The 71st Flaherty Film Seminar
Gestures of Refusal
ARTISTS
* Non featured and Artists Not Present at Seminar
Left to Right: Korakrit Arunanondchai, Paijong Laisakul, Tzu Nyen Ho, Riar Rizaldi, Sriwhana Spong, Chikako Yamashiro, Saeed Taji Farouky. Not pictured: Araya Rasdjamreansook and Jumana Manna
Photo by Ferrante Ferranti.
Kamal Aljafari
Kamal Aljafari is a Palestinian filmmaker and artist known for his distinctive approach to cinema. His installation The Camera of the Dispossessed was shown at the 35th Bienal de São Paulo in 2023. His feature film A Fidai Film (2024) was shown in over 100 festivals and won around 10 international awards. His most recent work, With Hasan in Gaza (2025), premiered in the International Competition at Locarno Film Festival, where it was awarded with the Europa Cinemas Label.
Photo by Claudie-Ann Landry.
Miryam Charles
Miryam Charles is a Haitian-Canadian filmmaker based in Montreal. Her films have been presented at various festivals in Quebec and internationally. Her first feature film, This House, premiered at the Berlinale and was later shown at the AFI Film Festival. It was also included in TIFF’s Top 10 and listed among Sight and Sound’s best films of 2022. Her work has been exhibited at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, MoMA, the Leonard and Bina Ellen Gallery, the Everson Museum, and the Palais de Tokyo.
Photo by and courtesy of Oscar F Orengo.
Maryam Tafakory
Maryam Tafakory, born and raised in Iran, works with film and performance. She was the 2024 winner of the Film London Jarman Award. Her recent films have won seven Academy-qualifying awards. Mast-del (2023), was nominated for the Queer Palm at Cannes Film Festival and for the SACD Award at the Directors’ Fortnight. It was among Film Comment’s Best Short Films of 2023. Her film, Razeh-del (2024), premiered at the 77th Locarno Film Festival, where it won two awards. In 2025, she received the Locarno Residency Award for her feature film in development. Other awards include: Gold Hugo at the 58th Chicago International Film Festival; Best Documentary Short at the 72nd Melbourne International Film Festival; and the Tiger Short Award at the 51st International Film Festival Rotterdam. Screenings of her work include: Tate Modern (London), New York Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, and BFI London Film Festival. Solo screenings of her work include those at MoMA (New York), BOZAR (Brussels), National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC), and the Academy Museum (Los Angeles), among others. Her work has been featured in The Guardian, Le Monde, and Les Cahiers du Cinéma, among others.
Photo by Tuni Chatterji.
Lee Anne Schmitt
Lee Anne Schmitt is an essay filmmaker based in Los Angeles; her projects have addressed American exceptionalism, the logic of utility and labor, gestures of kindness and refusal, and the history of racial violence in the United States. Her films have screened at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Viennale, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Cinema du Reel, FICUNAM, FIDMarseille, DocLisboa and many more. She has had retrospectives at Fronteira in Brasil, DokLeipzig, Northwest Film Center and more. She is a recipient of awards and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, Creative Capital, the Graham Foundation, and multiple MacDowell Residencies.
Jonathan Schwartz *
Jonathan Schwartz (USA) Jonathan Schwartz (1973-2018) was a filmmaker, teacher, and source of inspiration for all his friends and students. Jonathan incorporated found and collected materials in many of his films, and simultaneously developed his unique 16mm vision through intimate exchanges with his subjects, handheld gestures, in-camera superimpositions, and a profound attention to the transient qualities of the world around us. Whether in his short collage films or works shot in his home, on his many walks, or during cinematic journeys to Israel, India, Turkey, or Iceland, his work simultaneously embodies a devotion to the ephemerality of external worlds and a gestural responsiveness to evanescent internal states. Often incorporating aurally textured poetic readings, and other times eschewing all words, Jonathan's films both lacerate and console as we confront his unique cinematic expression of sorrow, disquiet, and exultation. - Canyon Cinema
