The Patricia Zimmermann Memorial Fellowship Fund

The Flaherty is thrilled to create a new Fellowship Fund in honor of the late and great Patty Zimmermann (1956-2023). 

As a connector and builder, Patty was an indomitable force in both our communities. She inspired and nurtured the intellectual and generative processes of so many scholars and artists while remaining herself curious and open to reinvention. Her legacy as an author, presenter, and visionary thought leader in the film world cannot be underestimated.

Learn more about Patty from many who loved her by reading The Flaherty’s Memorial to Patty Zimmermann.

The Patricia Zimmermann Fellowship Fund will award fellowships to emerging curators, scholars, artists, and historians of alternative and new media to attend future Flaherty Seminars and engage in other affiliated mentoring activities.

We hope to carry these Fellowships forward into the future as a tribute to Patty’s work in the film world as a scholar, archivist, community builder, creator, historian, and adventurous explorer and chronicler of new media. 

Please join us now in making any donation – large or small – to continue the Zimmermann Fellowship Fund for years to come!

** If you wish to donate but are unable to do so via this form, please reach out to info at theflaherty dot org with the subject line: Patty Zimmermann Memorial Fellowship.

Cheques can be sent to
The Flaherty, PO Box 1267, New York, NY 10009

The Flaherty's Fellowship Program was a sensorial experience – I was overwhelmed with constructive emotions and encouraged to articulate them among generous peers.

– Seminar Fellow

The 2024 Patricia Zimmermann Fellows

Flaherty Seminar Fellowship

The recipient of the Inaugural Patricia Zimmermann Memorial Flaherty Fellowship is writer, editor, and film programmer Devika Girish. 

Devika Girish is a New York City–based writer and curator whose work explores the entanglements of moving-image culture with race, labor, colonialism, and power. She is the Editor of Film Comment and a Talks programmer at the New York Film Festival. Like Patty, Devika is a true polymath. Her interest in cinema combines with a true skill in facilitating the people and conversations that maintain curiosity, integrity, and creativity in our field. She is interested in engaging with Patty’s work, as well as with the legacy of the seminar. She has received a copy of Patty and Scott MacDonald’s two Flaherty books, and we will support her engagement, post-seminar, with an aspect of The Flaherty’s archive she finds most aligned with her existing practice.

Devika attended the 69 Flaherty Film Seminar TO COMMUNE in Salaya, Thailand. The podcast she created for Film Comment while at the seminar can be heard here – she will also be writing a piece about her experience that we look forward to sharing with you in the new year.

2024 Visible Evidence Fellowships

In 2024, The Flaherty partnered with Visible Evidence in the creation of a joint fellowship fund. Thanks to many generous contributions (see below), the following Fellowship recipients attended Visible Evidence XXX at Monash University’s Caulfield Campus in Melbourne, Australia, December 17-20th.

Minji Kim is a Ph.D. student in the Division of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Southern California. She holds an M.A. in Cinema and Media Studies from USC and a B.A. in Cinema Studies from the Korea National University of Arts. Minji’s research interests encompass documentary and non-fiction films, environmental media studies, and oceanic & island studies. Focusing on the islands across the Pacific such as Jeju in South Korea, she looks at the relationship between each island’s media landscape and the history of imperialism, militarism, and extractivism. Her research projects include state-sponsored films and the making of environmental subjects in South Korea, platformed nature documentaries, and underwater photography in nonfiction film.

Zoe Meng Jiang received her PhD from the Department of Cinema Studies at New York University and is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at Hong Kong University. She researches media theory and history, documentary media, gender and feminism, and moving-image arts. Her recent and forthcoming publications appear in the Oxford Handbook of Chinese Digital Media, Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, Art Asia Pacific, The Brooklyn Rail, Artforum China, and LEAP, among others. She is the co-editor of the "Chaotic Formats" issue of the Journal of Chinese Cinemas and was an assistant editor of World Records, a journal published by the UnionDocs Center for Documentary Art. Alongside her research, Zoe has curated exhibitions and screenings at SLEEPCENTER (NYC), Asia Art Archive in America (NYC), and Los Angeles Filmforum.