The 69th Annual Flaherty Film Seminar
To Commune
June 27–July 2
Thai Film Archive
Salaya, Thailand
Reconstruction of Sri Kung film studio facade with the “Floating Cinemathèque” behind. Image courtesy Thai Film Archive, Salaya.
The Seminar is going to Thailand!
The 69th Flaherty Film Seminar, To Commune, will take place at the Thai Film Archive near Bangkok from June 27 to July 2, 2024.
Curated by May Adadol Ingawanij & Julian Ross, To Commune will gather ten prominent guest artists and 100+ Seminar participants from around the world, including up to 30 Fellows for six days of screenings, discussions, exhibitions, and performances.
The Flaherty is honored to partner with the team at the Thai Film Archives, comprising Director Chalida Uabumrungjit, and Deputy Directors Kong Rithdee and Sanchai Chotirosseranee. The Archive’s state-of-the-art venues and vibrant neighborhood will offer an ideal setting for encountering the seminar’s cinematic worlds and connecting with each other.
“The floating cinemathèque” was a core vision of the newly designed Thai Film Archive, combining Buddhist ideology and state-of-the art design. Image courtesy Thai Film Archive, Salaya.
The 2024 Seminar will reflect the programmers' desire to highlight how filmmakers, artists, and community organizers across Asia and the Global South inherit surprising legacies of historical efforts to commune.
“How does cinema enable us to commune? We’re interested in the potential of groups gathering around a screen over a period of time. We approach documentary filmmaking as that which brings together bodies, minds, and spirits across different spaces, worlds, and temporalities.
Beyond self-organizing and community-building, to commune is to communicate with mystical, animistic, and ritualistic capacities.
Beyond affirming commonality, to commune is to connect with others and to be in touch with the unknowable.
We turn to the fundamental value of cinema as an encounter with beings and worlds very different from our own. Our curatorial approach seeks to explore the tensions and the sparks of efforts to commune. Not to gather to recognize an identity or a common concern, but to make relations on grounds of radical differentiation.”
–May Adadol Ingawanij & Julian Ross.
Although the Seminar is most often held in the US, it has taken place in multiple locations worldwide, including Puerto Rico (1961) and Latvia (1990). We are thrilled to continue this legacy in Thailand in 2024! Participants are invited to attend the seminar in Thailand, or join our asynchronous Seminar Pods in up to 15 locations worldwide. We’ll announce more details and open registration in the new year.
Save the date–June 27-July 2, 2024!
João Vieira Torres and Dan Taulapapa McMullin in conversation during MAKA: Many Eyed Vessel
Thank you FNYC 25!
Thank you to all who were a part of our 25th Edition of Flaherty NYC, MAKA: Many Eyed Vessel. We gathered in downtown Manhattan for three magical days of collective offerings curated by Flaherty Fellows Emily Abi-Kheirs, Ha'aheo Auwae-Dekker, Isabel Rojas, and Raven Two Feathers.
We worked with the cinematic form to conjure our ancestors and commune with ghosts, examine notions of identity, homeland, and language. We invoked spells and counterspells to envision new, contingent futures collectively. We are grateful to Emily, Ha’aheo, Isabel, and Raven for their labor and care; to filmmakers João Vieira Torres and Dan Taulapapa McMullin for joining us in person; and to all the practitioners, artists, and collectives who offered their work to bring us together. Gratitude to our partners who made the program possible through their support – especially DCTV and Metrograph for providing spaces to gather, and to every single person who attended – online or in person, for one day or all – who formed the net and knots that made MAKA what it was.
We invite you to revisit the program on our website and to read about the programmers’ process and intentions in their interview with Eddy Frumkin for Documentary Magazine.
Please Give, and Double Your Gift
All end-of-year donations will be matched!
Exceeded all expectations by providing more joy than I imagined might have been possible. The bonding with fellows and staff was a lovely surprise [...] a lot of learning happened in a short amount of time, resulting in deeply valued exchanges.
–2023 Seminar Fellow
2023 has been a terrific year for The Flaherty in many regards. Our last three Seminars brought together the largest and most diverse cohorts since The Flaherty’s founding in 1954. We shared the work of almost forty artists and collectives from all continents. Over 1,300 online and in-person participants attended from 45+ US states and 40+ countries. Our hybrid and pod Seminar expansion brought together people across a dozen timezones.
Our past informs our future. In 2024, we commit to being responsive to new audiences while holding true to our roots in radical and fearless experimentation. We will foster curation as craft; uphold our programmers’ process and visions; de-center the in-person Seminar away from a US context; and encourage multigenerational and international attendance. We will continue to experiment iteratively with hybridity and Seminar Pods to expand the reach of our programs and bridge international, multilingual, and multicultural conversations.
Your support is indispensable for the future of the Flaherty Film Seminar. Community donations directly enable us to create innovative cinema experiences, propel artists, reach audiences, provide mentorship through our Fellowship program, and expand global Seminar Pods tailored for accessibility and decentralization.
Double your contributions! Until December 31st, all donations will be matched by an anonymous donor — up to a total amount of $10,000. Help us meet our goal of $20,000 by end of year.
All donations are tax deductible
A wholehearted thank you to our departing trustees
Nicholas Elliott, jeanelle augustin, Jason Livingston
We extend deep gratitude to our departing board members, Jason Livingston (served 2017-2023), Nicholas Elliott (served 2017-2023), and jeanelle augustin (served 2022-23) for their service. All three served on the Executive Committee – Livingston and Elliott as Secretary, augustin as Vice-President – during times of significant institutional transition and growth. We thank them for their wisdom, vision, and heart.
