June 2020
Thanks to Pooja Rangan for her leadership at the Flaherty! Ruth Somalo elected new board President.
Pooja Rangan, Assistant Professor of English and Film and Media Studies at Amherst College, served on The Flaherty’s Board of Trustees from 2014 - 2020 and led the organization as board president from 2018 - 2020.
The Flaherty’s Board of Trustees would like to extend its gratitude to Pooja Rangan, who has completed her term on the board and is stepping down as its President. Since joining the board in 2014 and most visibly since 2018, when she was elected President, Pooja has played a critical role in the development and success of the organization with a tireless dedication to fulfilling the core mission envisioned by Frances Flaherty while reaching a wider audience and reimagining our activities for the years ahead.
Pooja has led us through a period of great change and challenges, taking her position as we began the search for a new executive director, ushering in new initiatives towards the inclusion of more diverse audiences, stewarding the redesign of our public identity, and leaving only after she had helped us establish the foundations for a response to the Covid-19 crisis that will allow the organization to emerge stronger and revitalized.
As Board President, Pooja ensured that a time of change was one of tremendous possibilities for our future. Her idealism, foresight, critical intelligence, and graceful diplomacy have laid the foundations for a crucial period in the Flaherty's development.
Ruth Somalo was elected the new president of the Flaherty Board of Trustees.
While we will miss Pooja and her inspiring leadership, we are proud to welcome our new Board President Ruth Somalo, who joined the board in June 2019 and has already stepped in to her new role as President to guarantee a seamless transition. As an independent filmmaker, researcher, and curator, Ruth embodies the spirit of our community. She brings critical engagement and fierce optimism as well as years of professional experience in the nonfiction media arts. We are fortunate to have Ruth to lead us as we continue to strengthen our engagement with increasingly more diverse and global audiences and our commitment to documentary film culture approached in a spirit of tolerance, inclusiveness, and critical thinking while we adapt to the changes brought about by the global pandemic and carry forth the sustained intellectual engagement grounded in the Flaherty legacy.
Filmmaker and nonprofit executive Jamie Dobie joins the Flaherty Board of Trustees
Jamie Dobie is the newest member of our Board of Trustees
We are pleased to welcome Jamie Dobie to the Flaherty / International Film Seminars, Inc. Board of Trustees! She has worked at the intersection of film and social impact for the past decade. She's currently the Executive Director of Peace is Loud, a nonprofit founded by filmmaker Abigail Disney that uses storytelling to support movement building. Peace is Loud has led impact campaigns for celebrated documentary films including Knock Down the House (featuring Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) and The Hunting Ground (by Academy Award-nominated filmmakers Amy Ziering and Kirby Dick). She also previously served as manager of community engagement at POV | American Documentary.
A filmmaker by training, Jamie's recent short documentary Shivani screened at MoMA Doc Fortnight, Full Frame Documentary Film Festival and AFIDocs. She's on the Mentorship Board for the MFA Documentary Film Program at Northwestern University, and has served as a guest speaker and lecturer at numerous universities, including Columbia University, American University, Tufts, Princeton, Texas A&M, and University of Colorado.
The Unassembled.
Join us for a shared experience to commemorate the opening night of the 2020 Flaherty Film Seminar.
June 13, 4pm ET / 1pm PT
Thank you to the Academy for selecting the Flaherty for a 2020 FilmWatch Grant!
We are pleased to receive continued support from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
TheAcademy’s FilmCraft and FilmWatch grants were established to identify and empower future filmmakers from nontraditional backgrounds, cultivate new and diverse talent, promote motion pictures as an art form, and provide a platform for underrepresented artists.
The Academy Grants program provides financial support to qualifying film festivals, educational institutions and film scholars and has awarded more than $15 million since 1968.
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ABOUT THE ACADEMY
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is a global community of more than 9,000 of the most accomplished artists, filmmakers and executives working in film. In addition to celebrating and recognizing excellence in filmmaking through the Oscars, the Academy supports a wide range of initiatives to promote the art and science of the movies, including public programming, educational outreach and the upcoming Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, which is under construction in Los Angeles.
Our office is going dark for some time, we don’t know how long we will have to close our doors to the public but we are hoping to come back in the summer to plan new events and be with our community. If you want to contact us you can send us an email to ifs@flahertyseminar.org
Please continue to share your events and screenings with us, you can always submit your info here.
Flaherty Fellows
Corrientes: LOS INGRAVIDOS + ANTO ASTUDILLO
The Sun Quartet, Part 1: SunStone (2017, Colectivo Los Ingrávidos)
"The camera, the lens, the window of the film is present and made evident through its edges in each of the pieces in this program. The film registers as a document, without color correction. These apparently aesthetic decisions are also intuitive, they remind us of the act of observing individually but also of belonging to the context of the work as a collective presence. Have you ever stopped to physically recognize your point of view? Both in saturated, overcrowded public spaces, and also in the private spaces dedicated to spirituality, introspection, and reflection it is possible to identify ourselves. This is how Los Ingrávidos establish a unique relationship between the spectators and the moving images they create. Moving images that are faithfully presented following the collective’s mission of 'dismantling the corporatized audiovisual grammar'. " These are the first words Anto Astudillo uses to establish a conversation with Los Ingrávidos. A conversation that vacillates between the written and the audiovisual, the self and the collective, and between dissonance and reality. Corrient.es, a new online site for Latin American film, is elated to be able to present six films by Colectivo Los Ingrávidos in conversation with filmmaker and programmer Anto Astudillo. The films will become available throughout the month of June.
ARTISTS RESOURCES
Emergency Support for Non-Salaried Workers in the Visual Arts
The Tri-State Relief Fund to Support Non-Salaried Workers in the Visual Arts will distribute one-time unrestricted cash grants of $2,000 each to freelance, contract, or non-salaried archivists, art handlers, artist/photographer’s assistants, cataloguers, database specialists, digital assets specialists, image scanners/digitizers, and registrars. Applicants must show proof of residency in Connecticut, New Jersey, and/or New York from the last two years. They must also have a minimum of five years experience in the aforementioned behind-the-scenes roles in the visual arts, and be able to show proof of critical financial need due to loss of income directly related to the COVID-19 crisis.
CALL FOR ENTRIES
The Vilcek Foundation currently seeks young foreign-born applicants for the 2021 Vilcek Prizes for Creative Promise in Filmmaking - from now until Wednesday, June 10, 2020 at 5pm EST. We are a nonprofit foundation dedicated to raising awareness of immigrant contributions to the arts and sciences in the United States.
Immigrant directors, editors, screenwriters, producers and cinematographers working across a variety of genres including narrative, documentary, experimental or animation, are invited to apply. Applicants should have been born outside of the United States; be 38 years of age or younger in 2021; and completed at least one short film that has received a prize or been selected for film festivals, or alternatively, one feature-length film. Three winners will each receive a $50,000 unrestricted cash prize and a comprehensive promotional campaign to honor their career and achievements.
If you are eligible, we encourage you to apply. Attached is the press release, and complete eligibility requirements and the online application can be found on www.vilcek.org.
Submit to our e-newsletter through our website.
We will no longer send a separate email for submissions, please visit our site anytime for instructions to submit your listing for our newsletter through the ‘About’ section of the site’s drop-down menu.
2019 Catalog Available Now!
The 2019 Seminar Catalogue includes detailed information about the 65th Robert Flaherty Film Seminar. This publication is the result of a collaboration between Flaherty / International Film Seminars, Inc. and World Records, in conjunction with the Action: the 2019 Flaherty Film Seminar, programmed by Shai Heredia.
Thank you to all our contributors: Shai Heredia, Jason Fox, Abby Sun, Joel Neville Anderson, Lakshmi Padmanabhan, Priya Sen, Ani Maitra, Pooja Rangan, Aparna Sharma, Jim Supanick, Tenzin Phuntsog, Jheanelle Brown, Chet Pancake, and Carl Elsaesser.
Edited by World Records
Design by Dan Schrempf
Copy Editing by Nadine Covert
SUPPORT the Flaherty
With your support, we will continue to bring filmmakers and audiences of all levels together. All contributions, whether large or small, help ensure the excellence of Flaherty programs for many years to come. Every donation makes it easier for us to support the artists in their art and to inspire others to create. Any amount you are able to donate will have a big impact. During COVID-19, The Flaherty can continue to present thoughtful interactive programming about the exploration of film culture and time-based media. Cinemas may be closed, but we must continue to preserve film history and hope to support the restoration of important works for many years to come. This year, your donation will be more impactful than ever.
If you prefer to donate by check please make it out to: The Flaherty, 80 Hanson Place, #603, Brooklyn, NY 11217.
About the Flaherty
The Flaherty is a media arts organization that brings together diverse, curious minds to foster an in-depth discourse on film and the creative process. We believe in the transformative power of the moving image and its ability to change how we think about film, and the world we live in. Since 1954, our unique Robert Flaherty Film Seminar, has provided an unparalleled opportunity to explore beyond known limits of the moving image and renew the challenge to discover, reveal and illuminate the ways of life of peoples and cultures throughout the world.
