Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College
The 68th Flaherty Film Seminar Queer World-Mending June 17-23, 2023
The 2023 Flaherty Film Seminar, Queer World-Mending, programmed by Jon Davies and Steve Reinke, will take place June 17-23 2023.
This year, we will relocate to Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, NY
After an extensive search led by Seminar Producers Juan Pedro Agurcia and Eynar Pineda, we were inspired by Skidmore’s many modular and accessible spaces, invigorated by the campus’ collaborative and interdisciplinary environments, and heartened by recent changes in leadership and the unionization of non-tenure track faculty in September 2022. We are eager to collaborate with the teams at the John B. Moore Documentary Studies Collaborative, the MDOCS Storytellers' Institute, the Tang Teaching Museum, and the Office of Conferences and Events teams on the upcoming seminar.
REGISTRATION WILL OPEN LATE FEBRUARY
“We at Skidmore and in MDOCS have long looked to The Flaherty as an inspiration and a fellow traveler in placing the documentary arts at the center of a wider mission to promote critical reflection, formal experimentation, passionate dialogue and transformative struggle. It's hard for me to imagine a better fit, or better timing: we foresee myriad alignments and cross-pollinations emerging between the Seminar and MDOCS's own June documentary residency/fellowship, the Storytellers’ Institute. So, we gleefully look forward to getting to know many of you, and are thrilled to welcome the Seminar to the region during the gorgeous and reposeful early summer - in our opinion, the best season to be here.”
– Adam Tinkle, Assistant Professor, Media and Film Studies, Director, MDOCS-the John B. Moore Documentary Studies Collaborative, Skidmore College
Documentation of past seminars at Colgate University. Photographers: 2010, 2012 Theo Rigby | 2011 Scott Nyerges | 2013, 2014, 2018 Robert M. Goodman | 2015, 2017, 2019 Anne-Katrine Hansen | 2016 Amy Jenkins
Thank you to Colgate for hosting the past thirteen seminars!
We are saddened to move away from Colgate University, a decision spurred largely by a multi-year construction project that broke ground between the buildings most used by the seminar.
Since 2008, Colgate has welcomed hundreds of filmmakers and thousands of participants for the last 13 seminars, programmed, in ascending order, by
Chi-hui Yang (THE AGE OF MIGRATION, 2008)
Irina Leimbacher (WITNESSES, MONUMENTS, RUINS, 2009)
Dennis Lim (WORK, 2010)
Dan Streible (SONIC TRUTH, 2011)
Josetxo Cerdán (OPEN WOUNDS, 2012)
Pablo de Ocampo (HISTORY IS WHAT’S HAPPENING, 2013)
Caspar Stracke & Gabriela Monroy (TURNING THE INSIDE OUT, 2014)
Laura U. Marks (THE SCENT OF PLACES, 2015)
David Pendleton (PLAY, 2016)
Nuno Lisboa (FUTURE REMAINS, 2017)
Kevin Jerome Everson & Greg de Cuir Jr. (THE NECESSARY IMAGE, 2018)
Shai Heredia (ACTION, 2019)
Almudena Escobar López and Sky Hopinka (CONTINENTS OF DRIFTING CLOUDS, 2022)
Over the years, thousands of people have experienced life-shifting inspiration at the Golden Theatre, the Clark Discussion Room, The Edge and the Hall of Presidents (aka Bill’s Bar), as well as by (and in) the lakes and under the trees.
Thank you to John, Lynn, Cody, Jamie-Leigh, Amy, Lakshmi, Mary, Ani, Angela, Lois, Doug, Mark, Zach, Matt – and the many many folks from Summer Programs, Film & Media Studies, and Classrooms, Digital Media, and Events who have been an integral part of the Flaherty Seminar over the many years. It has been a delight to know and work alongside each of you.
Photograph by Rachell Morillo
Dessane Lopez Cassell joins Board of Directors
The Flaherty Board of Directors is delighted to welcome Dessane Lopez Cassell. Dessane has worked with The Flaherty in many capacities, as a Fellow (2018), FNYC Programmer (Fall 2018), Guest Services Manager (2019), the Opacity Catalogue Co-Editor (2021-22), and as a Fellows Coordinator (2021-22). She knows our institution well, and will work alongside the full board with great discernment, depth, and dedication. Welcome Dessane!
Dessane Lopez Cassell is an editor, writer, and curator. She gravitates towards moving image and visual art concerned with race, gender, and decoloniality, and is particularly interested in voices from the African and Caribbean diasporas.
As Editor-in-Chief of BlackStar’s journal, Seen, Cassell platforms film, art, and visual culture writing by and about people of color, with the aim of carving out more opportunities for nuanced, slow journalism. Prior to joining Seen, she was the reviews editor at Hyperallergic, where she focused on championing writers and artists from underrepresented communities, in addition to growing the publication’s film coverage.
An itinerant curator, Cassell was a Flaherty/Ford Foundation curatorial fellow in 2018, before serving as the Flaherty NYC programmer for that fall season. She has also organized screenings and exhibitions for Abrons Art Center & Metrograph, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, MoMA, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Black Women’s Film Conference, among others. Cassell has been part of the programming team for BlackStar Film Festival since 2018 and was named a DOC NYC Documentary New Leader in 2022.
Raised in New York City, Cassell is of Dominican and African American descent. She lives in her hometown with her dog.
Oberhausen Seminar Application Deadline: February 15
The Flaherty is excited to partner with the Oberhausen Seminar for the 9th time, along with LUX (London) and Doc's Kingdom (Lisboa).
Apply now for the five-day seminar as part of the 69th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen. The Oberhausen Seminar is an experimental course designed to explore contemporary artists' moving image practice in the context of a renowned international film festival.
The Seminar primarily addresses young and upcoming professionals. It is open to international artists, filmmakers, curators and researchers. It will be held in English. Twenty-five applicants will be selected to meet daily during the festival to discuss the programs they have seen with each other and with guests.
The 2023 seminar will be led by Salla Tykkä, Professor for Moving Image and Contemporary Arts in the University of Arts, Academy of Arts, in Helsinki.
Community News
LEF Application Deadline: January 20
Through the Moving Image Fund, LEF supports the work of New England-based filmmakers across all phases of a project's production. In November, LEF opened up Letter of Inquiry (LOI) submission forms for projects in Production and Post-production to award grants of $15,000 and $25,000, respectively.
To be eligible for Post-production funding, the project must have already been supported by LEF at a previous stage. The deadline to apply for either Production or Post-production funding is Friday, January 20 at 11:59pm ET.
The Harvard FSC-LEF Fellowship is an additional opportunity for one Boston-area director to receive a $10,000 grant, access to a pool of production and post-production equipment, and the ability to participate in the Harvard FSC community through work-in-progress screenings, workshops, and other activities over the 2023-2024 academic year. To apply for the FSC-LEF Fellowship, filmmakers who submit a Moving Image Fund Letter of Inquiry by January 20 will be able to express interest in this additional opportunity until the end of January!
Documentation from Floaters, a performance by Workspace Resident Rob Cosgrove at Silo City, September 4, 2022
Squeaky Wheel's Summer Workspace Residency Deadline: February 19
Call For Submissions! Squeaky Wheel's Workspace Residency (Buffalo, NY) is open to artists, filmmakers, curators, scholars, and researchers who are seeking resources, time, and support for ongoing projects or the creation of new work.
BlackStar Film Festival Application Deadline: March 1
Call for Entries! Submit your film to BlackStar Film Festival. BlackStar, one of the world's premier festivals for filmmakers of color, just opened film submissions for their 2023 festival! Filmmakers who identify as Black, Brown, or Indigenous are invited to submit short or feature-length films.
The Flaherty Recommends
Watch ThousandSuns Cinema | January 9-30
60+ films by indigenous artists from turtle island and around the world, presented with Cousin Collective. Works by: Alanis Obomsawin, Sky Hopinka, Cecilia Vicuña, Svetlana Romanova, Caroline Monnet, Adam Piron & Adam Khalil, Alexandra Lazarowich, Colectivo Los Ingrávidos, Lindsay McIntyre, New Red Order, TJ Cuthand, asinnajaq, Eve-Lauryn LaFountain, and many more!
Read Creating Community in Hybrid Festivals
We’re reading the IDFA / MIT Report: Creating Community in Hybrid Festivals. We’re honored to have contributed our process and findings from the 2022 hybrid seminar to this report:
“A metaphor we might use to describe a hybrid festival are two streams running in parallel; the act of joining the two streams (virtual and physical) being akin to jumping from one platform to the other, or one side to the other. This was illustrated to us by Juan Pedro Agurcia, online producer at Flaherty Film Seminar, a prestigious annual, week-long program devoted to non-fiction film and media. He likens a hybrid festival to “two rivers that come from the same source flowing parallel to each other. Our points of connection are where there's flow between the two rivers, but the source is the same."
Listen Film Comment Podcast – Indigenous Cinema
An essential conversation with filmmakers, writers, programmers, and Cousin Collective members Adam Piron (board member 2019-22) and Sky Hopinka (2022 Seminar Programmer)