THE SEMINAR in New York City
is SOLD OUT
Onward! The 70th Flaherty Film Seminar:
Donโt miss your chance to join us!
We are officially sold our for the seminar in NYC but there are still many ways to participate in the 70th Flaherty Film Seminar. Register today for Pods, Gatherings, or Online.
If you are in New York City, purchase tickets to Opening Night at MoMA (starting June 19) or add your name to our waitlist.
Last Chance to Register!
International Pods & Gatherings
If you canโt make it to NYC, find us in a Pod or Gathering near you. Registration closes on June 20th
๐น๐ญ Salaya, Thailand
๐ฎ๐ณ New Delhi, India
๐ต๐ฑ Warsaw, Poland
๐ต๐น Porto, Portugal
๐ต๐น Lisbon, Portugal
๐จ๐ด Bogotรก, Colombia
๐จ๐ฆ Toronto, Canada
๐บ๐ธ Los Angeles, USA
๐บ Worldwide Locations
๐ฆ๐ท Buenos Aires, Argentina
๐ฆ๐บ Melbourne, Australia
๐ฆ๐น Vienna, Austria
๐ง๐ฉ Dhaka, Bangladesh
๐ง๐ด La Paz, Bolivia
๐ฏ๐ต Kazuno City, Japan
๐ฑ๐น Vilnius, Lithuania
๐ฒ๐ฝ Mexico City, Mexico
๐ต๐ช Lima, Perรบ
๐น๐น Trinidad and Tobago
๐น๐ท Istanbul, Turkey
๐บ๐พ Montevideo, Uruguay
๐ฌ US Locations
Humboldt, CA
Miami, FL
Kansas City, MO
Johnson City, TN
Saint Louis, MO
Atlanta, GA
Minneapolis, MN
Detroit, MI
Other ways to participate: Online Experience
Connect with a global community online. The online experience is a mix of synchronous and asynchronous events launching June 26 and available through July 31.
Group screenings and facilitated discussions will be scheduled at varying times to accommodate a global audience. Enjoy a curated list of resources, and access film programs online during and after the Seminar.
Bill Brand, from MASSTRANSISCOPE, 1980
A FREE Pre-Launch Event for ONWARD! 70th Flaherty Seminarโs Online Experience
Ghosts in the Garden: Livestream and Conversation with Bill Brand
Join us for a special pre-launch livestream and conversation as we celebrate our dear friend Bill Brand, whose work inspired this yearโs ONWARD! Seminar visual identity.
Ghosts in the Garden features a selected retrospective of Billโs films streaming on Eventive, the platform we are using for our Online Experience this year, followed by a live conversation on Discord about his artistic practice, his relationship with the Flaherty, and the design process behind this yearโs brand.
This is also a chance to explore and test out the 2025 Online Experienceโno registration required, just curiosity and a good internet connection.
๐
12th June, 2025 at 7:00 PM EST
๐ฅ WATCH - Livestream Free via Eventive, link below
๐ฌ CHAT - Live, post screening discussion on the Flaherty Discord
๐ Free and open to all
๐ผ This program is presented on the occasion of ONWARD! The 70th Flaherty Seminar (June 26-29, 2025) and Ghosts in the Garden, a two person exhibition with Katy Martin at Court Tree Collective Industry City, 51 35th Street, Building #5, 2nd floor, Suite B236, Brooklyn, New York opening June 14 at 5 pm EST.
Meet our 2025 Programming Collaborators
In the spirit of collaboration that has been central to the seminar since its inception, our Programmers Janaรญna Oliveira, Carlos Gutiรฉrrez, and Richard Herskowitz each invited a programming partner to join them in the curation process. We are thrilled to have these three brilliant minds joining us for the 70th seminar, Onward!
Christopher Harris
Christopher Harris makes films and video installations that read African American historiography through the poetics and aesthetics of experimental cinema. His screenings include solo screenings at the 2024 Whitney Biennial, Tate Modern, Tiff Lightbox, and the Museum of Modern Art, among many others; a two-person screening with Su Friedrich at the Cinรฉmathรจque Franรงaise in Paris, and group screenings at the New York Film Festival, the International Film Festival Rotterdam, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, among many others. Harris is the recipient of a 2025 United States Artists Fellowship, the 2023 Herb Alpert Award in the Arts in Film/Video, a 2020โ2021 fellowship at Harvard Universityโs Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and a 2015 Creative Capital Award as well as many other awards. Harris is Professor of Visual Arts at Princeton University and splits time between Princeton, New Jersey and Coralville, Iowa.
Zaina Bseiso
Zaina Bseiso is a filmmaker, educator, and curator. She is a Senior Programmer at the Points North Institute and the co-founder of Bahia Collective, a community of filmmakers dedicated to collaborative practice and curation. Bseiso additionally serves on the programming board of LA Filmforum. Currently in post-production, her first feature, Todo Lo Sรณlido, has received support from Sundance, Sandbox Films, Visions Sud Est, among others. In 2024, she served as a curatorial fellow at the Flaherty Seminar and filmmaker-in-residence at the Duke DocX Lab. She holds an MFA in Film and Video from CalArts.
Louis Massiah
Louis Massiah is a documentary filmmaker and the founder of the Scribe Video Center in Philadelphia, a media arts center that provides production workshops to community groups and emerging media makers. As an educator and institution builder, Massiah has developed production methodologies that assist first time makers author their own stories, including the Precious Places Community History project, a collection of 150 collaborative documentaries; Muslim Voices of Philadelphia; The Great Migration - A City Transformed and currently The Tenants of Lenapehoking in the Age of Magnets, an oral history of an African-American community. Massiahโs documentaries include TCB โ the Toni Cade Bambara School of Organizing, W.E.B. Du Bois โ A Biography in Four Voices, The Bombing of Osage Avenue, Cecil B. Moore, two films for the Eyes on the Prize II series, and A is for Anarchist, B is for Brown. A MacArthur Foundation โgenius awardโ fellow, he is currently an A.D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University. Massiah has presented at the Robert Flaherty Film Seminar and has been a co-programmer and board member.
The 2025 Flaherty Seminar Team. From left to right, top to bottom: Zฤซle Liepins, Samara Chadwick, Nehal Vyas, Sun Park, Simone Barros, Elizabeth Kroner, Juan Pedro Agurcia, Anne de Mare (and Luigi), and Anisa Hosseinnezhad (and Spud).
Meet the people that make The Flaherty
Team
Samara Chadwick | Executive Director
Juan Pedro Agurcia | Program Director
Anne de Mare | Grants and Special Projects Lead
Anisa Hosseinnezhad | Fellowship Programmer
Maliyamungu Muhande | Brand Art Direction
Zile Liepins | Graphic Design & Photography
Simone Barros | Programs Coordinator
Elizabeth Kroner | Production Coordinator
Nehal Vyas | Online & Digital Communications Coordinator
Michael Krish | Online Advisor, with the Brown Institute for Media Innovation
Eynar Pineda | Production Consultant
Jules Rosskam | Online Fellowship Coordinator
Sun Park | Fellows Coordinator
Board of Directors
Pablo de Ocampo | President
Dessane Lopez Cassell | Vice President
Ted Kennedy | Treasurer
Patti Bruck
Steve Holmgren
Ruth Somalo
Juana Suรกrez
Welcome (back!) to the Board,
Patti Bruck
The Flaherty is delighted to welcome (back!) Patti Bruck, whose long commitment to The Flaherty Film Seminar has buoyed us through many decades. Patti is a filmmaker and educator. Her award-winning documentary and experimental films have screened at festivals internationally. From 1990 to 2014, she taught film and video production at the University of Colorado, Boulder. She has served on the Black Maria Film Festival selection committee and on granting panels for the Colorado Council on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Pennsylvania Arts Council. She has also served on the Boulder Arts Commission and is currently Selection Committee and Programming Adviser for the Boulder International Film Festival. She was President of The Flaherty Board of Directors from 2002 to 2010.
30% OFF Flaherty Books
Deep dive into the history of The Flaherty Film Seminar โ explore the brilliant research of Patty Zimmermann and Scott MacDonald in their compilations: The Flaherty: Decades in the Cause of Independent Cinema and Flash Flaherty. Thank you to our partners at Indiana University Press.
We are happy to share a 30% discount code: UFLHRTY30
โโPart myth and half truth, The Flaherty Seminarโs reputation as a hot bed of polemical debate attests to its absolute centrality to the documentary tradition. And hereโs the proof: historical context provided by the authors and scintillating encounters generated between filmmakers and participants. Raw, incendiary, insightful: itโs a treasure to behold.โ
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Order here:
The 70th Flaherty Film Seminar is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. We sincerely thank all our partners who support the Seminar, Fellowship, Pods, Gatherings, and our wider work as an independent organization.
