70 YEARS OF CURIOSITY, COMMUNITY & COMMITMENT TO INDEPENDENT CINEMA
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70 YEARS OF CURIOSITY, COMMUNITY & COMMITMENT TO INDEPENDENT CINEMA 〰️
For seven decades, The Flaherty has created vibrant spaces for collective inquiry, screening innovative works and fostering complex conversations that have deep reverberations in the field. Flaherty has hosted upstarts and legends, screened masterworks and provocations, survived trends, ruptures and the passage of time - all while remaining focused on exploring cinema as a catalyst for the conversations we long to be having.
The Flaherty has remained relevant for the last 70 years because of its responsiveness and commitment to its politics and participants, who find at the Seminar a haven to engage differently and more deeply with cinema. We don’t use the term ‘participants’ lightly: each person who joins the seminar makes the seminar what it is.
Our belief in independent cinema is enshrined in our own institutional independence. Our roots are scrappy, irreverent, independent. Our board is composed of artists, academics, arts administrators, and elders; we have no major donors directing our mandate, and have been free of corporate sponsorship since our inception. Growth has been tricky — our future demands resources and partners that help us continue to expand our reach without compromising our integrity.
For decades, the Seminar ran primarily on volunteer labor, largely inaccessible registration fees, and modest donations. As we divest from the first two, we need our community’s help to get it across the finish line of the year. If you have the means, please consider shining some light our way by making a tax-deductible donation today.
A sincere thank you,
on behalf of our modest and mighty team,
Samara
Executive Director, International Film Seminars, Inc.
Jumana Manna, Julian Ross, Fang-Tze Hsu, May Adadol Ingawanij, Riar Rizaldi at the Thai Film Archive. Photo by Vinai Dithajohn.
Read & Listen: Press from TO COMMUNE
Cici Peng, ‘Distant Voices: A new edition of the Flaherty Film Seminar’. Tank Magazine, Issue 101. Winter 2024.
Jean Ma, ‘To Commune: The 69th Flaherty Film Seminar.’ Film Quarterly vol. 78, no. 2, Winter 2024, pp. 68-73.
Anuj Malhotra, ‘Portions of an Immense Lava: Notes on a Film Seminar Designed as an Open Map,’ Senses of Cinema, issue 111, November 2024.
*Jooyeon Lee, ‘천 개의 조각 [A Thousand Pieces],’ Material online publication, September 2024.
*Wood Lin, Wanling Chen, Pei Hwa, ‘排除預設、反思權力，重探電影的交流可能性──拜訪2024 年佛萊赫提電影研討會, [non-preconception, reflections on power, and the possibilities of film at the 2024 Flaherty Film Seminar]’ Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute online publication, August 2024.
Devika Girish, The Film Comment Podcast: Flaherty Film Seminar 2024, July 3 2024.
*articles in Korean and Chinese are legible (enough) via google translate.