A Letter from Flaherty Board President Ruth Somalo

December 8, 2021

Dear friends,

As a second year of global uncertainty and shared fragility comes to an end, I feel thankful for all we have been able to overcome together and hopeful for the future. Sometimes uncertainty and instability offer us opportunities to process, to learn, to embrace transformation, and in modest ways, to impact the world through action.

The Flaherty, now entering its 68th year, continues to provide media makers, audiences, curators, critics, scholars and students with rare opportunities to observe and deconstruct the creative process, to exchange ideas and explore the limits of representation, to see as we had not seen before, to think the world through cinema and to challenge our own preconceptions with joy. As exquisitely said by Rebecca Solnit “when you face politics that aspire to make you fearful, alienated, and isolated, joy is a fine initial act of insurrection”.

We have joyfully reimagined ourselves in the virtual space through the extraordinary Opacity Seminar curated by Janaína Oliveira. Opacity expanded our reach worldwide – to over 400 participants in 40 countries – in ways more accessible and democratic than ever before. As we move towards the centennial of Nanook of the North, we are working with the Avataq Cultural Institute and other partners on an ambitious archival project that includes the repatriation of images to their original Inuit communities, and a publication led by indigenous scholars. We are moving ahead full speed with the preparations for next year's Seminar, curated by Sky Hopinka and Almudena Escobar López which promises to be outstanding. We are enjoying the return of our beloved Flaherty NYC series in person with exciting new partnerships, and looking forward to presenting the results of the preservation initiative of Notes of an Early Fall by Saul Levine just wrapped up by the NYU-MIAP-Flaherty-BB Optics collaboration.

We remain committed to these thought-provoking curatorial practices: from education, to public programming, to preservation. As a small but mighty non profit we are looking forward to a year packed with new initiatives, and we seek your support to make them possible.

We know these are difficult times for everyone and we thank you in advance for your generosity and continuous support. We know you are there for us! The Flaherty’s resilience to overcome challenges is tightly bound to your support. So please make a tax-deductible donation and help us continue the work. I can’t wait to see what we can accomplish for our community in 2022.

Wishing you health, inspiration and freedom,

Ruth Somalo

President, Board of Trustees