Seminars 68 | 69 | 70

The staff and board of The Flaherty are filled with gratitude and inspiration after the 68th Flaherty Film Seminar (June 17–23, 2023 at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, NY).

We look forward to Seminars 69 and 70 with enthusiasm, and are delighted to announce the programmers for our next TWO editions!

As we move into a new season, we part with a valued long-time team member, Sarie Horowitz, who has been at the Flaherty since 2011.

warm | tinged with eroticism | challenging | intensive | thrilling | joyful | transformative | a thoughtful week of conversations | facilitated with a lot of care | edifying | humbling | energizing | engaging | fancy | porous | surprising | Queer People | provocative | interesting | revitalizing | generous | inspiring | loving | invigorating discussion | community | tender | deeply reflective | emotional | exciting | arousing | enlivening | productive | difficult | rigorous | expansive | enriching | exhausting | honestly…so much fun!

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Photography by Bleue Liverpool

A Thrilling 68th Flaherty Film Seminar

The 68th Annual Flaherty Film Seminar, Queer World-Mending, concluded Monday July 31st, with the closing of our online asynchronous platform.

We were honored to welcome artists Sharlene Bamboat & Alexis Kyle Mitchell, Emily Vey Duke & Cooper Battersby, Theo Jean Cuthand, Shu Lea Cheang, John Greyson, Madsen Minax, James Richards, Roee Rosen, Amina Ross, Wu Tsang in our midst, as well as a host of elders whose presences were felt at every turn: Chantal Akerman, Barbara Hammer, Pat Hearn and Shelley Lake, George Kuchar, Curt McDowell, Gunvor Nelson, Edward Owens, Marlon Riggs, Beryl Sokoloff, Leslie Thornton and Ron Vawter, and Paul Wong.

Over five hundred people from around the world took part in this year’s programming – as Fellows, Seminar Participants, Pod Participants, or Online Attendees. We brought together creators, critics, and scholars in Argentina, Australia, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Croatia, France, Germany, Greece, Honduras, India, Ireland, Israel, México, Norway, Paraguay, Perú, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Slovenia, Spain, South Korea, Sweden, the Netherlands, Turkey, United Kingdom, and the United States.

Thank you to all who joined and supported this year’s seminar, to every member of the Flaherty Team, and the gracious folks at Skidmore who welcomed us so warmly on their verdant campus.

Read Mend the World: The 2023 Flaherty Seminar by Caden Mark Gardner, in the Film Comment Letter, July 31, 2023.

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In this Blue Moon month,
The Flaherty is delighted to announce the programmers for the next two Seminars

May Adadol Ingawanij; Julian Ross photographed by Merel Hegenbart; Jemma Desai photographed by Christa Holka

May Adadol Ingawanij and Julian Ross will program
the 69th Flaherty Film Seminar To Commune in 2024

How does cinema enable us to commune? We’re interested in the potential of groups gathering around a screen over a period of time. We approach documentary filmmaking as that which brings together bodies, minds and spirits across different spaces, worlds and temporalities. […]

Our curatorial approach seeks to explore the tensions and the sparks of efforts to commune. Not to gather to recognize an identity or a common concern, but to make relations on grounds of radical differentiation.

— May Adadol Ingawanij & Julian Ross, August 2023

TO COMMUNE: READ MORE

May Adadol Ingawanij | เม อาดาดล อิงคะวณิช is a writer, curator, and teacher. She works on Southeast Asian contemporary art; de-westernized and de-centred histories and genealogies of cinematic arts; avant-garde legacies in Southeast Asia; forms of future-making in contemporary Global South artistic and curatorial practices; aesthetics and circulation of artists’ moving image, art and independent films belonging to or connected with Southeast Asia. She is Professor of Cinematic Arts at the University of Westminster where she co-directs the Centre for Research and Education in Arts and Media. May publishes regularly English and Thai for a wide range of publications. Her recent and ongoing curatorial projects include Legacies, and Animistic Apparatus.

Julian Ross is a researcher, curator and writer based in Amsterdam. He is an Assistant Professor at Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society, a film program advisor for IDFA, and co-organizer of Doc Fortnight at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, with Sophie Cavoulacos. He was a programmer at International Film Festival Rotterdam (2015-22), Locarno Film Festival (2019-20) and guest programmer at Singapore International Film Festival (2021). His curatorial work has been presented at Tate Modern, Art Institute of Chicago, e-flux Video & Film, Kunsthal Rotterdam, Eye Filmmuseum, Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, Harvard Film Archive and British Film Institute. He is co-director of the interdisciplinary research centre ReCNTR and editorial board member of Collaborative Cataloging Japan. He is co-curator of Animistic Apparatus with May Adadol Ingawanij, with whom he will co-programme the 69th Flaherty Seminar.

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Jemma Desai Joins the Board of Directors as Programmer-in-Residence of the 70th Flaherty Film Seminar Yearning in 2025

What might happen if we used the phenomenology of yearning to appraise our cultural production infrastructure? Not yearning to belong to what we have, but yearning to be longing: to embody a desire for something else? How might both understanding more clearly our own desires as well as attending closely to the ways that reformism, managerial moderation and ‘professional practices’ contain the work that is possible lead us to more congruent and committed ways of working? —Jemma Desai, August 2023

YEARNING: READ MORE

In an effort to lift the veil between the leadership of The Flaherty, our history, and our programs, The Flaherty is honoured to work with curator, researcher, and writer Jemma Desai over the next two years. Her engagement with our board, staff, and the archives will culminate in her curation of the 70th seminar, tying our long history together with possible visions for the future.

Jemma Desai is a writer, educator and somatic facilitator based in London. Her practice engages film and other art forms through research, writing, performance, as well as informally organized settings for deep study. She has previously worked with the BFI and British Council, and is the creator of "This work isn't for Us” a multidisciplinary and auto-ethnographic research project on institutional racism in the UK arts sector. She was co-chair of LUX, a UK based international arts agency that supports and promotes artists’ moving image between 2017-22, the Head of Programming at Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival in 2021 is and is on the programming committee at Blackstar Film Festival in Philadelphia.  She is a practice based PhD candidate at Central School of Speech and Drama thinking through the liberatory possibilities of abolitionist praxis to cultural production with a thesis entitled "what do we want from each other after we have told our stories?" She regularly writes, teaches and speaks on her research interests in a variety of academic and non-academic contexts.

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Photographed by Scott Rudd at a 60th Flaherty Film Seminar screening in 2014

A heartfelt thank you Sarie Horowitz

The Flaherty Board of Directors and team send flowers and gratitude to Sarie Horowitz as we part ways. We wish her great success in her future endeavours. Sarie joined The Flaherty as seasonal seminar staff in 2011, working closely with Executive Director Mary Kerr. In her thirteen years working at our organization, she helped implement a dozen seminars and two dozen FNYC seasons, rising to the role of Program Director in 2019.

Sarie has been a gift to the Flaherty community. She has nurtured generations of dedicated staff, worked closely with programmers and artists, and is beloved for her perennial kindness, care, and warmth.

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Call for Entries: MacDowell Residency
March 1 – August 31, 2024, Peterborough, NH
Apply by September 10

Apply for a MacDowell Fellowship! Filmmakers of all genres, in addition to artists across six additional disciplines, are eligible for MacDowell residency Fellowships. There are no residency fees, and need-based stipends and travel reimbursement grants are available to all artists awarded Fellowships. Deadline: September 10.

APPLY

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Registration for the 68th Flaherty Seminar opens March 1!

Steve Reinke, Untitled (detail), Needlepoint, 2017 | Floss on plastic backing, 18.1 x 9.3 cm | Courtesy the artist and gallery Isabella Bortolozzi, Berlin

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Queer World-Mending
Programmed by Jon Davies & Steve Reinke
June 17–23 2023
Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY

“Better a mended sock than a torn one – not so with subjectivity.” –Hegel

The world – wounded, wasting, wheezing – needs mending. But our feral subjectivities, our libidos, need to remain torn, agape, asunder. So how can we mend the wounded world if we are open wounds ourselves? Sexuality is a force that cuts through histories and identities, and offers an embodied approach to thinking. Perhaps queer desire, through its very non-productive fucked-upness can mend the world better than more stable, normative approaches.

It is hard to have any hope these days, now that so many of the flaming creatures are literally flaming creatures. As the world burns, one can barely determine which fires to put out, which to ignore, and which to fuel and fan. This program will join the living and the dead because the only way into the future is through the ashes of the past. Queer World-Mending will be a playground of desire, a laboratory for developing and performing new subjectivities. And if we can’t build a new house, we can at least change the wallpaper. Long live the new flesh!

— Jon Davies, Steve Reinke

Join us!

The annual Flaherty Seminar is among the most significant non-fiction film events in the world. Filmmakers, scholars, students, curators, critics, archivists, and cinephiles gather for an immersive, week-long program of screenings, discussions, and multimedia works centered on a common theme. 

Through thoughtful co-creation and conversation, we explore the impact of the moving image. The Flaherty Seminar strives to elevate the human experience, expand consciousness, and encourage critical thought about the world. 

Join us! Registration will open March 1st and remain open until full. The registration link be available on our homepage theflaherty.org
You will:

• Be asked to provide full or partial fee payment upon registration

• Select rooms with AC or non-AC 

• Be able to sign-up to volunteer during the seminar

The all-inclusive in-person Seminar registration fee includes lodging, meals, screenings and discussions, receptions, and additional special events. The fee does not include travel to and from Skidmore College. Arrive by 5 pm Saturday, depart at noon Friday.

Don’t delay – Registration is limited. In past years, in-person registration moved to the waitlist within a few weeks.

Rates

In-person: $1750, suggested fee | $1,500–$2,500, sliding scale

Virtual: $250, suggested fee | $250–$400, sliding scale

• We are offering sliding scale registration on an honor system with the aim of creating an accessible and equitable experience. Please contribute a rate that reflects your financial capacity and relative privilege. 

• The suggested fees would ensure that we can pay our staff equitable rates and cover rental and meal costs.

• We especially encourage reduced rates for participants who are Indigenous to the land they call home, or have been historically dispossessed from their land, history, culture, and power, and experience precarity as a result. 

• We ask that participants with the means, including those receiving institutional support, pay a minimum of $2000 in person and $400 online, thereby directly making registration more affordable for others.

Fellowship. All Fellowship recipients receive a fully funded registration, courtesy of either The Flaherty or our Fellowship Partners. The Flaherty Fellowship begins a day earlier than the full seminar, on Friday, June 16th.

Applications for the Fellowship open March 1st.

The Flaherty at Skidmore College

We are 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.

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.

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Images: 2018 Seminar photographed by Robert M. GoodmanImage; 2017 Seminar photographed by Anne-Katrine Hansen; courtesy skidmore.edu

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Flaherty Filmmaker Event

An Evening with Bill Basquin
Monday, February 13, 7 pm
The Museum of Modern Art

MoMA's Modern Mondays series hosts Flaherty NYC alum and Bay Area–based filmmaker Bill Basquin (Flaherty NYC Filmmaker 2019) for the New York premiere of his feature From Inside of Here (2020), which explores the relationship between body and landscape.

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Image (detail) courtesy the artist

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The Flaherty Recommends

Attend the One Earth Film Festival
March 3-12, 2023
Virtual & In-person across the Chicagoland area

One Earth Film Festival returns March 3-12, 2023, for its 12th festival season with its annual launch party and 10 thoughtfully curated film events that will be streamed online, with about a dozen in-person screenings, including “View & Brew” events, in the greater Chicago area.

Image courtesy One Earth Film Festival

Register for the Greaves Filmmaker Seminar
March 16-18, 2023, Philadelphia

Registration is open for BlackStar’s 2023 William + Louise Greaves Filmmaker Seminar! The Seminar is a rare space that brings together Black, Brown, and Indigenous artists for workshops, panels, and deep conversations about their filmmaking practice – without having to manage the added burden of representation. This year acclaimed artist Cauleen Smith will be holding the keynote and the visionary Terence Nance will be presenting a director’s commentary. 

Photo by Mariam Dembele

Order SEEN 05
The Dreams Issue: Winter 2023

Seen is a journal of film and visual culture focused on Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities globally, published by BlackStar Projects twice each calendar year.

The Dreams Issue features Flaherty Filmmaker Cauleen Smith In Her Own Words, and Anaïs Duplan, Aurella Yussuf, Beandrea July, Clarkisha Kent, Deborah Anzinger, Dessane Lopez Cassell, Flordalis Espinal, Ifeanyi Awachie, Iris Torres-Gatherer, Isabel Ling, Jasmin Hernandez, Kambole Campbell, Kareem Reid, Kenny Rivero, Lakshmi Padmanabhan, Lizania Cruz, Lou Cornum, Rashida Bumbray, Rianna Jade Parker, Rohini Kejriwal, Widline Cadet, Xia Gordon.

Photo by Shanlynne Silvestre, Imagenfotografi

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