The 2012 Robert Flaherty Film Seminar is now in full swing this week at Colgate University in Upstate New York. This year’s Seminar “closed Wounds”, programmed by Josexto Cerdán (Punto de Vista), examines changing perspectives on politics, the economy, technology, culture, and ethics over the past Century. Whether making connections between activist films across decades or demonstrating how the traumas of oppression pass from generation to generation, these selected works illustrate how ideas and histories are linked over time.
Join us Saturday for our final screening of the season before we break until mid-September, which presents a taste of the Seminar. We will showcase additional rare and in-progress work from presenting artists who will be in-person including Su Friedrich, Sami van Ingen, Sebastián Lingiardi, Andrés Duque, Sun Xun, and Minda Martin. Cerdán will also be in attendance to introduce the screening.
Practice Makes Perfect (2012), 11 minutes by Su Friedrich.
Su Friedrich will present her work, Practice Makes Perfect which was commissioned for “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,” a festival held in May 2012 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM). The festival mainly featured musical acts by Brooklyn-based bands, but seven Brooklyn filmmakers were asked to do short works, without any stipulation as to form or content.
In 2011, Su had seen Kam Kelly (as well as a number of young boys and girls) drumming at a block party down the street from where she lives in Bed-Stuy, and decided to do a portrait of him and his students. Although he teaches in many locations around the five boroughs, she only went to observe him at one school, Intermediate School 292 in East New York. There are several classes and many students, but she chose to concentrate on one especially enthusiastic and dedicated young drummer, Jessica Jackson.
HATE (2012), 12 minutes by Sami van Ingen.
Sami van Ingen is a finnish visual artist who works mostly with film and video and is presenting, HATE which investigates how otherness is portrayed in the Finnish national epic Kalevala.
It’s Not the Image It’s The Object (2008), 12 minutes and Miracle (2001), 33 seconds by Andrès Duque
Venezuelan Filmmaker, Andrès Duque will present two of his shorts. He is a professor for the Master of Creative Documentary at Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona. He currently resides in Spain.
Follow Orders (2006), 15 minutes by Sebastián Lingiardi.
Sebastián Lingiardi’s first short Follow Orders won him the first prize at the International Festival of Film Schools. He describes the short as the world seen through the window – the intimacy has already passed away. The struggle is between strange organizations. There is no common cause to die for anymore. This is despite the man, the enemy, expands his power in each place the characters wander. The orders from the organization emphasize taking care of yourself first – in this kind of situation, who sees his death from a window?
Presented with
The Flaherty is a non-profit organization dedicated to the proposition that independent media can illuminate the human spirit. Its mission is to foster exploration, dialogue, and introspection about the art and craft of all forms of the moving image. The Flaherty was chartered (as International Film Seminars, Inc.) in the state of Vermont but is based in New York City. It was established in 1960 to present the annual Robert Flaherty Film Seminar, which was started five years earlier by the Robert Flaherty Foundation. The Seminar remains the central and defining activity of The Flaherty.
Through its unique annual Robert Flaherty Film Seminar, The Flaherty provides media makers, sp;users, teachers and students an unparalleled opportunity to confront the core of the creative process, reaffirm the freedom of the independent artist to explore beyond known limits and renew the challenge to discover, reveal and illuminate the ways of life of peoples and cultures throughout the world.
