Attending the seminar will be three LEF New England Flaherty Fellows: Morgan Hulquist, Matteo Moretti, and Sasha Tycko. (Read more about the fellows below). Since 2009, LEF has partnered with the Flaherty to support the participation of New England-based nonfiction filmmakers at the Flaherty Film Seminar each year.

The Flaherty fellowship program runs concurrently alongside the Flaherty Seminar while offering additional programming – workshops, screenings, discussions, artist lunches, and artist talks – designed to provide more in-depth engagement with the Seminar program.

Morgan Hulquist is an emerging documentary filmmaker based in Portland, Maine whose work explores latent place-based stories. She is currently directing and producing INVADERS, a lyrical portrait of citizen scientists who spend their free time scouring Maine’s coastline for marine invasive species, now in production.

From 2022 to 2025, Morgan was Associate Producer at Multitude Films, the independent production company dedicated to transformative culture change through nonfiction storytelling, where she participated in the company’s Producer Apprenticeship program — dedicated to mentoring the next generation of documentary producers. Her credits include Life After(Sundance 2025/Independent Lens), Power (Sundance 2024/Netflix), Queer Futures (CPH: DOX 2023/Criterion Channel), How We Get Free (SFFILM 2023/Max) and Lowndes County and the Road to Black Power (Tribeca 2022/Peacock), as well as Kristine Stolakis’s forthcoming animated documentary alive!, now in post-production. She worked in communications at Chicken & Egg Films, a nonprofit supporting women and gender-expansive documentary filmmakers, 2017–2021 and is also a freelance archival producer and documentary communications specialist.

Originally from San Diego, Morgan is a member of the Maine Palestine Film Collective and an organizer of the Maine Palestine Film Festival.

Matteo Moretti is a Greek-Italian-American filmmaker and cinematographer specializing in documentary and narrative work that explores the intersection of culture, environment, and people. He’s drawn to stories that preserve living traditions, often capturing the quiet beauty and complexity of people and places worldwide.

Sasha Tycko is an anthropologist, photographer, and filmmaker and a PhD candidate at Emory University. Her current work focuses on the Atlanta forest at the center of the conflict over “Cop City,” where she integrates ethnographic research and a visual art practice to explore how the contested landscape—once the site of a city prison farm and antebellum plantation—motivates new articulations of history, nature, and ethics. Through this work, she has produced two films, Dwelling: A Measure of Life in the Atlanta Forest (2023, 40 min.) and Atlanta Forest Garden: Four Days of Work (co-produced with Marion Lary, 2023, 12 min.) and a photography exhibition, Ways of the Atlanta Forest (2025, Institute 193). Her writing and photographs have been published in n+1, Jewish Currents, Trans Studies Quarterly, Mergoat Magazine, and elsewhere. Her essay “Not One Tree” (co-authored with Grace Glass, 2023, n+1) was awarded the Krause Essay Prize. She received her BA at the University of Chicago.

The post Meet the 2025 LEF Flaherty Fellows appeared first on LEF Foundation.

Maxime Cavajani is a multimedia artist working across experimental video, photography, drawing, sculpture, performance, and installation. Their practice investigates the space and time that is in between queer bodies, questioning the “seen” and the “legible”. Thinking through mnemonic functions, their work uses the slippages in between image and imaging, sculpture and forming, performance and gesture, sound, and noise to challenge modes of address. Rather than locating what is in motion, their work reverberates through bits, blurs, traces, and reflections. In doing so, the artist asks the public to question their own mnemonic system through themes of desire, violence, death, loss, and love.

Pauline Shongov is a filmmaker whose work explores oral, historical, affective, and haptic senses of place as well as local and diasporic forms of community belonging, particularly in the Balkans. Her latest film Couple More Shovels for a Few More Levs (2023) premiered at the German International Ethnographic Film Festival and was selected for the Visions du Reel Film Market and Ji.hlava New Visions Market. Her practice-based work has been supported by the Harvard Film Study Center, Sensory Ethnography Lab, Harvard Mellon Urban Initiative, and the Cornell Council of the Arts. She is a PhD candidate in film and visual studies at Harvard University, where she is a Presidential Scholar. She is also the co-founder of the curatorial research initiative Off-site. Currently, she is co-directing/co-producing Borá: a film that follows foragers, treasure hunters, foresters, and clairvoyants on their journeys through a mountain that unearth a cryptic landscape ripe with fables, legends, and apparitions.

See the full list of Flaherty fellows on the Flaherty website.

Learn more about the fellowship on our website.

The post Meet the 2024 LEF New England Flaherty Fellows appeared first on LEF Foundation.

Cam/a.c. Howard (they/them) is a writer, ‘zinemaker, and multidisciplinary artist, and the program coordinator at the Points North Institute in Maine, USA. Their work focuses on queer coming of age, community care, nature, music, and the future. a.c. has made short films, interactive workbooks, comics, podcasts, and fiction & nonfiction zines. Their writing has appeared in The Bollard, Oroboro, and their newsletter The Deal. They are currently working on an essay about Brian Eno, and a comic about trans-masculine lesbian identity. Cam studied radio and podcast production at the SALT Institute for Documentary Studies, and documentary filmmaking at the Rochester Institute of Technology. They live on Wabanaki land with their leopard gecko, Nero.

Chloe Zimmerman (she/her) is an artist, filmmaker, writer, and educator engaging with ecologies, documentary poetics, collaborative learning, and making across disciplines. She currently teaches film, writing, and fungi-based workshops at RISD, MassArt, and Brown University. She is the curator of an upcoming film and poetry series called ESSAI. Chloe was a UnionDocs Collaborative Fellow and recently completed an MFA at Brown University.

Enrique Rivera (he/him) is a Puerto Rican filmmaker born and raised in Bridgeport, Connecticut. He uses his passion for research-driven documentary and archival preservation to highlight and empower stories from BIPOC and marginalized communities. While elevating nuanced and inclusionary perspectives, his practice revisits conversations surrounding decolonization, abolition, and our relationships with land and agriculture. His documentary work on legal institutions, belief systems, trafficking, and cultural icons has appeared on Netflix, HBO Max, National Geographic, CNN, and The Atlantic. Most recently he was the producer of the HBO Max documentary series Menudo: Forever Young. He is a graduate of Emerson College.

Stephen Wardell is an American filmmaker whose experimental narratives move fluidly between fiction, documentary, and essay. Their playful films investigate systems of power and explore the contemporary forces that construct queer identity. Recent screenings include: Visions du Réel, L’Alternativa Independent Film Fest Barcelona, and the Ann Arbor Film Festival. From the Midwest, currently they live in Boston, MA.

See the full list of Flaherty fellows on the Flaherty website.

Learn more about the fellowship on our website.

The post Meet the 2023 LEF New England Flaherty Fellows appeared first on LEF Foundation.

The 2017 Robert Flaherty Film Seminar took place from June 17-23 at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York. Since 2009, LEF New England has supported an annual fellowship program for four New England-based artists working in non-fiction film/video to attend the seminar. This year’s LEF New England Fellows included Sarah Bliss, Allison Cekala, Madsen Minax, and Darian Stansbury.

After sharing Allison Cekala’s notes last month, this week on the LEF blog, we share new reflections from Darian Stansbury’s experience at the Seminar.

Darian writes:

I’m still thumbing through and highlighting 53 pages of notes taken over 7 days. Still captioning 118 photos and 16 videos. Still feeling the electricity of 5 nights on the dancefloor, 3 of them barefooted.

Trinh Minh-ha stated in discussion on June 20th, “People bury in order to remember.” I have deeply buried my memories as a Flaherty fellow in my mind and heart of hearts, and will mine them for ages to come. Programmer Nuno Lisboa began his first morning screening by stating that he was “jealous” of those who were attending for the first time. Shortly thereafter, I knew exactly why: I could be taken by surprise only once. Like Frances Flaherty would have wanted, I had very few preconceived notions. I had not spoken to anyone who had attended the seminar before. When the theatre lights were being lowered, I was passing through the “dark partition” (Trinh) into a kino-fire hydrant blast of 40+ films.

Laura Poitras said she “likes to implicate the audience.” I was implicated and stirred to decisively evaluate my own practice. As an artist, I usually have a constellation of rotating projects in mind at various stages of development. During the course of the seminar, I was affirmed in which concepts and themes to continue exploring and experimenting in, as well as the ideas and courses to abandon. I received new ideas of my own; ideas that I experienced more viscerally and emotionally after having my senses heightened and stamina broken down by the sheer volume and weightiness of content.

I admired how each of the filmmakers not only addressed their own implications and biases, but absorbed them into their work. They did not avoid or sidestep the tensions therein as many commercially-focused artists do.

It was a privilege to hear the thoughts of brilliant people from several countries around the world. I wished more of them would have spoken their thoughts in the formal discussions more often. Because of this hesitation, further intimacy occurred outside of the scheduled outline. Some of the most meaningful moments were to and from meals, at happy hour, or in threesome huddles in front of Bill’s Bar. It was no coincidence that after the most heated discussions were the longest nights on the dancefloor in President’s Hall, where we stayed once until dawn.

___________________________________________

I discovered while attending that the fellowship program was once referred to as the grants-in-aid program. While it may not be the case for my colleagues, this title would have been applicable to me. Without this grant from the LEF Foundation to attend, the Flaherty Seminar would have remained on my ‘Someday/Maybe’ list, in direct competition with other practical considerations like: “Should I buy a camera?” or “Should I take a summer course instead?”

In addition, the Flaherty fellowship program was my first ​yes in a political environment that is very much influenced by the other yes’s already on the list. As I overheard it repeated by another participant, “I feel as though I’ve found my film tribe.” Gaining exposure to this tribe of contemporaries who are eager to offer critique on my work is not just encouraging, but crucial to survival. The direction I was so generously and immediately given by other fellows on navigating the world of fundraising, residencies, and grant-writing will be invaluable.

Arriving a day earlier, as the fellows are expected, gave me the opportunity to become acquainted with my surroundings and begin conversations more slowly. I had the privilege of being fully present. The time spent with the fellows prior to the Opening Reception was like a private appetizer before the full excitement of 130 more people being added. Being identified as a fellow was a primary factor to my not becoming lost amongst the crowd. My duties bartending during the evening and happy hour afforded me interactions with participants and staff that were informal and earnest. You get to know people best when you are serving them. The radical access to the featured filmmakers (and participants) throughout the master-class, meals, and in between screenings was counter-cultural. I was free to obtain the information needed, to gain insights on their philosophies and thinking processes, and to challenge areas growth in myself.

The post Notes from the Flaherty Seminar 2017 (Part 2) appeared first on LEF Foundation.

The 2017 Robert Flaherty Film Seminar took place from June 17-23 at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York. Since 2009, LEF New England has supported an annual fellowship program for four New England-based artists working in non-fiction film/video to attend the seminar. This year’s LEF New England Fellows included Sarah Bliss, Allison Cekala, Madsen Minax, and Darian Stansbury.

This week, we share some notes and images from Allison Cekala’s experience at the Seminar.

Allison writes:

It is hard for me to try to synthesize my experience this past week at the Flaherty Seminar. It felt like entering an otherworldly, never-ending, immersive world of documentary film, film criticism, and non-stop discussion. It was exhausting and intense, but I have come away with new friendships, connections, and a deeper understanding of cinema.

As one of the 35 fellows this year, I arrived a day before the rest of the participants. We were able to get to know each other, and each others’ work as well as attend a master class by Trihn T. Mihn Ha, a highlight for me. When the rest of the participants arrived we became part of a 175-member community of makers, critics, academics, and film enthusiasts from 22 different countries; a community committed and devoted to not only talking about film, but larger the implications of cinema and documentary, questioning representation, authenticity, performativity, truth, class, race, aesthetics, and a myriad of other concerns both about the world at large and the medium of filmmaking.

As the seminar unfolded, blindly going into each program, we slowly came to recognize each of the ten filmmakers sharing work: Filipa Cesar, Vincent Carelli, Kevin Jerome Everson, Dominic Gagnon, Laura Huertas Millan, Sana na N’Hada, Laura Poitras, Peter Nestler, Trinh Minh-ha, and Eduardo Williams. The Flaherty is a unique experience, not only because we come to each program without preconception, but also, the program is a highly curated sequence, this year by Nuno Lisboa. Different from a film festival, the ways in which the films either compliment or create dissonance are planned to encourage conversation, this year within the theme of “Future Remains”. I was able to see connections to films that were shown at different times of the week and also within the same day. For example, Kevin Jerome Everson’s Tonsler Park employed a similar structure to Dominic Gagnon’s Idea of the North, focusing on long shots of close-up faces, but their affects where distinctively opposed. Idea of the North, depicting a dark view of Inuit people, using appropriated youtube footage, produced some of the most inflammatory and passionate responses on Wednesday evening, (the kind of notorious debate that I had heard rumor of at the Flaherty) while the Kevin Jerome Everson’s generous gaze in Tonsler Park produced a more praiseworthy response.

As a new filmmaker without formal training in film, listening and engaging with the critical discourse that followed each film was most impactful. It felt almost absurd to judge a film without knowing its context and seeing it only once, but often, my opinions about the film would shift as I heard other’s thoughts about the film. I am continuing to unpack comments like “I don’t make films for the subject”, as quoted by Kevin Jerome Everson, or the notion of “speaking nearby”, rather than “speaking for” or “speaking about” another, as quoted by Trihn T. Mihn-ha, whose presence was one of the most meaningful parts of the seminar.

A new book just came out about the Flaherty, “The Flaherty: Decades in the Cause of Independent Cinema”, written by long-time Flaherty participants Scott MacDonald and Patty Zimmerman. During a fellows lunch, Scott and Patty talked about the history of the seminar and their experience writing the book. It was then that I realized the larger implications of the seminar, in how it has shaped film and the discourse surrounding it and we, the participants, are an integral part of that history. The Flaherty feels as though it is at the forefront of the shifting and changing world of documentary, keeping it honest, current, and continually redefining and pushing the boundaries of the genre.

On the final day of the seminar, Sana na N’Hada (through a translator) said, “It has been an honor to be amongst such an elevated assembly. I am returning to my country with optimism because I have hope in the world.” N’Hada is known for filming his country, Guinea-Bissau, during their war for independence in the 60s and 70s. He had seen unimaginable hardship and suffering, but his powerful films have become an important document in his country’s history. Just as Sana observed during the seminar, it also became clear to me that our group was deeply invested in the betterment of humanity and the proliferation of art and new ideas through the medium of moving image. We all feel that filmmaking is important. Its significance is far-reaching and deeply intertwined with social underpinnings of our society. Attending the Flaherty allowed me to understand this further, transforming me into a more sensitive viewer and maker. It is an experience that I will surely take with me as I move through the world.

Thank you LEF for the opportunity to attend this year’s Flaherty Seminar.

The post LEF New England Fellow Allison Cekala on the 2017 Flaherty Seminar appeared first on LEF Foundation.

Since 2009, LEF has supported fellowships for New England-based nonfiction filmmakers to attend the Flaherty Seminar. This year’s Seminar took place from June 18-24 at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York, and the 2016 LEF New England Fellows were (pictured, left to right:) Gerald Peary, Amber Bemak, Daniel Hui, and Thorsten Trimpop.

This week, we share some notes from Gerald Peary and Thorsten Trimpop.

Gerald Peary writes:
Thanks
to the LEF Foundation for getting me up to Colgate University. What has
taken me so long? I was by far the oldest of the 31 Flaherty Fellows
this year, and what we had in common was that we were all Flaherty
virgins. And thus, whatever our age, extremely vulnerable and raw,
almost like college freshmen. I thought before I went that, if I ate
well and got enough sleep, all should be OK. Wrong. I did eat well,
stuffing myself on not-so-bad cafeteria food; and I probably slept more
than anyone, getting back to my dorm room by 11:30 pm, when most were
off drinking and dancing.  Even so, I was broken down with exhaustion
each night after films starting at 9 AM and discussions ending at 11 pm.
Fourteen hours of watching movies, thinking about them, talking about
them. Insane!

And some of the time I was feeling anxious, frustrated, angry, bursting with unchecked emotions. What was my problem? Being so tired, I was driven around the bend by the more laborious discussions, in which various Flaherty participants stood up to speak. Their points were all over the place, often without point, often bogged down by the worst kind of impenetrable, pretentious grad school “theoryspeak.” And too much shrill political correctness. I craved an old-fashioned Q&A, where audience members ask short questions of the gathered filmmakers, and the filmmakers do the talking. My frustrations were shared by many others, who wished also that the Flaherty would alter its framework for group communication.

What was great about the Flaherty is all the private conversations you have with others like you, who are crazy about seeing and making documentaries. I can say I have a whole set of new friends in the documentary world whom I had never met before, including a delightful group of young filmmakers from Philadelphia and others from various Latin American countries.

The key each year to the Flaherty’s success is the choice of programmer, and this year the excellent person in charge was David Pendleton of the Harvard Film Archive. He picked far more experimental films than I would have preferred, but I felt fine with his program. He stretched me and challenged my aesthetic, all good things, and he brought with him a very interesting group of filmmakers from around the world to show their work. It was a great week to see documentaries set on the Azores Islands, in Colombia, Brazil, the Philippines, Germany, and the California desert. And thanks to David for celebrating a Boston cineaste who, forty-plus years into experimental films, still deserves far more recognition: the Mass College of Arts guru and local hero, Saul Levine.

Thorsten Trimpop writes:

“To see is to forget the name of the thing one sees.” This idea, frequently attributed to Paul Valéry, kept coming to mind during this year’s Flaherty, while watching film after film from the amazing program, Play, curated by the exceptionally gifted David Pendleton.

The amount of stimulation during this week is astonishing. Three full film programs a day, followed by discussions, collective meals, and conversations over drinks and dance. The next morning you return to the darkness of the cinema. Schweigend ins Gespräch vertieft (Deeply Absorbed in Silent Conversation) was, fittingly, one of the first films we saw during a master class with Ute Aurand. Shot in the early 80s in West Berlin, the film launched me on a kind of time travel. I’ve lived in Berlin for more then a decade—though almost twenty years after this film was made—and I saw in it a very familiar city, one I’m intimate with, that puts me in a mood for self-reflection. Ironically, Ute’s film happens to be about mirrors and reflections. The central character walks out of her front door and looks down at her reflection in a puddle on the street. Her gaze is constantly mirrored in her surroundings.

If truly seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees, to taste is to forget the name of thing one tastes, to smell is to forget the name of the thing one smells, and so forth —it is the process of forgetting not only the name but all categorical and assumptive thinking that enables us to experience the thing in itself. To sit in a dark cinema with 150 others, not knowing what we’ll see next, is to immerse oneself deeply into Flaherty’s idea of non-preconception. Kidlat Tahimik calls it Be. Here. Now. And thus I immersed myself in the different sensibilities of the filmmakers of this year’s program: The acerbic view of Luke Fowler, the never-resting eye of Saul Levine, the provocations of Luis Ospina, the kind wisdom of Kidlat Tahimik, and the soulfulness of Joaquim Pinto.

In Pinto’s Fish Tail, he arrives at a small fishing village at the Azores and captures the fascination he feels for this small community and the sea. There is a scene which will always stay with me: Rui, a farmer who becomes a fisherman after marrying and joining his father-in-law’s business, does not know how to swim. After several failures in his attempts to learn, Rui finally manages to overcome his fear of water and swim a reasonable distance without drowning. The respectful tenderness with which Joaquim Pinto and his partner Nuno Leonel captured this moment of tremendous drama is beyond words and something that can only exist in cinema. A swim in a pool becomes an Ulysses-like journey. The film is rooted in mutual curiosity and affection, and the result is a documentary as organic and transparent as the friendship from which it sprang.

After a couple of days of such immersion, real life began to blur. Each morning I woke in the midst of a vivid dream, my brain trying to digest it all. A film constructs its own universe of image and after-image and cannot be easily summarized as a chronological experience. I experienced this almost physically as the films occupied me and began to speak to one another. I remember the question we started with in the fellow’s orientation: What happens if you take play seriously? What does it mean to move from what if into what is?

In the end, the real power and quality of a film to me is in the way the filmmaker encounters a new place or way of being, bypassing clichés, moving beyond the surface to uproot the expected image so deeply buried in our unconsciousness. Cinema needs to create something new, not repeat the things we already know. To catch the truth of a moment: that’s the challenge.

I had the great pleasure to meet Billy Woodberry during the seminar and when I told him after seeing his LA rebellion classic, Bless their little hearts, for the very first time on a big screen, how wonderful it was. He looked at me and said: “The wonderful is in you.” And walked back inside the cinema.

The wonder is in us. We, as spectators and filmmakers, create the possibility of the pure, unmediated aesthetic experience we all seek, removed from theoretical or prejudicial frameworks. Cinema not only reflects life, life reflects cinema, and if we can experience something truly vital onscreen–“things you can’t erase from your soul anymore,” as one of the characters in Naomi Kawase’s film Sky, Wind, Fire, Water, Earth puts it–we can bring that deeper perception to our lives.

The post Notes from the Flaherty Seminar 2016 appeared first on LEF Foundation.

Four filmmakers were selected to attend the 61st Robert Flaherty Film Seminar as LEF New England Fellows, including (pictured, L-R) Josh Weissbach, Eric Gulliver, Amahl Bishara, and Colin Brant. The seminar took place from June 13-19, 2015 at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York. This week, Eric Gulliver and Josh Weissbach share reflections on their experience.

Eric Gulliver writes:

It had just stormed when I arrived in Hamilton, NY and it smelled of recent rain at The Scent of Places. I’d heard warnings from friends and colleagues to “remember to rest,” and “always sit with somebody new when you eat.” There are so many people to meet, films to see, and discussion to finish, that halfway through the week you realize the impossible task that is the Flaherty Seminar. It is meant to be start of something, a catalyst, and not necessarily conclusive in any way. Here is where Rilke’s dictum to love the questions of your heart, and not just the answers, would be tested. It is then that the “ONWARD!” motto of Flaherty rings true. Just keep watching. Keep talking. And take it with you from there.

The typical day was overflowing, consisting of waking up at 7am, watching approximately 6-8 hours of films, three plus hours of group discussion in some capacity, eating three collective meals, and then continuing conversations over drinks and ultimately dancing until the sun comes up. Flaherty literature describes those who engage in all of this as “die-hards,” a title I was glad to glean in my time as a fellow. I had to carry the torch! The words intense and exhausting are apt when describing the experience, even for a person who functions well on little sleep. Somehow all of it seems needed though; the grueling screening schedule leading to discussion/confusion and releasing it through forged connections and fraternal convivialities. Here is where liking and disliking are fruitful. It’s targeting pressure points and not relenting from them.

To be there among newcomers, Flaherty veterans, and dedicated staff creates a welcoming yet challenging atmosphere. We don’t all use the same terms or know what to expect, and this posed particular difficulties in communication. Then again, Frances Flaherty stressed the goodness in this, that of ‘non-preconception’, which I came to appreciate as the week wore on. You bring your own terms that are redefined. Board Member and former Flaherty programmer Chi-hui Yang described the process of curating as having an ‘architecture,’ which was a perfect descriptor for the endeavor. What helpful contributions the various disciplines can reflect on each other. There is something productive about having 150+ people watch the same films, with all the filmmakers present, and championing each comment from the audience. It is empowering while being slightly off putting (I’m recalling the first time an attendee let the filmmaker on stage know they HATED their film, to which the filmmaker replied “And that is fine”). During the week there is opportunity to make oneself heard both publicly or privately, and this creates a spirited atmosphere.

There was notable absence of documentaries at The Scent of Places, whereas the program was full of experimental/installation art and narrative features. A mystery attendee scrawled “Narrative is safer,” on the screening room chalkboard sometime during the week. Each film in the program spoke to the theme’s implicit suggestion; that films can include subtleties in their minutia. In this sense it doesn’t matter what vehicle we choose to analyze be it conventional, experimental, or otherwise. Indeed, the ‘aren’t we all just representing performances’ debate was settled in one of the first day’s discussions. After multiple conversations, we all realized the vocabulary that included ‘ideological,’ ‘representation,’ and ‘absence,’ was an imperfect syllabus. Therein lies the mission of Laura U. Marks while putting together The Scent of Places. We were all going to have to find other words more suitable, and another path more productive. The we-are-all-in-this-together(ness) of the thesis was problematic in some instances, especially in regards to questions of filmmaker intent and supposed audience. The lack of conversation between installation artists and ‘conventional’ documentarians was remarkable both on the stage and off the stage. Perhaps some are concerned with form more than others. Or some want to see past the frame and not concern themselves with the merits of deconstruction per se. The inclusion of both persuasions though was in perfect Flaherty fashion (as I have come to understand it). Maybe the conversations that happened were because of this –  a guided experiment in detecting unrepresentable potions that manifest themselves somehow on screen.

–

Josh Weissbach writes:

First of all, I just want to say thanks to LEF for this experience at
the 61st Robert Flaherty Film Seminar. I would like to attach an
adjective to the word experience in the previous sentence, but which one
do I choose? The possibilities feel and seem endless. Lovely,
wonderful, fantastic, grueling, tedious, exhausting, alien, incoherent,
restorative, extraterrestrial, indescribable, emotional, puzzling,
challenging, searching.

Throughout my week at The Flaherty, I experienced all of these
sentiments and more. And on some level, I think The Flaherty is a game,
or at least it has the feel of being that type of paradigm. What was
Laura U. Marks trying to do with her programming? As the week went on, I
began to settle into the rhythm of her choices when I thought that the
films and videos that were being screened all converged within the
thought that this seminar was about the inability to comprehend. This
conclusion was initially reached while watching Zanj Revolution by Tariq
Teguia. As a singular movie, it felt like it was attempting to map a
cultural landscape that was unable to be mapped. This feeling was
augmented while juxtaposing it to Inland, another one of Tariq Tequia’s
films shown earlier in the week, which partially focused on the physical
mapping of landscapes in Algeria. In this film as well, the act of
mapping failed.

During the last group discussion on the final day of The Flaherty, one
of the other participants spoke to the group about how she saw the week
coalesce into the theme of incoherence. The symmetry that was occurring
between my own thoughts and this other participant’s thoughts made me
feel like there was an unknown and silent acceptance that was
simultaneously happening in our personal reading of the week’s
programming. But how does one work with the inability to comprehend?

When thinking about my own film and video work in the aftermath of The
Robert Flaherty Film Seminar, I do not know yet how the new thoughts and
considerations I both witnessed and individually produced apply to my
own sensibilities. But I can say that it was without a doubt a
generative process for me. For a number of years now I have been working
on a on-going film series entitled The Addresses. This project focuses
on and proposes ways in which to understand the domestic across a
spectrum that includes the intimate at one end and the uncanny at the
other. While at The Flaherty and since my departure, a new set of ideas
and structures have interested me that are now allowing me to consider
both old and new material for The Addresses, whether that material is
appropriated or created on my own.

Lately I have been considering one-point perspective grids, the textual
representation of sound within subtitled movies, small quadrants of the
frame that enhance an image’s “domesticity,” the combination of
geographic and cyborg forms to create a cyborg-ography, and the role of
verisimilitude to mask fiction as fact. These ideas somehow relate to
the failure of the whole and the success of the fragment, which maybe
resides somewhere within the inability to cohere.

–

All images courtesy of Eric Gulliver and Josh Weissbach.

The post Reflections on the 61st Robert Flaherty Film Seminar appeared first on LEF Foundation.

 ^{(L-R) Beyza Boyacioglu, Warren Cockerham,} Amy Jenkins and Brynmore Williams. Photo Credit: The Flaherty

Four New England filmmakers were selected to attend the 60th Robert Flaherty Film Seminar from June 14-20, 2014 as LEF Fellows. These filmmakers are Beyza Boyacioglu, Warren Cockerham, Amy Jenkins, and Brynmore Williams. The following are reflections from the fellows about their Flaherty Seminar experience: 

^{Photo Credit: Brynmore Williams}

LEF Fellow Brynmore Williams writes: 

Disruption! That about sums up my experience at the Flaherty Seminar.  Disruption of style, disruption of form, disruption of expectations.  Nothing could have prepared me for what I discovered at the Flaherty.  The range of people I met, films we saw and discussions we had left me spellbound and inspired.  But most of all it left me with the burning desire to do it all again.  I realized that one cannot truly judge the experience without a few seminars under your belt, for the experience is not only about what appears on screen but also about the programmers and participants.  Parts of the program this year were really difficult for me.  They challenged my expectations of storytelling and documentary film but it was also amazing how much these dense films became fodder for stirring debate and intellectual rigor.  This experience wasn’t about loving every film or being always entertained, it was about the dialogue that was generated. This dialogue is what kept us all engaged and conscious of our humanity.

Brynmore Williams
http://brynmore.com

^{Photo Credit: Brynmore Williams}

LEF Fellow Amy Jenkins writes: 

Upon hearing of this year’s Flaherty Seminar topic “Turning the Inside Out” I was truly excited.  A Flaherty Fellowship sponsored by LEF enabled me to attend, and it came at a pivotal moment in my work.  After twenty years as a video installation artist, I am actively pursuing a new direction—the experimental documentary.  This year’s topic was precisely the question I, too, have been pondering:  How does the form of presentation affect the notion of “documentary?”  With help from the Film-Summer-Camp called The Flaherty, my seed of curiosity has now exploded into a full garden of possibilities, with enough bounty to carry me fully into Winter.

This year’s topic questioned documentary film’s claim to “truthful” representation, and examined the re-invention and expansion of the documentary form in a number of aspects, including its presentation beyond the single screen and into multiple screens, as well as outside of the theater and into three-dimensionality, along with documentary’s inclusion of staged scenes and theatrical reenactments, anonymous footage mined from the internet, surveillance feeds, and the creation of collective source material by giving laypersons cameras.  There were also moments of non-narrative disruptions of story, fictive stories parading as fact, and open-ended narratives that offered no conclusion.  Many of the films seemed to strive for what Samuel Beckett terms ‘a form that accommodates the mess.’

^{Photo Credit: Amy Jenkins}

Film themes early in the week included socialist idealism, cycles of capitalism, political corruption, and structures of oppression.  The catch-word I heard a number of times was “solidarity.”  Parallels were drawn between cinematic shooting and military warfare.  As my depth of despair for humanity began to overtake me, I was saved by a shift in the final days of the seminar to films that focused on the relationship between humans and nature. Whew, a close call!  While I say this in jest, I acknowledge that it is not the programmer’s aim to please, but rather to incite us to discuss, to argue, and to challenge our experience of the cinematic. And this was the most rewarding part of my Flaherty Fellowship–the interaction with the artists and the participants was truly inspiring and unique.  To spend eight days with over one-hundred film-lovers, twenty hours a day (yes, there was very little sleep, but with assistance from caffeine and alcohol,) while passionately serving, ingesting and digesting the art of documentary film, is the consummate experience called The Flaherty, (aka Summer Camp for Film Lovers.)  I gained enough inspiration to carry me through Winter, but next summer I might just have to return for another film-feast!

Amy Jenkins
July 15, 2014

^{Photo Credit: Amy Jenkins}

LEF Fellow Beyza Boyacioglu writes: 

In her article ‘What’s Wrong with the Liberal Documentary’, renowned filmmaker Jill Godmilow coins the term ‘post-realist documentary’, a form that refrains from pure description, truth claims and satisfying tools but rather “disengages the spectacle from the real in order to produce knowledge.” Reading this article followed by a masterclass with Jill Godmilow was a perfect introduction to the intense 7-day experience at Flaherty Film Seminar. Her ideas hinted us that at Flaherty, we will not enjoy the usual documentary experience where we learn about the lives of “those distressed social actors” and feel satisfied with our passive emotional participation. The program ahead of us required full engagement throughout the week, not one idea was served on a plate and the level of satisfaction was proportionate to one’s willingness to dig deeper and farther in order to make connections within and between the films.

Curated by Gabriela Monroy and Caspar Stracke, this year’s Flaherty Seminar was named ‘Turning The Inside Out’, with a special emphasis on form. The films we saw throughout the week were all quite challenging and required active participation from the audience in the movie theatre while igniting intense discussions at the Q&A’s. The nonhierarchical form of the seminar was also far from the traditional festival/screening environment where audience and filmmakers interact in a formal fashion. The filmmakers blended in the crowd of 170 participants, creating a sense of suspense by keeping us wondering who we are sitting next to. The seminar’s ‘no preconception’ rule restrained us from getting any information on films and googling filmmakers. As the week progressed, curatorial vision of Monroy and Stracke unfolded elegantly, revealing the connections between films they had chosen. My personal favorites were Hito Steyerl, CAMP, Johan Grimonprez and Jill Godmilow. CAMP’s ‘The Neighbor Before The House’ depicts Palestinian families peeping into their invaded homes in Jerusalem, examining the fine line between private and public, personal and political. I drew a connection between the Israeli settlers seeking to create a homogeneous thus ‘safe’ society for themselves and Hito Steyerl’s film ‘How Not To Be Seen. A Fucking Didactic Educational .Mov File’ in which people choose to live in gated communities hoping to blend in enough to disappear completely. Johan Grimonprez’s ‘Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y‘, a hijacking documentary that investigates the depiction of ‘terrorists’ on media 60s onwards was the star of the first night. However it became more precious for me after seeing Steyerl’s ‘November’, a film about her childhood best friend Andrea, who joins Kurdish guerilla in Turkey and becomes a symbol on Kurdish flags after being killed as a terrorist by the Turkish army. Sprinkled evenly throughout the week, Jill Godmilow’s work was a masterclass on documentary filmmaking, advising the filmmakers not to underestimate their audience and reminding the audience that the filmmakers are not obliged to spoonfeed them knowledge. Her question lingered with me: Who am I next to this film? She said, “if this question is not asked, it’s entertainment.” Godmilow’s work refreshed my tired eyes every time, no wonder she was the toast of the seminar this year.

Flaherty Seminar was a truly unique experience. It will take me at least a couple of months to digest the works I saw and to decipher the network of meanings woven by the curators. It was a privilege to take part in such an enriching journey and I will hopefully be back for the 61st Flaherty Film Seminar next year that will be curated by Laura U. Marks and will look closely at Middle Eastern cinema.

^{Photo credit: Brynmore Williams}

LEF Fellow Warren Cockerham writes: 

The Flaherty didn’t disappoint. I’ve known about the Flaherty Film Seminars for about ten years. Two of my undergrad professors at The University of Florida (Roger Beebe and Nora Alter) were the first to tell me about it. Since then, I’ve had many friends and colleagues attend. It’s always been discussed as one of those rites of passage for filmmakers, curators, writers and teachers:  a unique, full-immersion screening and seminar experience that leads to intense group discussions about the cultural function, politics, and aesthetics of “non-fiction” filmmaking.

The theme of this year’s seminar was “Turning the Inside Out,” curated by Gabriela Monroy and Caspar Stracke. In many ways, it was exactly the kind of work that one would expect to encounter at a Flaherty: essay films that border on, blur, and employ fiction filmmaking. The seminar opened with a familiar found-footage 1997 essay classic, Dial H-i-s-t-o-r-y by Johan Grimonprez and was followed by Hito Steyerl’s 2010, In Free Fall. Both pieces explore histories of the commercial airline industry and both are contemporary examples of a free-form non-fiction approach. This initial screening stirred up some critical conversation about the similar subjects of both pieces (commercial airlines) as being a far too didactic approach to the programming.  Although there was a similar sentiment surrounding the “remake” motif in both the pairing of Marker’s and Resnais’ classic, Les statues meurant aussi (1953) in Session 2 with a film inspired by it, Duncan Cambell’s It for Others (2013) in Session 3 and later in the programming the remake classic, Jill Godmilow’s What Farocki Taught (1997), it became clear that the curation was more about form and the evolution of cinematic language and style via modes of mediation.

^{Photo Credit: Brynmore Williams}

This direction became most evident in the inclusion of Jesse McLean’s work. Jesse’s work employs the codes and aesthetics of experimental and avant-garde histories, pop art, experimental ethnography, and the syntax of user-made online selfies.  This hybrid aesthetic approach to moving-image making signifies a shift away from objective Othering that so often happens when filmmakers attempt to create ethnographic films about foreign people, specifically the third world. Instead, Jesse’s work is ethnography of the first world – a world that the maker herself is very familiar with – a world of mediation and fascination with consumerism, material fetishism, fame, and information. The work treats these fascinations not necessarily as evil but as seductive, magical, and even religious fixations. One can certainly see an evolution of early Flaherty artists, Jean Rouch and Bruce Connor as well as more recent Flaherty artists Ben Russell and Deborah Stratman in McLean’s attempt at aesthetisizing American fascination with media as a kind of secular religion via cine-trance and flicker.

I’m not sure what the future holds for the Flaherty or “non-fiction” filmmaking. This year’s programming was complex enough to make me contemplate this future. Is the future of non-fiction filmmaking a series of collected or crowd-sourced recordings of world events? Is it similar to the crowd-sourced, super-cut text on The Arab Spring, The Uprising (2013) made by Peter Snowdon, a fellow at Flaherty this year? Whatever this future is, I’m sure the Flaherty Film Seminars will be a part of it.

^{Photo Credit: The Flaherty}

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LEF Fellow Hunter Synder (left), filmmaker Yoni Brooks, LEF Fellow Beth Balaban (right)

BETH BALABAN:

Something is at stake here. Someone spoke these words during the first group discussion at The Flaherty Seminar 2013, and they ultimately defined my week. At lunch one day, film historian Scott McDonald described The Flaherty as a “mixed bag.” Your experience is entirely subjective, he said. The board and the people who run it do an amazing job of setting up the atmosphere – maintaining traditions while also breaking them – with great care and thought. After that, it’s up to you to keep that spirit going within yourself. For me, it was utterly exhausting, and also the most rewarding thing I did this year.

I’mm reticent to report on the specificities of what I saw and heard – because I’ve barely begun to unpack it. It takes the whole year to process what happens here, I heard someone say, and by the time you do, you’re finally ready to come back. The entire seminar felt like a matryoshka doll of critical analysis, and I’m still stuck on the outermost shell. We fellows began the week with a masterclass on programming, and so the conceit of the whole experience was already on my mind. Veteran Flaherty programmer John Gianvito joined Pablo de Ocampo, programmer of this year’s ; “History is What’s Happening”, to discuss the great undertaking of curating the seminar. As the week progressed, I could see Pablo’s overarching vision take shape in a form quite unlike anything else. It’s true that The Flaherty is utterly unique. And this singularity in which I was entrenched illuminated a thing about cinema that I frequently fail to consider – that a film screening is also an event, and the context in which you ingest a work is nearly as important as the work itself.

So there I was, sitting in the discussion room with 170 other participants, and I was listening to a plane fly overhead. Chairs creaked, and a snowy feedback from the audio recording filled the empty space between words. I heard Sarah Maldoror – the first woman to make a feature film in Africa – say something in French that I didn’t understand. From my vantage point in the back, I saw mostly domes of hair and I started to think about what was happening underneath the coifs and how everyone was really listening. Someone translated for Sarah: To create is to invent, is what she had said. Her words unraveled in my head and I conjectured that we were inventing a moment right at that moment, that we create history with invented moments, and that we reinvent history when creating our films. These were just ideas.

Nearly 60 years ago, Francis Flaherty began what the subsequent board members have maintained as a safe place for unsafe ideas – a singular experience where what’s at stake is different for everyone. For me, it was my entire practice. I had begun to lose sight of how I could think about films – how to be daring and adventurous in my ideas. The Flaherty inspired me in a way that I desperately needed at this critical juncture in my career. I’m still considering the macro-Flaherty implications for my work; I’m looking forward to burrowing down into the details. And maybe, after a year of contemplation, I’ll be ready to go back to The Flaherty.

HUNTER SNYDER:

Where else have I ever had the opportunity to watch, think and converse with the filmmakers, artists and critics whose work has been an inspiration – and a shaping force – for my own? Before attending the Flaherty, there was no such opportunity. For a young filmmaker, watching rare and new films, having meals with your documentary filmmaking heroes, and being part of an accomplished fellowship cohort can be likened to drinking from a fire hydrant. And in the wake of the Flaherty, there still remains a strong flow of new ideas and the formation of new friendships. Thank you LEF for supporting us as fellows of this year’s Flaherty Seminar. I sincerely hope to return.

JIM WOLPAW:

At times during my week at Flaherty I felt like I was in the middle of a diabolical, but fascinating, sensory experiment. It was an intense experience, in many ways reminiscent of the experience of an extended film shoot. However, while a film crew might spend 16+ hour days together in the production of one film, the Flaherty crew spends 16+ hour days together viewing, discussing, dissecting, and absorbing a dizzying array of films.

Going into the seminar I was very excited about its theme “History is What’s Happening”, since much of my own work focuses on making historical characters and events accessible and relevant for modern audiences. However, the majority of the work screened at the seminar was non-narrative and focused on making aesthetic and political statements, and the post-screening discussions focused on close readings of the films, rather than on analysis of either how the films used historical events, or how they engaged audiences.

The seminar film that I found most interesting was The Specialist by Israeli filmmaker Eyal Sivan. In his treatment of history Sivan chooses to focus on perpetrators rather than victims. The Specialist is made totally with archival footage of the 1961 trial of Adolph Eichmann. In the post film discussion Sivan talked about how, as a schoolboy, he was required to memorize the portion of the prosecuting attorney’s opening argument that describes Eichmann as an inhuman monster. Sivan opens his film with this statement, but the remainder of the film focuses on Eichmann, as he attempts to explain and defend his actions. By doing this, Sivan creates a portrait of a very human monster.

With the exception of Sivan’s work, most of the films screened could, I think, be classified as experimental films with documentary elements, rather than as documentary films dealing with historical issues and events in innovative ways. For me, with a documentary orientation, this was somewhat disappointing

With that said, the seminar was a valuable and extraordinary experience, a total immersion in film. I am grateful to LEF for providing me with the opportunity to attend as a fellow.

For more information about Flaherty visit: www.flahertyseminar.org

The post Reflections on a week at the Flaherty from LEF’s Flaherty Fellows appeared first on LEF Foundation.

-Finally getting to see The Florestine Collection, the final film by Helen Hill, finished by her husband Paul Gailiunas.

-Seeing the work of Tan Pin Pin for the first time, particularly Invisible City.

–A Poem Is A Naked Person, Les Blank’s incredible portrait of Leon Russell and various hangers-on. (Unfortunately the film has been kept from the public by Russell)

-Watching Lillian Schwartz’s films in 3-D!

–Frank Scheffer’s Helicopter String Quartet, a dizzying documentation of the ambitious Stockhausen piece utilizing not only violins, viola, and cello, but also 4 military helicopters!

–Caroline Martel’s WAVEMAKERS, a documentary on the forgotten early electronic instrument the ondes Martenot, and the accompanying live performance by Martenot virtuoso Suzanne Binet-Audet.

The post LEF Flaherty Fellow Mike Stoltz’s “Must See” List appeared first on LEF Foundation.

1. What an experience! Being here has been pretty mind-blowing already. Sleep deprivation has started to blend being awake, with dreams and films. The first night we watched Spend It All (1971), by the extraordinary Les Blank, and I keep coming back to one deceptively simple thing he said during the Q&A/ discussion hosted by Sally Berger (MoMA). It was clear that the audience was in love with the film, and the patient storytelling that drew people (or “contributors” as they call them in the UK) out with respect and admiration.  When Les was asked about how he made such a profound film he answered “well, I just rolled the camera when I saw something interesting.” It all boils down to the fact that he trusts his “gut” (and isn’t even afraid of being fired). As I get more exposed to different filmmaking styles, and try to learn as much as possible, I want to keep this idea of trusting instincts in mind.

— Jesse

2. Last night we watched a film about Pete Seeger and square dancing, and then had our own square dance. Love the way the films and physical experience of being here is working together. Full immersion.

— Jesse

3. Pioneer and Rockstar Lillian Schwartz showed some of the first computer animations. Turns out that by working in primary colors she unknowingly created 3D films!

UFO’s (1971):

Here is a documentary about her early work: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiHv6UTU7nY&feature=related

— Jesse

4. One of the best things about Flaherty is the short and often unfinished conversations that happen in the lunch line, on the way to a screening, or sitting on the lawn.

— Jesse

5. Today we had a 3-hour break from film watching. It was raining very hard and even though I didn’t have an umbrella, I decided to take a walk through campus. After watching so many films and focusing on sound elements — the walk in the rain was an incredible sonic experience. Water drops hitting a metal railing, leaves rustling – all blended into a kind of music.

— Jesse

6. This just in from programmer Dan Streible….films watched at Flaherty 2011….90!

Got to hand it to him for orchestrating this event! Maybe it’s because we have been watching so many films on musicians, and perhaps because I have been making a film on a guitar orchestra, but I can’t help but see a metaphor in this whole experience. In programming the Flaherty his role really has been that of a conductor. Deepening the discussions with every screening. It is certainly going to take a while for all these ideas to be digested but what a week! This has truly been a transformative.

BIG thanks to the incredible Flaherty Staff for all their hard work!

— Jesse

Short post-Flaherty anecdote:

Fittingly — on the way back from “Sonic Truth” I went to the “Solid Sound” festival at Mass MoCA.  It’s a 3-day festival of music, art and films, curated by Wilco. A short film I made (The Guarantee – link: http://www.newday.com/films/theguarantee.html) was screening, and I was very excited to be wearing my “Sonic Truth” t-shirt to the event. Sonic Youth was playing at the festival the next day, and someone looked at my shirt, thought I was a crazed fan, and said something to the effect of “I hear you, so true.”

Also, just found out there is a wonderful thing happening at the MoMA:

Les Blank: Ultimate Insider / June 24–July 11, 2011

— Jesse

Thank you, Jesse, for writing about these wonderful Flaherty moments!

The post Jesse Epstein’s Flaherty Notebook appeared first on LEF Foundation.

It’s our first big chunk of downtime at the Flaherty Seminar.  We’ve seen some great work so far and started some interesting discussions.

Two discoveries for me are the work of Tan Pin Pin, who makes very authored films “exploring Singapore’s histories, contexts, and limits,” and that of Lillan Schwartz, a lovely woman in her 80s who was a pioneer in computer-generated art.

Pin Pin’s “Invisible City” moves between several subjects who are all passionate about uncovering and preserving aspects of Singapore before its modern present.  Through the humor and tragedy, and the emerging details of the pre-colonial, polyglot past, we are left most of all with a deepened understanding of the human drive to memorialize.

Quebecois filmmaker Caroline Martel presented a work-in-progress of “Wavemakers,” a piece which also assembles a vast amount of detail in service of a higher filmmaking vision.  In this case, it is the colorful history and technique of the Onde Martenot, one of the first electronic musical instruments.  I really appreciated Caroline’s humane search for the “vital impulse” that inspires these engineers, composers, and musicians to find a way to translate sound into music.

Having been put into a dreamy space by Caroline’s film and a live Onde Martenot performance by one of the film’s subjects (Suzanne Binet-Audet), we were truly ready to receive Lillian Schwartz’s beautiful computer-generated films from around 1970.  We watched some of them with ChromaDepth 3D glasses, which Lillian recently discovered have the effect of heightening the depth perception she was aiming to create in the films (having suffered from an eye condition which limited her own depth perception).

We’ve spent a lot of time in films and discussions, but I can’t say we haven’t also found some diversion – square dancing, Bill’s bar (named after Flaherty regular Bill Sloan), pickup soccer games, and a big bonfire on Monday night.  As fellows we also enjoy daily lunches with the visiting filmmakers, including today with Sam Pollard.  Among other topics, we discussed the distinction between conscious and sub-conscious acts of exclusion in filmmaking.

It’s been a great time so far.  Some of us in the filmmaking contingent, though, are hoping that the remaining program will involve more inventive uses of sound, so that we can more deeply explore this year’s Seminar theme, Sonic Truth.  There has been a preponderance of films about music, or films that contain mostly music and interview in the soundtrack.  This has really limited discussion of sound recording and sound design technique.

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