From: Patricia R. Zimmermann (email suppressed)
Date: Tue Oct 13 2009 - 10:00:13 PDT
FLEFF 2010 Is Right Here, Right Now
ITHACA, NY — This year it won’t be necessary to wait until spring for Ithaca College’s Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival (FLEFF). In fact, FLEFF 2009–2010 has already started. Pop http://www.ithaca.edu/fleff into your browser and take part.
“Unlike past festivals, FLEFF 2009–2010 is not just a series of discrete events taking place at prescribed times,” said Patricia Zimmermann, codirector of FLEFF.
“Starting now and extending over the next nine months, we’ll be rolling out a succession of online, user-generated events under one program stream — Open Spaces — to accommodate an incredible range of ideas,” added Thomas Shevory, the other FLEFF codirector. “Instead of people coming to FLEFF, FLEFF will be coming to them.”
Entitled “Open Space: A Yearlong Nomadic Exploration,” FLEFF 2009–2010 will feature 13 intellectually stimulating blogs, which are now up and running. Highlighting 17 artists, scholars, musicians, educators, directors and poets, the blogs explore the ways we identify, question and create open space from a range of interdisciplinary and international perspectives. Bloggers represent and write about 11 different countries, including Brazil, England, Germany, India, Mexico, Mongolia, Nigeria, Singapore, Spain, the United States and Uzbekistan.
The FLEFF 2010 Open Space Blogging Team includes Stewart Auyash (USA),Rodrigo Brandao (Brazil), Georgekutty A.L. (India), Jairo Geronymo (Brazil/Germany), Alexandra Halkin (Mexico/USA), Jan-Christopher Horak (USA), Dale Hudson (USA), Nicholas Knouf (USA), Vadim Isakov (Uzbekistan), Cecelia Lawless (USA), Sharon Lin Tay (Singapore/UK), Ulises Mejias (USA/Mexico),Anjali Nerlekar (India/USA), Kole Ade Odutola (Nigeria),Claudia Costa Pederson (Portugal/USA) Thomas Shevory (USA/Mongolia), Carlos Vasquez Velasco(Basque Country/Spain), and Patricia Zimmermann (USA/Singapore)
The bloggers include Shevory reflecting on his experiences as a Fulbright scholar in Mongolia and pianist Jairo Geronymo musing on the junctions of contemporary music and architecture in Berlin’s new central train station. Ithaca College faculty member Stewart Auyash tracks the public health implications of the H1N1 virus, poet and cultural activist Kole Ade Odutola shares his insights into the Nigerian film industry and Singaporean/British author and curator Sharon Lin Tay muses on 19th-century photographs depicting the area of London in which she now resides. In addition, Jan-Christopher Horak, head of the UCLA Film and Television Archive, examines how knowledge changes in cyberspace and probes the questions raised when film archives become increasingly digitized.
“The blogs explore the ways we find open spaces in geography, community, melody and materiality,” Zimmermann said. “We invite anyone interested in this exploration to join us at the FLEFF website and enter the conversation.”
“Leave a comment on a blog, upload a piece for our user-generated exhibitions when they become available, and participate in our new developments and ideas on Twitter and Facebook,” Shevory added.
In the coming weeks and months, look for the roll out of the Open Space Project, which will feature four online, juried competitions, all of which will be open to the public. Three of these exhibitions will be user-generated.
Look also for the series of Ithaca premiere screenings and discussion forums at Cinemapolis and the FLEFF Distinguished Writer in Residence visit in late October by Girish Karnad, one of India’s foremost playwrights.
Information will be available at www.ithaca.edu/fleff and from the blogs themselves. (At http://alden.ithaca.edu:83/fleff10/blogs/south_asian_spaces, Ithaca College faculty member Anjali Nerlekar provides details on Girish Karnad’s visit along with an in-depth interview.)
Launched in 1997, the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival was an outreach project from the Center for the Environment at Cornell University. In 2005 the festival moved permanently to Ithaca College, where it is housed in the Division of Interdisciplinary and International Studies as a program to link intellectual inquiry and debate to larger global issues.
For more information, contact Thomas Shevory at email suppressed or Patricia Zimmermann at (607) 274-3431 or (address suppressed)
-------
Patricia R. Zimmermann, Ph.D.
Professor, Cinema, Photography and Media Arts
Roy H. Park School of Communications
Codirector, Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival
Division of Interdisciplinary and International Studies
953 Danby Road
Ithaca College
Ithaca, New York 14850 USA
Office: +1 (607) 274 3431
FAX: +1 (607) 274 7078
http://faculty.ithaca.edu/patty/
http://www.ithaca.edu/fleff
BLOG: http://www.ithaca.edu/fleff10/blogs/open_spaces/
email suppressed
----
__________________________________________________________________
For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.