For the second year in a row Colgate University will host the prestigious Robert Flaherty Film Seminar. The seminar, now in its 55th year, will run June 20-26.
“We are thrilled to once again be holding the Flaherty at Colgate,” said the seminar’s executive director, Mary Kerr.
Organizers said they appreciate the university’s state-of-the-art facilities, which provide both the technology necessary for the seminar as well as comfortable locations for discussion.
This year’s seminar is titled “Witnesses, Monuments, Ruins.” The sessions will examine the ability of film to bring the past into the present via moving images and audio.
Last year’s seminar was the first in the event’s history to feature screenings open to the public. Finding it a successful approach, this year’s seminar also will offer several films free to the public and one for a small admission price at the Hamilton Movie Theater. (Click graphic at left for full schedule.)
“We are eager to again introduce audiences from upstate New York to the exciting and innovative works, which are a hallmark of the seminar, and to provide the opportunity to hear from the makers themselves on their creative process,” said Kerr.
Working with the seminar organizers are Lynn Schwarzer, director of the university’s Film and Media Studies Program, John Knecht, art and art history professor, and student interns Adam Hughes ’10 and Andy Giandomenico ’11.
It is the second year as an intern for Hughes, who last year worked as theater manager.
“The best part of the seminar is the spirited and complex nature of discussions,” he said. He added that he believes those talks are fostered by the complete immersion of the 166 attendees in the subject matter.
“I also enjoy the lack of hype or preconceptions,” he said in explaining that other than the public screenings all the films are kept secret from the attendees until the time they are shown at the seminar.