Artists and film professionals and enthusiasts from around the globe discussed a wide range of documentaries at the recent Robert Flaherty Film Seminar, hosted for the second year in a row at Colgate University.
More than 160 participants from Russia, India, Germany, Syria, Australia, Canada, Europe, and the United States spent six days on campus, ending June 26.
African filmmaker Abderrahmane Sissako couldn’t visit campus but participated from Paris via webcam.
“The Flaherty is really at the cutting edge of documentary cinema … . I think this is a great experience for educators, scholars, and filmmakers, and also for our students,” said Luca Caminati, assistant professor of Italian who specializes in contemporary Italian film and documentary cinema.
The seminar focused on film, video, and installation works from the Middle East, Asia, Latin America, Europe, and the United States in order to explore the act of bearing witness – bringing memory, experience and history into the present.
This year’s programming was by Irina Leimbacher, former artistic director at San Francisco Cinematheque and co-founder and co-curator of kino21, a nonprofit film screening series in San Francisco.
Organizers said Colgate’s idyllic setting and state-of-the-art facilities helped make the seminar a success for a second year in a row.