The 25th Anniversary Edition of the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival runs for three weeks, from March 21-April 10. This year’s festival theme is ENTANGLEMENTS.
Cinemapolis will host 25 films on its virtual cinema platform and three in-person special event screenings and talkbacks at the theater with filmmakers and community groups.
Feature-length documentary and narrative films from 16 countries including Argentina, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Czech Republic, China, France, Hong Kong, Israel, Kosovo, Morocco, Niger, Rwanda, Tunisia, United Kingdom, and United States will each have a one-week run on the Eventive platform.
12 interactive discussion-driven Zoom talkbacks with filmmakers, archivists, activists, musicians, journalists, and scholars from around the country and across the globe are free and open to the public each weekend of the festival. Film screenings , which can be watched anytime in the week prior, are asynchronous to the talkbacks.
Speakers include Louis Massiah, Yi Cui, Rikun Zhu, Tony Buba, Carmel Curtis, Scott MacDonald, John Scott, Deborah Hoard, Abel Sanchez, Andres Alegria, Aisha Sultan, Trish McAdam, Hai Wen, and Jinyan Zeng.
This year’s program features:
*In-person New York State premiere of Ithaca College professor John Scott’s new feature documentary, Elizabeth Bishop and the Art of Losing (2022), with Ithacans on the production team on Sat April 8
*Celebration of the work-in-progress documentary on Ithaca civil rights legend Dorothy Cotton, with film director Deborah Hoard, in partnership with AKA of Ithaca on Sat April 2
*Five-film program of innovative environmental films probing water, coal mining and opioids, farmworkers organizing, housing, and gig workers
*Special three-film retrospective of the works of legendary African American film director William Greaves (1926-2014) including Ida B. Wells: A Passion for Justice (1989), Nationtime (1972) and Symbiopsychotaxiplasm Take One (1971).
*Special focus on dissident films from China and Hong Kong by women or dealing with sexuality
*Four-film programming stream on contemporary French transnational cinemas
*Focus on documentary and narrative films from Africa
*Stream on films exploring music and politics
*Stream exploring cutting-edge Eastern European narrative films from Bulgaria and the Czech Republic
Tickets are $35 for a five-pass, $125 for an all-access pass to all 28 screenings, and $10 per individual screening. They are available for purchase via the Cinemapolis Eventive portal starting on March 1.
Partners for the FLEFF screenings at Cinemapolis include the Center for the Study of Globalization and Culture at the University of Hong Kong; Scribe Video Center in Philadelphia; Art Mattan Films; UniFrance; Museo del Cine Pablo Ducros Hicken, Argentina; the Park Center for Independent Media, and Louise Archambault Greaves as well as the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program, the Department of Health Promotion and Physical Education, and the MBA Program in Entertainment and Media Management at Ithaca College.
Patricia Zimmermann serves as Director of the FLEFF, and Brett Bossard, Executive Director of Cinemapolis, is associate programmer this year. Leah Shafer is associate producer for the talkbacks.
For the full festival program of over 65 events, check out www.ithaca.edu/fleff
Contact: Brett Bossard, Cinemapolis, brett@cinemapolis.org
Patricia Zimmermann, FLEFF, patty@ithaca.edu