I was glad to make it out last night to the LEF Foundation-hosted gathering in honor of the 60th Anniversary of the Flaherty Seminar. I've been to the Seminar three times over the last 18 years, and each time was thoroughly memorable. Spending a week in upstate New York, watching movies all day and night (last time I was there, we watched over 80 movies in 6 days), and talking about them with fellow filmmakers, programmers, and critics over meals and drinks.... it's a dream scenario.
The program was an interesting collection of documentary shorts set around the world - though, in keeping with Flaherty tradition, no one in the audience knew what we were going to see until it came onto the screen. None of the films a traditional film structure. As director and several-time Flaherty curator John Gianvito (pictured above, talking to Flaherty board member Elizabeth Delude-Dix) described it, what tied this program together was these films exploration of "the imprint of the past upon the present." I'm quite taken with that idea.
These are the films that screened:
- Complex by Sirah Foighel Brutmann & Eitan Efrat (Beligum, 2008, 9 min.)
- Satyagraha by Jacques Perconte (France, 2009, 5 min.)
- 14.3 Seconds by John Greyson (Canada, 2008, 9 min.)
- Tito Among the Serbs for the Second Time by Zelimir Zilnik (Serbia, 1994, 43 min.)