Newswise — Ithaca College's Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival (FLEFF) has gone global by forming a consortium with environmental and human rights film festivals in Spain, Mexico and India. Entitled "Open Cinema," the new international organization is formed by FLEFF; the Chiapas Media Project based in Chicago and Mexico; Kultura, Communication y Desarrollo in Bilbao, Spain; and Voices from the Water Film Festival in Bangalore, India.
"This is a very, very significant advancement for FLEFF," said Patricia Zimmermann, professor of cinema, photography and media arts and, with politics professor Tom Shevory, co-director of FLEFF. "We are honored to be one of the founding organizations of a consortium that will help circulate films that are hard to see and spread ideas that reach beyond viewers' everyday experiences."
"The main thrust of FLEFF is to explore themes of interconnectedness," added Shevory. "Forming the 'Open Cinema' consortium with international partners reinforces our commitment to collaboration, diversity and explorations into thinking differently about the environment."
"Open Cinema" will be guided by 10 working principles that include forming collaborative partnerships with other festivals and organizations around the globe that are interested in exploring environmental, social justice, sustainability and human rights issues in cinema, video, new media and projections/performances.
The new consortium will also support works that are produced in many diverse cultures, genres, formats and platforms; create visibility for work that has been marginalized, censored, shut down or sequestered within one location or nation; and expand the concept of open cinema at all the members' festivals to build gathering places for international dialogue and action on environmental and social justice media. "Open Cinema" also aims to generate critical dialogue, practices and scholarship on all its works and projects.
For more information on "Open Cinema" and FLEFF, contact Patricia Zimmermann at (607) 351-4334 or [email protected].
For more information on the partners of "Open Cinema," see below.
Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival (FLEFF) at Ithaca College in Ithaca, New York, USA, interrogates sustainability across all of its forms: economic, social, ecological, political, cultural, technological and aesthetic. In the spirit of UNESCO's initiative on sustainable development to expand environmental issues, FLEFF explores the international interconnections between war, disease, health, genocide, the land, water, air, food, education, technology, cultural heritage and diversity. Through film, video, new media, installation, music, performance, panels and labs, the festival engages interdisciplinary dialogue and debate. For more information, visit www.ithaca.edu/fleff.
Chiapas Media Project (CMP)/Promedios is an award-winning, bi-national partnership that provides video equipment, computers and training enabling marginalized indigenous and campesino communities in Southern Mexico to create their own media. CMP/Promedios has created four regional media centers in Zapatista territory and trained over 200 young indigenous men and women in basic video production in Chiapas. CMP/Promedios has presented videos at numerous universities, museums and film and video festivals around the world. CMP/Promedios is currently distributing 30 indigenous produced videos worldwide. For more information, visit: www.chiapasmediaproject.org.
Kultura, Comunicacion y Desarrollo/Culture, Communication and Development (KCD) is a nongovernmental organization based in Bilbao, Spain. Its mission is to promote social and cultural communication as a mechanism for social change. KCD presents alternative and progressive information to counter the predominance of the monocultural model that destroys the diversity and legitimacy of national, social and cultural identities. KCD strengthens cultural identities and creates a socio-economic development model based on just and sustainable human development.
Voices from the Waters Film Festival initiated by the Bangalore Film Society is based in Bangalore, India. It was established in 2005 to promote among the public an awareness of the myriad water issues affecting our everyday lives either directly or indirectly and as a platform for alternative voices and views rarely heard in the mainstream. Voices from the Waters started as a Bangalore-based environmental film festival; the 2007 and 2008 editions grew to be one of the largest, most diverse and dynamic platforms of debate, dialogue and celebrations of that precious resource, the blue gold, life itself — water.
RSS