Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival (FLEFF) roundtable
Cinemas on the Periphery: Decentering Media Geographies
April 13, 2018, 3:00-6:00pm
Center for Faculty Excellence (Gannett 316), Ithaca College, NY
Convenor: David Turkon, Anthropology
with Matthew Holtmeier, Screen Studies; Andrew Utterson, Screen Studies
This roundtable brings together scholars, curators, distributors, exhibitors, filmmakers, and new media artists whose work exists outside of, and charts geographies beyond, dominant industrial mappings.
By framing such cinemas as peripheral, this roundtable acknowledges the many industrial and other practices around the globe that centralize images and orient what is seen, heard, and otherwise experienced.
Rather than position the periphery as secondary, marginal, or other, this roundtable will explore the myriad potentialities and creative cartographies associated with decentered media geographies.
Moderated discussions will explore three broad prompts, each posed in close dialogue with trailers and other case studies from the films of FLEFF 2018.
Roundtable participants:
Rebecca Burditt (Hobart and William Smith Colleges)
Catherine Clepper (independent scholar)
Beth Corzo-Duchardt (Muhlenberg College)
Naminata Diabate (Cornell University)
Katherine Groo (Lafayette College)
Monika Mehta (Binghamton University)
Lisa Patti (Hobart and William Smith Colleges)
Samantha Noelle Sheppard (Cornell University)
3:00-3:05pm Opening Comments
3:05-3:55pm Peripheral Economies
moderated by Nicole Horsley, Center for the Study of Culture, Race, and Ethnicity; Andrew Utterson, Screen Studies
Where exactly are the center(s) and periphery(ies) of cinema? Is the periphery a physical place or an alternate geography? Who defines such relations and via what cartographies? How is the periphery politically, economically, and industrially structured, mediated, and mapped?
4:05-4:55pm Peripheral Stories
moderated by Matthew Holtmeier, Screen Studies; David Turkon, Anthropology
Whose voices emerge outside of dominant industrial and other centers? What different stories are (or could be) told? Via what distinctive conceptual, aesthetic, narrative, and other strategies?
5:05-5:55pm Emerging Peripheries
moderated by Walter Byongsok Chon, Dramaturgy and Theatre Studies; Michael Richardson, Modern Languages and Literatures
What audiences exist at the periphery? In circumnavigating centralized frameworks, what are the challenges and opportunities for distribution, exhibition, and audience engagement? How are new technologies shaping our understanding and experiences of cinemas on the periphery?
5:55-6:00pm Closing Comments
Sponsored by the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival (FLEFF), the Roy H. Park School of Communications, and the Center for Faculty Excellence (CFE)
Individuals with disabilities requiring accommodations should contact Andrew Utterson at autterson@ithaca.edu or (607) 274-7337. We ask that requests for accommodations be made as soon as possible.
