Ithaca College

The Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival (FLEFF) has launched a three-way international collaboration with the Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute (TFAI) and the Centre for Screen Cultures Playlist initiative at the University of St. Andrews Scotland to showcase playlists about online media projects about COVID-19. 

FLEFF codirector Patricia Zimmermann and FLEFF new media curator Dale Hudson from New York University Abu Dhabi have curated three separate playlists featuring nearly 60 projects from across the globe on COVID-19 for the U of St. Andrews playlist initiative.

Zimmermann and Hudson will present one of the keynote addresses at the TFAI’s international forum, “The Multitudes Prevail: History and Memory in the Participatory Media Landscape,” October 17 and 18 in Taipei, Taiwan.

Their presentation, which theorizes and analyzes international new media works featured on their curated playlists, is entitled “The Urgency of Participatory Small Media on the COVID-19 Pandemic.” 

Their three extensive playlists will be programmed as part of the international forum. The forum will also feature other Centre for Screen Cultures playlists.

Taiwan Docs, part of TFAI, will curate playlists of Taiwanese online projects about COVID-19 as well playlists on Taiwanese documentary.

Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute

Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute (TFAI) is a foundation set up by the Ministry of Culture on July 28, 2014. It was upgraded from the Chinese Taipei Film Archive (CTFA), which had thirty-four years of history. TFAI preserves Taiwan and Chinese films. TFAI now has close to 17,500 Taiwan and Chinese film titles in its collection and is undertaking the important task of digital restoration. TFAI engages in film preservation and restoration, publications, film programs, exhibitions, and international programs to promote the cinema of Taiwan.

A hub for Taiwan documentary, TFAI holds documentary-related festivals and events, and also promotes Taiwan’s documentaries overseas. In 2014, the executive team of Taiwan International Documentary Festival (TIDF) established its permanent office under TFAI. As one of the major professional platforms for documentaries in Asia, TIDF is responsible for the festival and documentary- related affairs in Taiwan.

Centre for Screen Cultures Playlist Initiative, University of St. Andrews, Scotland

In the early stages of COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, the University of St. Andrews (Scotland) Centre for Screen Cultures (CSC) Playlist Initiative navigated the abundance of media materials migrating online, such as digital archives, proliferating streaming platforms, individual projects, and film festivals.

As the outreach process unfolded, the CSC Playlists afforded an opportunity to give visibility to multiple perspectives and voices through the media scholars, programmers, and makers who curated themed playlists.

An archive of the now, this initiative offers a valuable and timely resource for teaching and research. It disrupts the often totalizing and exclusionary tendencies of so many media lists in its embrace of international perspectives and a heterogeneity of approaches, topics, and interfaces, all of which are widely accessible.

Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival (FLEFF)

The Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival at Ithaca College embraces and interrogates sustainability across all of its forms: economic, social, ecological, political, cultural, technological, and aesthetic. The festival is in the spirit of UNESCO’s initiative on sustainable development. This initiative has redefined and expanded environmental issues to explore 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, performance, panels, and presentations, the festival engages interdisciplinary dialogue and vigorous debate. It links the local with the global. And it showcases Ithaca College as a regional and national center for thinking differently—in new ways, interfaces, and forms—about the environment and sustainability. 

The Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival was launched in 1997 as an outreach project from the Center for the Environment at Cornell University. In 2005 the festival moved permanently to Ithaca College, where it is housed in the Office of the Provost as a program to link intellectual inquiry and debate to larger global issues. Professor of cinema, photography, and media arts Patricia Zimmerman and professor of politics Thomas Shevory are the codirectors of the festival.

FLEFF: A DIFFERENT ENVIRONMENT