Patricia Zimmermann, Professor of Screen Studies and Codirector of the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival, and Dale Hudson, Associate Professor of Film and New Media, New York University, Abu Dhabi, were invited to deliver the keynote address at The Multitudes Prevail: History and Memory in the Participatory Media Landscape forum mounted by the Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute on October 17, 2020.
Their presentation was entitled “The Urgency of Participatory Small Media during the COVID-19 Pandemic." The respondent for their keynote was Wood Lin, head of the Taiwan International Documentary Festival.
Focused on issues of participation in cinema, tv, radio, and new media, the forum drew international presenters and participants.
Their keynote address is part of an international three-way partnership between the Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute; Centre for Screen Cultures at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland; and the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival (FLEFF).
In late Spring 2020, Zimmermann and Hudson were invited to curate playlists of small media on COVID 19 produced around the globe. Their project for St. Andrews features over 50 titles.
Their lecture developed from this initial and on-going curatorial work and research to probe how accessible amateur media and no budget/no tech ways of producing distributed work have responded to the global pandemic and its uneven developments.
Some of these projects were also curated for the FLEFF Infiltrations: A Different Media Environment online exhibition in response to the pandemic.
https://www.ithaca.edu/intercom/article.php/20201020233344707