On April 29th, the Park Center for Independent Media and The Flaherty hosted the international launch of Scott MacDonald and Patricia R. Zimmermann's new book Flash Flaherty: Tales From A Film Seminar (Indiana, 2021).
Flash Flaherty, the follow-up volume to The Flaherty: Decades in the Cause of Independent Cinema, is a collection of personal memories and ruminations from attendees of the prominent Robert Flaherty Film Seminar over a span of more than 60 years. The Flaherty Film Seminar is an annual event where participants challenge and reimagine the creative process surrounding multiple forms of documentary.
Attended by over 120 academics, students, and independent film enthusiasts, the event – which occurred via Zoom – featured readings by editors and contributors of the book. The list of readers featured at the launch included filmmaker Portia Cobb, international film publicist Lucius Barre, filmmaker Susana de Sousa Dias, and author and scholar Laura U. Marks whose passages detailed their experiences at the seminar as well as the lasting impressions it left with them.
The event was moderated by Girish Shambu, editor of Film Quarterly’s Quorum, who commented on the variety of the anecdotes recounted during the reading, “it’s hard to imagine this single space encompassing this range of experience”.
The full event can be viewed on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJW6cKKwe-Y
The book can be purchased here, with the international launch book discount with IUP Press: Flash30
https://iupress.org/9780253053985/flash-flaherty/
https://www.ithaca.edu/intercom/article.php/20210503092138465