New media artist and documentary film director Laura Kissel will be in residence at FLEFF from March 27 thorugh April 1, sharing her new multimedia project, Cotton Road: From South Carolina to Shanghai in a series of workshops, discussions and screenings. Kissel is an IC alum with a degree in cinema and photography and currently serves as Director of the Film and Media Studies Program at the University of South Carolina.

Her documentary Cotton Road follows the production cycle of a global agricultural commodity through the stories of US farmers, migrant laborers, cotton merchants, Chinese textile workers, and consumers, illuminating the global trade in cotton and the connection between workers in the United States and China.

At the nexus of this story of labor, economics, and consumerism is a small cotton seed, planted in a field in South Carolina in late spring. Though the story originates in a cotton field, it culminates at a discount store with the sale of mass produced cotton clothing.

Cotton Road travels from farm to factory to reveal this industrial story: planting and harvest, mechanized ginning, the transportation of 420,000 bales through the port of Savannah and across the ocean to Shanghai.

Once in China, cotton bales are conveyed to factory cities, transformed from bale to textile, from textile to product and exported as cotton commodified into clothing, back to the American South.

More on 2012 FLEFF Microtopias programming HERE.

FLEFF, A Different Environment

The new feature length documentary chronicling the rising water levels in Louisiana, VEINS IN THE GULF, has just been confirmed for 2012 FLEFF Microtopias program at Cinemapolis.  

Creating a complex weave linking rising water levels, destruction of coast lines, Hurricane Katrina, Cajun culture, the BP oil spill, oil and energy, bayou ecologies, public policy battles and the fishing industries, VEINS IN THE GULF changes how we think about and see Louisiana.  The state of Louisiana produces a majority of our seafood and energy, as we learn in this exquisitely photographed and intricately edited film.

VEINS IN THE GULF screens Sunday April 1 at Cinemapolis.

Watch the trailer for the film HERE.

Codirectors and renowned documentary filmmakers Elizabeth Coffman and Ted Hardin will be present for the post-screening discussion.

32 days and FLEFF 2012 launches.  We are very excited for you to join us in experiencing and discussing this year's program.

We'll be sharing a little bit each day so you can start planning your festival picks early.

With help from our friends and collaborators at Kino International, we're proud to screen SUSHI: THE GLOBAL CATCH at Cinemapolis during the festival.