Do you want an international experience without leaving town?

Do you want to meet filmmakers, new media artists, and industry insiders in an informal, engaged environment?

Then you need to get your FIVE PASS FOR CINEMAPOLIS for FLEFF 2011 NOW!

Pre-Festival Pricing for IC faculty and staff for FESTIVAL PASSES is $35 (regularly $45) until 5 p.m. on April 8 at the IC Bookstore.   $7 a film! Festival screenings are normally $9.50

Passes also available at pre-festival price at Cinemapolis until last show on Friday April 8.

If you are an IC student, we have a limited number of passes left at the $20, until we sell-out all 200.  Then festival passes increase to the regular price of $35.

Visiting filmmakers and industry professionals appearing at Cinemapolis include Helen De Michiel, Rodrigo Bellott, Rodrigo Brandao, David Brancaccio, Danny Schechter, Maple Razsa, Karin Chien, Arthur Smith, Tina Mabry, Jenny Stein, James La Veck, Tom Swartwout.

For more information on FLEFF 2011 edition Checkpoints program, check HERE.

FLEFF, A Different Environment

7 New Mini Courses

Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival

One Credit, P/F, Block II Mini Courses*
Register on Homer

Checkpoints: Markets, Crisis, Disaster [IISP 10100-01] CRN 43199

Examines how various economic and financial controversies have been portrayed in popular and documentary films. Students will explore such topics as the Enron fiasco, the Great Depression, and more recently the collapse of the banking industry and the housing market. Students will use their knowledge to analyze and compare FLEFF 2011 films. 1 cr. LA Instructor John McKinley Thursday 6-7:15 pm.

Too Late to Stop Now: Tipping Points [IISP 10100-02] CRN 43200

The tipping point is the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point. It is the moment when protests become revolutions, popular you-tube videos become viral, and deforesting becomes devastating. We will consider the forces that bring about tipping points, including the power of individuals to fuel and/or restrain such moments. Topics will be determined by students’ interests. Our only constraint is that we be informed by our reading of Malcolm Gladwell’s, The Tipping Point, and our participation in FLEFF events and screenings. 1 cr. LA Professor Jodi Cohen, Communication Studies Thursdays 12:15-1:30 pm

 
Checkpoint: Can Games Change the World [IISP 10100-03] CRN 43201

Can games make the world better? Can they encourage cooperation, problem-solving, and altruism in ways that affect ordinary lives and address social and economic problems? In this mini-course, we’ll read Jane McGonigal’s new book Reality is Broken and engage her thesis that games can change the world for good. We will play a “checkpoints” game and decide if simulations can teach us something about the real world and the problems associated with a utopian vision. Students will attend several FLEFF films and examine how the "rules" at work in real-life social situations challenge the thesis that games can teach us how to change the world. 1 cr. LA Rachel Wagner, Assistant Professor, Philosophy and Religion MW 4-6 pm

Garbage, Oil, and other dirty stuff: Environment, Commodities, and Film in the Americas [IISP 10100-04] CRN 43202

The course will treat two themes: human and natural agency as portrayed in films & the history of "environmental films" in the Americas. 1 cr. LA Associate Professor Jonathan Ablard, History and Assistant Professor Michael Smith, History MW 2:00 pm-2:50 pm

Tying Story to Environment: the Checkpoint as Drama [IISP 10100-05] CRN 43203 [GCOM 10200-01]

A river forces its way through rock.  A four lane highway chokes down to one. A huge line forms at airport security.  Checkpoints occur in both the natural and man-made world.  Where pressure builds, drama will soon follow. This mini-course examines the recurring theme of a checkpoint as a source of drama film.  We will analyze FLEFF screenings, plus classic recent indie and Hollywood features where the narrative is tied directly to a specific environment; physical, political and otherwise.   1 cr. LA Andy Watts, lecturer, Cinema, Photography, and Media Arts M 6-8:30 pm

Cultural Ecology [IISP 10100-06 or MUNM 25200 – 01] CRN 43204

Examines the philosophic, sociological and artistic issues surrounding the transmission and assimilation of cultures. Through the prisms of film, music and dance, we will question the relationship between cultural diversity, sustainability, assimilation, artistic integrity, authenticity & creativity. 1 cr. LA Professor Peter Rothbart, Music, Theory, History, and Composition Fridays 1:00-1:50 Whalen Room 2330.

 
Public Health, Media, & Lifestyle IISP 10100-07 CRN 43205 or HLTH 39901-01 CRN 42735

Explores the foundations and applications of public health through readings and the films and events of FLEFF.  Students will explore the role of media in generating ideas, propagating myths, and influencing decisions about health. Students will attend films and participate in FLEFF events during the Festival week. 1 cr. LA Associate Professor Stewart Auyash, Health Promotion and Physical Education W 4-5:15 Hill 54.

 * For additional mini course information contact Warren Schlesinger, FLEFF mini course coordinator [warren@ithaca.edu]. All mini courses are pass/fail and one credit.

By way of introduction, my name is Nick Knouf, and along with Claudia Pederson, we are serving as assistants to the co-directors of FLEFF this year. But additionally, we are also co-teaching a course called FLEFF Lab: Checkpoints Project; following that link will go to the course blog, where you can see all of the goings on in the class.

As part of the class this year we're going to be hosting a panel during FLEFF entitled "Activist Retooling, Fourfold". This panel will feature four different artists/curators working in new media and activism: Dreamaddictive, Elvira Dyangani Ose, Monica Haller, and Sarah Wylie. Moderated by myself and Professor of the History of Art and Visual Studies at Cornell María Fernández, the panel will take place on the Tuesday of the FLEFF festival, 12 April 2011, from 7-9PM on the Ithaca campus:

Panelists will discuss ongoing projects touching on a range of issues and strategies relevant to current forms of media activism. Topics include the development of opensource and specialized tools as a means to channel scientific and private knowledge to the cultural and social domain; the move toward creating provisional and limited range broadcast technologies and the choice to focus on the immediate as ways to drive transnational outlooks; the prescience of formative personal experiences for the furthering of generative political processes; and the challenges in using digital tools to hold authoritarian structures accountable. These questions among others will be raised in the presentations and the follow-up moderated discussion.

Here's some more information about the presenters:

DreamAddictive is a collaborative project between Carmen González and Leslie García in 2003, in Tijuana, México. Their work explores technical skills coming from the field of applied sciences, like physical computing, visual programming, hardware production, articulated through art and design, to create responsive environments and situations that play with the limits between the oneiric and the virtual. DreamAddictive is a member of the Upgrade International network working under the Open Source philosophy, as a way of sustaining and distributing the knowledge produced from research in working with multiple means including the distribution and promotion of electronic culture, organizing meetings to show projects and live acts, and teaching workshops and qualification courses, in collaboration with different universities and institutions. Their work has been shown in diverse contexts: virtual happenings through the Internet; festivals; solo and group exhibitions, as well as live acts and audiovisual improvisations. DreamAddictive is the recipient of the grant PECDA “Creadores con trayectoria”,and the grant Fonca “Jóvenes creadores,” 2009-2010.

Elvira Dyangani Ose (1974, Spain / Equatorial Guinea) is an Art and Architecture historian, and Curator of Contemporary Art, currently pursuing a PhD at Cornell University, New York. Her academic and curatorial research focus on Contemporary African Art and Culture. As an independent curator, she has developed different interdisciplinary projects, focusing on the recovery of collective memory, intervention in public space and urban ethnography. Her most significant projects are: Olvida Quién Soy/Erase Me from Who I am, Africalls?, Nontsikelelo Veleko/Welcome to Paradise, and Carrie Mae Weems: Social Studies. She has worked as a curator in several institutions in Spain. She was general curator of Arte inVisible, AECID in 2009 and 2010.

Monica Haller works on long-term collaborations with individuals and small groups, often using photography, video and writing. Her artistic practice is rooted in social justice concerns and attempts to mobilize information by amplifying the materials and technologies that her collaborators have turned to along the way. Drawing from the experiences of the individuals and communities with whom she works, Monica reactivates their personal histories, and in so doing, hopes to provoke critical dialogue around them and their larger social contexts. Monica has a BA in Peace and Conflict Studies, an MFA in Visual Studies and has received fellowships from foundations including the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Bush Foundation, the McKnight Foundation and the Jerome Foundation.

Sara Wylie is an ABD student in MIT’s Science, Technology and Society (STS) Program. She is finishing up her dissertation “Corporate Bodies and Chemical Bonds: an STS analysis of the American Natural Gas Industry”. Her dissertation research involved developing web-based tools to help communities and experts across the country study and hold extractive industries accountable for their social and environmental impacts. This project called ExtrAct was developed in collaboration with artist and technologist Chris Csikszentmihalyi, in MIT’s Center for Future Civic Media. She seeks to develop new modes of studying and intervening in large-scale social issues such endocrine disrupting chemicals and corporate accountability through a fusion of social scientific, scientific and art/design practices. She continues to investigate those interests through her interdisciplinary classes: Becoming Animal, Technical and Environmental: A practical course in disruptive Art and Design and Art Lab: Artistic investigation of the biological sciences.

We'll be posting more information about the presenters in the coming weeks, including short interviews. We're excited to be presenting this panel and encourage all of you to attend!