Ithaca College

Patricia Zimmermann, professor of Screen Studies and codirector of the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival, was a featured invited presenter at the “Leading Creatively” national conference of the National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture in Minneapolis, September 6-8, 2012.

Zimmermann facilitated an interactive workshop and panel entitled “Open Space Documentary: How and Why.” The panel featured three new media artists working in transmedia collaborative documentary: Laura Kissel, with her Cotton Road Project about textiles in China; Jesikah Maria Ross, with her project on localized environmental storytelling; and Helen De Michiel, with her Lunch Love Community project, on healthy food in public schools. All three new media artists have been featured in the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival.

The workshop explored the shifts and transformations in documentary practice from a deductive, director-centered , long form approaches to a more open, collaborative, mosaic structure which migrates across formats and interfaces.