Meet the FLEFF 2023 talkback speakers
32 scholars, activists, librarians, scientists, activists, and community members open up the films with post-screening dialogue, discussion, and debate
Jonathan Ablard is a Professor of History in the School of Humanities and Sciences at Ithaca College and author of Madness in Buenos Aires: Patients, Psychiatrists, and the Argentine State, 1880-1983 (2008).
Chile ’76 (Manuela Martelli, Chile, 2022, 95 min): Friday, March 24, 7:00 p.m.
Kofi Acree is the Director of the John Henrik Clarke Africana Library at Cornell University. He is also the Curator of Africana Collections, which is part of the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections.
Seeds of Survival and Celebration: African American Food: Saturday, April 1, 1:00 p.m.
Lady Ajayi is a Scholar-in-Residence in the Department of Politics at Ithaca College. Her areas of specialization are in policy and human security studies. She was recently appointed by the Tompkins County Legislature to serve as a Commissioner on the Human Rights Commission. She is also the Chair of the Standing Committee on Projects of the African Studies and Research Forum.
Time of Pandemics (Rehad Desai, South Africa, 2023, 93 min): Friday, March 31, 7:00 p.m.
Stewart Auyash is an Associate Professor of Public Health at Ithaca College, with research specializations in public health policy, international health issues, health communication, and the war on drugs. He will speak at the talkback for Devil Put Coal in the Ground on Sunday, April 3, at 1 p.m.ET on Zoom.
Time of Pandemics (Rehad Desai, South Africa, 2023, 93 min): Friday, March 31, 7:00 p.m.
Brett Bossard ’95 is the Executive Director of Alumni and Family Engagement at Ithaca College. Brett formerly served as the Executive Director of Cinemapolis, where he successfully navigated the COVID closure and post-pandemic pivots to operations.
Chile ’76 (Manuela Martelli, Chile, 2022, 95 min): Friday, March 24, 7:00 p.m.
Wild Lens Shorts (Wild Lens Collective, US, 90 min): Saturday, April 8, 11:00 a.m.
Laura Branca is a Senior Fellow, Project Director, and co-founder of the Dorothy Cotton Institute. Laura has been an organization consultant at Training for Change, a skilled facilitator of dialogue on racism and intersectional forms of oppression, and a community mediator for over 35 years. Laura is a co-owner of Moosewood Inc. and member of the Moosewood Collective who ran Moosewood Restaurant in Ithaca for forty-nine years and co-authored fourteen cookbooks.
Move when the Spirit Says Move (Ry Ferro and Deborah Hoard, US, 2023, 90 min): Saturday, March 25, 7:00 p.m.
Jake Brenner is a Professor and Chair of Environmental Studies and Sciences at Ithaca College. He specializes in geography, land use, forests, and political ecology. His current projects focus on forest carbon dynamics and the management of natural areas by institutes of higher education.
Powerlands (Ivey Camille Manybeads Tso, US, 2022, 75 min): Saturday, April 1, 11:00 a.m.
Kenneth Clarke is the Director of the Tompkins County Office of Human Rights and an experienced religious affairs director and pastor.
Move when the Spirit Says Move (Ry Ferro and Deborah Hoard, US, 2023, 90 min): Saturday, March 25, 7:00 p.m.
Seeds of Survival and Celebration: African American Food: Saturday, April 1, 1:00 p.m.
Yolanda Clarke is Manager of Tutoring Services and Program Director for the Emerging Scholars Program at Ithaca College and teaches courses in public health.
Seeds of Survival and Celebration: African American Food: Saturday, April 1, 1:00 p.m.
Heidi Rae Cooley is an Associate Professor in the School of Arts, Humanities and Technology at the University of Texas at Dallas. She is the author of Finding Augusta: Habits of Mobility and Governance in the Digital Era (2014), which earned the 2015 Anne Friedberg Innovative Scholarship award from the Society of Cinema and Media Studies. She is a founding member and associate editor of Interactive Film and Media Journal.
Users (Natalia Almada, Mexico, 2021, 81 min): Saturday, April 1, 11:00 a.m.
Raymond B. Craib is the Marie Underhill Noll Professor of History at Cornell University. His most recent book is Adventure Capitalism: A History of Libertarian Exit, from the Era of Decolonization to the Digital Age (2022).
Chile ’76 (Manuela Martelli, Chile, 2022, 95 min): Friday, March 24, 7:00 p.m.
Yi Cui, Assistant Professor of Film and Video at Colgate University, is a filmmaker from China and has directed several feature-length documentaries.
From Our Eyes: Shorts from Tibet with filmmaker Yi Cui (China/US, 90 min): Saturday, March 25, 1:30 p.m.
Carolyn Fornoff is an assistant professor of Latin American studies at Cornell University. Her forthcoming book, Subjunctive Aesthetics: Mexican Cultural Production in the Era of Climate Change (Fall 2024), examines how contemporary Mexican artists respond to climate change with subjunctive aesthetic modes such as the counterfactual and the “as if.”
Dos Estaciones (Juan Pablo Gonzalez, Mexico, 2022, 99 min): Sunday, April 2, 2:00 p.m.
Mat Fournier is an Assistant Professor of French in the World Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Department and an affiliate member of the Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at Ithaca College. His forthcoming book is Dysphoric Assemblage: Writing Gender in the Interwar Years, which looks at French modernist literature to explore the emergence of modern gender.
Dancing the Twist in Bamako (Robert Guédiguian, France/Senegal, 2023, 120 min): Wednesday, March 22, 7:00 p.m.
Framing Agnes (Chase Joynt, US, 2022, 75 min): Saturday, April 8, 4:00 p.m.
Sarah Hunley Fiorello is the Interpretation Coordinator at Cornell Botanic Gardens. In this role and as a member of the education team, Sarah creates an interpretive master plan as well as coordinates the design and installation of interpretive materials such as outdoor signs, brochures, and exhibits.
Seeds of Survival and Celebration: African American Food: Saturday, April 1, 1:00 p.m.
Enrique Gonzalez-Conty is an Assistant Professor of Spanish in the Department of Modern Languages and Literature at Ithaca College. His current book project, Archiving the Revolution: Claiming History in Cuban Literature and Film, examines the close relationship between post-revolutionary Cuban Literature and Film and its ties to important Cuban state institutions.
Dos Estaciones (Juan Pablo Gonzalez, Mexico, 2022, 99 min): Sunday, April 2, 2:00 p.m.
Naeem Inayatullah is a Professor in the Department of Politics at Ithaca College. His latest book, Pedagogy as Encounter: Beyond the Teaching Imperative (2022) engages large pedagogical questions, such as the role of politics in the classroom, how the desire of the teacher shapes the pedagogical process, and whether teaching and learning is possible at all.
No Bears (Jafar Panahi, Iran, 2022, 107 min): Saturday, April 8, 7:00 p.m.
Jennifer Jolly is the Dana Professor of Art History, Art, and Architecture in the School of Humanities and Sciences at Ithaca College. Her book, Creating Pátzcuaro, Creating Mexico: Art, Tourism, and Nation Building under Lázaro Cárdenas (2018) investigates the art commissioned by Lázaro Cárdenas in Michoacan, Mexico, as part of a program of tourism development and national integration.
Users (Natalia Almada, Mexico, 2021, 81 min): Saturday, April 1, 11:00 a.m.
Mika Kennedy is an Assistant Professor of Asian American Studies in the Center for the Study of Culture, Race, and Ethnicity at Ithaca College. Her current book project, Crossed Wires: Japanese American Incarceration and the Environmental Frontier, examines the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans and its intersection with both fantasies of the Western frontier and the fight for Native sovereignty.
Manzanar Diverted (Ann Kaneko, US, 2021, 84 min): Friday, March 24, 4:00 p.m.
Camilo A. Malagón teaches in the Department of World Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at Ithaca College and is Co-Director of the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program, with a research program in late 20th and 21st century Latin American literature, film, and culture.
Chile ’76 (Manuela Martelli, Chile, 2022, 95 min): Friday, March 24, 7:00 p.m.
Luca Maurer serves as Interim Executive Director for Student Equity and Belonging and founding Director of the Center for LGBT Education, Outreach & Services at Ithaca College. He co-authored The Teaching Transgender Toolkit (2015), an award-winning book about the lives and experiences of transgender people, and also teaches in the Sociology Department.
Framing Agnes (Chase Joynt, US, 2022, 75 min): Saturday, April 8, 4:00 p.m.
Idrissou Mora-Kpai is an Assistant Professor of Media Arts, Sciences, and Studies at Ithaca College. His social documentaries tackle post-colonial African societies, migrations, and diasporas, most recently in his film America Street (2019).
Dancing the Twist in Bamako (Robert Guédiguian, France/Senegal, 2023, 120 min): Wednesday, March 22, 7:00 p.m.
Shaianne Oesterreich is an Associate Professor and Chair of Economics in the School of Humanities and Sciences at Ithaca College. Her specializations are globalization, feminist economics, heterodox economics, poverty alleviation, and Southeast Asia.
Matter Out of Place (Nikolaus Geyrhalter, Austria, 2023, 105 min): Saturday, March 25, 4:00 p.m.
Blue Island (Chan Tze Woon, Hong Kong, 2022, 92 min): Friday, April 7, 4:00 p.m.
Jeffrey Palmer is an Associate Professor in the Department of Performing and Media Arts at Cornell University. His recent feature film, N. Scott Momaday: Words from a Bear (2019), examines the life and mind of the first and only Native American writer to win the Pulitzer Prize for literature.
Powerlands (Ivey Camille Manybeads Tso, US, 2022, 75 min): Saturday, April 1, 11:00 a.m.
Ghosts and other shorts on Kiowa and Native Youth (Jeffrey Palmer, US, 2023, 90 min): Saturday, April 8, 1:30 p.m.
Lisa Patti is an Associate Professor of Media and Society at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. She is the editor of Writing About Screen Media (2019); co-editor of The Multilingual Screen: New Reflections on Cinema and Linguistic Difference (2016); and co-author of Film Studies: A Global Introduction (2015).
The Extra Girl (F. Richard Jones, US, 1923, 68 min): Friday, April 7, 8:00 p.m.
Michael Richardson, Professor of World Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at Ithaca College, serves as the inaugural Director of the Program in Screen Cultures with research interests in 20th- and 21st-century German literature, theater, and film, focusing on Holocaust cinema and the image of Hitler in American and German popular culture. He is the author of Revolutionary Theater and The Classical Heritage: Inheritance and Appropriation from Weimar to the GDR (2008).
Warning Shadows (Arthur Robinson, Germany, 1923, 90 min): Saturday, April 1, 7:30 p.m.
The Natural History of Destruction (Sergei Loznitsa, Ukraine, 2023, 112 min): Sunday, April 2, 4:00 p.m.
KikiKrazed Short Video Essays (US, 90 min): Sunday, April 2, 7:00 p.m.
Raza Rumi is Director of the Park Center for Independent Media, a journalist, policy analyst, and the author of many books, including most recently Being Pakistani: Society, Culture, and the Arts (2018).
Vigilante (Greg Palast, US, 2023, 61 min): Saturday, April 1, 3:00 p.m.
Imane Terhima is an Assistant Professor of Francophone Studies at Cornell University. Her research explores the intersection of aesthetics, ethics, and politics. Her specializations include Francophone African literature and culture, critical theory, political philosophy, and non-western modernities.
Dancing the Twist in Bamako (Robert Guédiguian, France/Senegal, 2023, 120 min): Wednesday, March 22, 7:00 p.m.
Catherine Thrasher-Carroll is the Mental Health Promotion Program Director at Cornell University Health Services. Catherine works collaboratively with colleagues across the entire campus to assess, develop, implement, and evaluate mental health programming and support resources for students, faculty, and staff. In addition to overseeing the development and delivery of bystander intervention programs, Catherine convenes and/or participates in several multi-disciplinary teams that address campus mental health services, policies, and practices.
Seeds of Survival and Celebration: African American Food: Saturday, April 1, 1:00 p.m.
Andrew Utterson, an Associate Professor of Screen Studies at Ithaca College, is the author of Persistent Images: Encountering Film History in Contemporary Cinema (2020); From IBM to MGM: Cinema at the Dawn of the Digital Age (2020); the editor of Technology and Culture: The Film Reader (2005); and the co-editor of the four-volume anthology Film Theory: Critical Concepts in Media and Cultural Studies (2004).
Dancing the Twist in Bamako (Robert Guédiguian, France/Senegal, 2023, 120 min): Wednesday, March 22, 7:00 p.m.
Manzanar Diverted (Ann Kaneko, US, 2021, 84 min): Friday, March 24, 4:00 p.m.
Matter Out of Place (Nikolaus Geyrhalter, Austria, 2023, 105 min): Saturday, March 25, 4:00 p.m.
No Bears (Jafar Panahi, Iran, 2022, 107 min): Saturday, April 8, 7:00 p.m.
Zenon Wasyliw is a Professor in the Department of History at Ithaca College. Zenon specializes in the USSR, East Central Europe, Russia, Ukraine, and Global History. He has published fourteen articles in the areas of Soviet, Ukrainian, and global history, and social studies pedagogy.
Babi Yar. Context (Sergei Loznitsa, Ukraine, 2022, 120 min): Sunday, March 26, 4:45 p.m.
Patricia Zimmermann, Charles A. Dana Professor of Screen Studies at Ithaca College, is the Director of the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival. The author of ten books, her most recent are Documentaries Across Platforms: Reverse Engineering Media, Politics, and Place (2019) and with Scott MacDonald, Flash Flaherty: Tales from a Film Seminar (2021).
From Our Eyes: Shorts from Tibet with filmmaker Yi Cui (China/US, 90 min): Saturday, March 25, 1:30 p.m.
Ghosts and other shorts on Kiowa and Native Youth (Jeffrey Palmer, US, 2023, 90 min): Saturday, April 8, 1:30 p.m.