About the FLEFF Series

The Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival Series at the Ithaca College Library is a special collection of over 500 documentary, narrative, and experimental films screened at the festival since 1997.  It is the largest film series in the library.

This collection configures and explores the concept of the environment broadly, from interdisciplinary and international perspectives, often in ways that stretch and reconsider the very term. It asks users to think differently about the environment.

This collection is unique in the media landscape because very few festivals create library collections of works screened, and very few colleges and universities collaborate with festivals to build a collection from festival programming for teaching, research, students, and the campus community. 

The Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival Series captures Ithaca College institutional history in its public-facing programming.

This is a collection to be used in multiple contexts. It supports the curriculum, faculty research, student clubs, and student interests.  Many of the titles have public performance rights for free on-campus screenings open to the public beyond classrooms.

Titles in the collection were either shown on campus in classroom screenings or at Cinemapolis, the local art cinema, during the festival. Faculty, administrators, students, staff, festival team, and alums suggest titles for purchase. 

The Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival Series aligns with the mission of the library to support teaching and research and serves as a rich resource for classes, research, faculty, students, and the campus community.

The titles in the series represent a broad spectrum of interests across the five schools at Ithaca College, ranging from fine arts, journalism, music, theater, business, social sciences, health, communications, and more.  Over the last 25 years, the various titles in the series have had cross-disciplinary usage across all five schools on the Ithaca College campus.

The library staff involved in developing the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival Series include Lis Chabot, retired College Librarian; John Henderson, retired Social Science Librarian; Leon Smigiel, retired Health Science Librarian; Jennifer Richards, Fine Arts Librarian; Catherine Michael, Communications Librarian; Kelly Merritt, Multimedia Services Manager; Terri Beth Ledbetter, Multi-format Acquisitions Specialist; and Karin Wikoff, interim College Librarian.