The Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival is celebrating its 25th anniversary.
The Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival is celebrating its 25th anniversary.
This year’s annual Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival (FLEFF) will be marked with heightened celebration as the festival celebrates its 25th anniversary.
Led by Patricia Zimmermann, professor of screen studies and media arts, sciences, and studies, this year’s festival runs from March 21 to April 10, and will be 90% virtual, with select in-person events at Ithaca College. More than 65 online events and films will be hosted by Ithaca College and its partner Cinemapolis.
Full details about all the events, screenings and discussions can be found on FLEFF’s website.
Patty Zimmermann. (Photo submitted)
The theme of this year’s festival is “Entaglements,” focusing on how different environments, ideas, places, politics, and practices enmesh and twist into each other.
Zimmermann reflected on the path the second oldest environmental film festival in the United States has taken to get to this milestone.
“This anniversary has such deep meaning and significance,” she said. “First, that we actually survived across a quarter of a century; and second, that this milestone would not be possible without hundreds of Ithaca College faculty, staff, students, and a panoply of filmmakers, artists, musicians, producers, writers, journalists, scholars, archivists, activists, partners, and funders from around the globe.”
In addition to three weeks of events, there’s a plethora of other FLEFF content, including the 25 for 25 project, where participants — including several Ithaca College professors —share how the festival has impacted them, allowing them to share their experiences.
In response to the war in Ukraine, the festival also features a new collaborative project, collecting resources on Ukrainian film, music, and literature.
“The best way to do FLEFF is to sample as many events that are as different from each other as possible, and to experience the thrills and energies of those juxtapositions and invitations into new worlds one might have never known.”
Patricia Zimmermann, director of FLEFF
With so much content, it might be hard to decide what to check out. Zimmermann offered a piece of advice for those looking to maximize their experience.
“FLEFF is crafted to mobilize an enormous heterogeneity of intellectual and artistic experiences across different environments of politics, film, new media, journalism, music, literature, scholarly research, science, as a combustion engine of ideas and experiences to dive into what is unresolved and emerging in many different domains,” she said. “It makes public spheres for discussion and debate. The best way to do FLEFF is to sample as many events that are as different from each other as possible, and to experience the thrills and energies of those juxtapositions and invitations into new worlds one might have never known.”