Patricia Zimmermann, Charles A. Dana Professor of Screen Studies and Director of the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival (FLEFF), and Ann Michel, Principal of Insights International , published an essay entitled “Co-Creation for a Virtual Environmental Film Festival, or, How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love ZOOM.”
The essay maps the massive, historic disruptions of the pandemic on all aspects of cinema and media arts, but also shows how film festivals have recalibrated with the new strategies and new affordances of virtuality, focusing on the 24th Annual Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival in Spring 2021.
It also provides an example of how Zoom and virtual festivals enhance accessibility issues by explaining how a FLEFF mounted an online event with differently abled scientists and disability rights activists from NASA.
The essay is part of a special dossier, Co-Creation Documentary During Pandemic and Protest, published in Visible Evidence Forum, the international organization for documentary scholars, programmers, and practitioners.
The essay can be accessed here: https://www.visibleevidence.org/article/co-creation-virtual-film-festival/
