Four films have been selected as Best of the Fest for FLEFF 2023.
Blue Island (Chan Tze Woon, Hong Kong, 2022)
The second feature-length film by award-winning director Chan Tze Woon mixes documentary, fiction, and visions of the future as it links past and present activists fighting for democracy in Hong Kong.
Move When the Spirit Says Move (Ry Ferro, director and Deborah C. Hoard, director/producer, US, 2023) Ry Ferro is an IC alum.
Dorothy Foreman Cotton was a bold highly effective civil rights leader, who educated thousands in their citizenship rights and inspired generations of activists with her powerful freedom songs. The only woman on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s executive staff, Dorothy was a charismatic, courageous and consistently overlooked key player in the Civil Rights Movement.
No Bears (Jafar Panahi, Iran, 2022)
In his new virtuosic sleight-of-hand — completed shortly before his imprisonment in July 2022 — Jafar Panahi plays a fictionalized version of himself, who has relocated to a rural border town in Iran to remotely direct a new film in nearby Turkey. While there, he finds himself thrust in the middle of a local scandal, confronting the opposing pulls of tradition and progress.
Powerlands (Ivey Camille Manybeads Tso, US, 2022)
A young Navajo filmmaker investigates displacement of Indigenous people and devastation of the environment caused by the same chemical companies that have exploited the land where she was born. On this personal and political journey she learns from Indigenous activists across three continents.
Selection Process
The films were selected by the student interns enrolled in Cinematic Currents: FLEFF and the History of Film Festivals, a FLEFF companion course the provided an in-depth dive into global festival operations and practices and a deep immersion into the 26th Annual Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival. Students served as FLEFF Brand Ambassadors.
The course is offered in the Roy H. Park School of Communications and open to students from all schools on campus. It is team taught by Dr. Andrew Utterson, Screen Studies; Brett Bossard, Alumni Engagement; and Dr. Rachel Schaff, Mercer University.
FLEFF: 26 YEARS OF A DIFFERENT ENVIRONMENT