Desoni Cooper, Documentary Studies and Production major with a minor in Finance, FLEFF Blogging Intern, Brentwood, New York
Amid the COVID-19 pandemonium, the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival (FLEFF) continues to run remotely via online exhibitions.
The online exhibition highlights diverse contents such as Photo News by Jody Zellen, a Los Angeles-based artist known for her art installations, who has collaborated with FLEFF throughout the years, beginning with her Disembodied Voices visual depiction of how different bodies interact.
In the Radical Infiltration New Media Exhibition, Zellen contributed an Instagram-based project called Photo News, "... images from print newspapers are digitally photographed and manipulated, paired with phrases selected for their lyrical qualities from newspaper headlines, then edited together as a looped video," as described in the Radical Infiltration New Media Exhibition biography.
One of Zellen's photographs features a low saturated shot of the Mexico-United States barrier with a man walking along the border in a dark hoodie. This picture is intended to highlight President Donald Trump's decision to close the southern border unless Mexico stops illegal aliens from entering the United States. The photo is preceded by additional events such as rising ocean temperatures, government shutdown, California wildfires, Tijuana massacre, which all took place in 2019.
Zellen also used her digital art skills to curate a "poetic meditation on light and shadow" she stated in the Shadow Trees reel for the FLEFF 2019 Network Disruptions theme. The one-minute and 35-second sequence shows a number of tree shadows with contrasting colors.
Similar to Zellen's political photography, Kailas Sreekumar, an emerging multi-disciplinary artist based in Bangalore, India, uses his art to show the injustices that are taking place among him. His latest film, Maut (Death), uses symbolic art to raise awareness of India's current anti-Muslim policies under the leadership of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Narendra Modi.
The film includes Sreekumar in the old Padmasana or Lotus pose while holding his nose. Then he starts to chant the Hindu word "himmat" meaning courage, the German word "Heimat" meaning motherland, and "hey mat" meaning "O don't" in Hindu or "hey Ram" which is believed to be Gandhi's final words, as the foreground shows the snow-covered mountains.
Each moment symbolizes a deeper meaning. For example, the nose pinching represents Muslims suffocating under India's anti-Muslim policies, the lotus is the BJP symbol for promoting their agenda, and the snow-covered mountains are a typical setting for the song-and-dance sequences in popular Hindi cinema. The film galvanizes citizens to stand up against the anti-democracy establishment using one of Gandhi's principles ahimsa (non-violence protesting).
FLEFF features another exhibition called Infiltrations: A Different Media Environment Exhibition, whereas it shares media from around the world, such as Australia and Canada, to address pressing environmental, health and polarizing political problems.
EngageMedia is one of the many displays in the exhibition that informs viewers of false infodemics about the novel coronavirus. In their latest video, #Coronavirus: Infodemic, Celine Isabelle Samson, editor and reporter for Vera Files, follows the story using a journalism news package technique to educate their audience.
A team of Chinese immigrants from the United States has created a platform that offers specific information on reported cases of the virus from reputable sources, such as the Center for Disease Control (CDC). The website provides statistics in the U.S., details on the policies of a variety of businesses operating, lists of colleges and universities that are transitioning to online learning, and other details, such as testing sites, and pending cases.
The exhibits, Radical Infiltration New Media Exhibition and Infiltration: A Different Media Environment Exhibition, produce content that promotes revolutionary ideas and innovations. Every extraction has a specific approach to communicating their message. That was the purpose of FLEFF with this year's Infiltration theme, which is to "... subvert all forms of dominance and open spaces for new possibilities" according to one of the many definitions of FLEFFs Infiltration.
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