Join us for the 12th annual Glimmerglass Film Days, November 7-11, 2024 in Cooperstown. We will have our signature combination of compelling independent films, filmmaker talks, art, books, parties, guided walks, and collaborations with local museums, nonprofits, restaurants, and businesses.

Schedule:

10:00 - 11:25 AM: Dahomey

For centuries, the Kingdom of Dahomey (located in present-day Benin) was considered a center of power and influence in West Africa. This prominence was rooted in the Kingdom's active role in the transatlantic slave trade. As slavery was abolished across Europe through the 1800s, the Kingdom’s power began to fade. A weakened Dahomey faced increasing territorial challenges. An 1892 invasion by France led to the looting of the royal palace where thousands of royal treasures and other art works were taken.

In 2021, after years of negotiations, an agreement was reached under which 26 of these stolen objects would be returned to home soil in Benin. French-Senegalese filmmaker Mati Diop documents every step of this journey of repatriation; from the careful packing and unpacking to the preparations for the jubilant homecoming fête. Deeper questions around the exchange emerge at a gathering at the nearby Université d’Abomey-Calavi. Here, students and teachers passionately debate the true legacy of these artifacts. Questions are raised about how these art treasures, stolen from ancestors, should be received in a country which has reinvented itself in their absence.

Dahomey is a poetic and immersive work of art that delves into the real and diverging perspectives on far-reaching issues surrounding appropriation, self-determination and restitution.

In French with English subtitles

Post-screening Q&A discussion with speaker Mikayla Brown

This film and discussion, open to the public, also serve as the annual Film Days Professional Seminar for the Cooperstown Graduate Program students and faculty.

Mikayla Brown is a doctoral candidate in Media and Communication at Klein College, Temple University. Her research delves into how museums that are in possession of looted Benin Bronzes discursively address repatriation efforts, exploring the ways these institutions confront their colonial legacies and navigate ongoing identity crises amidst repatriation and restitution calls. Mikayla has presented her work at both national and international conferences, including in Canada and Australia. She served on the ethics review committee at Mutter Museum and her previous professional experience was in Marketing. Currently, Mikayla teaches critical media and identity studies at Temple University and Drexel University, engaging students with issues of culture, power, and representation. In addition, Mikayla is conducting research on Wikidata's ontology and Silicon Valley's weapons defense industry.

Location:
The Farmers' Museum
5775 State Hwy 80,
Cooperstown, NY 13326

11:30 AM - 12:30 PM: Lunch Between Films: Indigenous Flavors (advance purchase required)

Enjoy the flavors of New Mexico before our Friday Freebie film, Written on the Landscape: Mysteries Beyond Chaco Canyon. Catered by the popular Mel's at 22 chef Brian Wrubleski. Purchase by November 1.

Please note: This lunch is not included with the Patron or Glimmerglass Pass. Please purchase lunch separately. Thank you.

Location:
The Farmers' Museum
5775 State Hwy 80,
Cooperstown, NY 13326

12:30 - 1:30 PM: Written on the Landscape: Mysteries Beyond Chaco Canyon

Chaco Canyon’s high-desert landscape in the American Southwest (approximately 70,000 square miles known as the Four Corners) was home to a once flourishing ancient culture with connections to Mesoamerica. Today it’s revealed in occasional physical remnants. For one, traces of their monumental architecture possess such incredible beauty and simplicity that they bring to mind the most creative of contemporary design. The cultural flowering of this civilization began in the mid-800s and lasted more than 300 years. A unifying and expressive cosmology, especially their integration of solar and lunar cycles, was a sublime key feature of the Chacoan way of life. Archeologist Anna Sofaer has spent her life studying the Chacoan people. In the film, she serves as our guide, sharing her Solstice Project’s latest research using aerial imagery and LiDAR (lasers that measure distances and create three-dimensional models). Astronomical alignments and their connections to the landscape in the canyon are reflected in the most unpredictable ways.

Generously sponsored by Patricia and Robert Hanft

Location:
The Farmers' Museum
5775 State Hwy 80,
Cooperstown, NY 13326

1:45 - 3:15 PM: Taking Venice

Paris was still the world’s artistic capital in 1963—but all that was about to change. Following the 1964 Venice Biennale, the city of New York took over as the Cultural Capital. 1964 was the year that American painter Robert Rauschenberg won the coveted grand prize at the Biennale. Everyone was stunned. Was it maneuvering behind the scenes by the Americans, possibly the State Department in cahoots with influential New York dealers like Leo Castelli? Was it clever publicists working to boost American interests? Europe was livid to think that Rauschenberg’s Combines—assemblages of ugly everyday objects often smeared with paint—were taking precedent over more traditional painters with better credentials than those of this oddball from Port Arthur, Texas. Taking Venice grapples with these issues. But what it really discovers, in beautifully nostalgic footage, is a Venice as yet unpolluted and uncorrupted by the multitudes of marauding tourists that plague the city today.

Generously sponsored by Robert Nelson and Van Broughton Ramsey

Location:
The Farmers' Museum
5775 State Hwy 80,
Cooperstown, NY 13326

3:30 - 4:45 PM: Boundaries: Shorts Program

Explore the theme “Boundaries” in the first of three shorts programs.  Find out about an amazing botanical mystery, watch a 15-year-old filmmaker’s effort to protect trees and the planet, learn how an artist transforms toxins into paint, and see what a father is willing to risk to ensure his son can drink clean water. Program includes: The Everlasting Pea (Su Rynard, 2024, Canada, 17 minutes), There Was a Cedar Forest (Arthur Čech, 2023, France/Morocco, 3 minutes), Toxic Art (Jason Whalen, 2023, USA, 16 minutes), and Wings of Dust (Giorgio Ghiotto, 2022, Peru, 30 minutes).

3:30PM: The Everlasting Pea

The Everlasting Pea moves between an anesthetized pea plant that dreams of a time when it thrived in the ruins of the Roman Colosseum, and the 19th century botanist Richard Deakin who discovered over 420 species of plants, some quite rare, among the Colosseum ruins. The lowly pea plant and Deakin, who exposes an amazing botanical mystery, together are heroes of the story.

3:30PM: There Was a Cedar Forest

Screened as part of the Boundaries Shorts program

Fifteen-year-old Alex Čech is a wildlife photographer whose main wish is to show the world the beauty of nature and encourage the long-term preservation of our planet. “I get very scared when I see that man can kill in a decade what nature has taken hundreds of years to grow. I can't stand by and do nothing. So I made this film.”

3:30PM: Toxic Art

Screened as part of the Boundaries shorts program

In southeastern Ohio, the heart and soul of Appalachia, acid mine drainage has been a huge issue, turning streams red with poisons and killing wildlife. Technology and funds to bring these streams back to life never happened—that is, until now, when artist John Sabraw and some friends developed a breakthrough process to upcycle the toxins into paint pigments. A creative and cooperative gamble became a money-making venture for artist pigments companies.

3:30PM: Wings of Dust

Screened as part of the Boundaries shorts program

Wings of Dust follows a Quechua indigenous journalist, Vidal Merma, who is fighting the damage inflicted on the K’ana Nation of Peru by aggressive mineral mining supported by the government. Vidal risks his life daily to secure a future where his son can savor the simple joy of drinking clean water.

Location:
The Farmers' Museum
5775 State Hwy 80,
Cooperstown, NY 13326

5:30 - 7:30 PM: All Illusions Must Be Broken

A collaboration of acclaimed filmmakers Laura Dunn and Jef Sewell, and backed by Executive Producers Terrence Malik and Robert Redford, All Illusions is the finale of a trilogy that delves into the tension between nature and our evolving culture, following The Unforeseen and Look & See: A Portrait of Wendell Berry, which was featured at Film Days in 2018. Ernest Becker was an American cultural anthropologist and author of the 1974 Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Denial of Death. Becker’s premise, and one that has deep implications for the environment, was that human beings are motivated to create a meaningful world for themselves rooted in self-esteem—a kind of near-religious view that we must somehow rise above the fear of death and the unknown. Beyond that, and more and more, virtual environments are overtaking and displacing the actual environment, only furthering a tendency toward self-deception. Using Becker’s thought-provoking framework, the film examines the unintended consequences of depriving the environment of its natural character and properties.  

“All Illusions Must Be Broken is a cinematic interpretation of Becker’s ideas. His psychoanalytic exploration of human nature and the study of his own life challenge our fears and inspire us to see the beauty that surrounds us in our fragile lives. Part film essay, part verité study, the narrative interweaves Becker’s insights, contemporary interviews on the re-patterning power of screens, and scenes from a boyhood from birth to age 13.”—Laura Dunn and Jef Sewell

Post-screening Q&A discussion with filmmaker Jef Sewell

Generously sponsored by Eva Davy

Jef Sewell was born in Dallas, a fourth-generation Texan with family roots in the Texas Plains. Before joining Two Birds Film, Jef co-founded the satirical publisher Despair, Inc. and Amplifier®, a fulfillment company serving artists and brands. For his work on The Unforeseen (2007), he was nominated for Outstanding Achievement in Graphics & Animation at the inaugural Cinema Eye Honors. In 2017, Jef received the SXSW Jury Prize for Visual Design for his contributions to Look & See: A Portrait of Wendell Berry.

Location:
National Baseball Hall of Fame Grandstand Theater
25 Main Street,
Cooperstown, NY 13326

8:30 - 10:00 PM: Selections from Thomas Edison Film Festival

Enjoy award-winning shorts from the Thomas Edison Film Festival (TEFF), curated and presented by Jane Steuerwald, executive director of the Thomas Edison Media Arts Consortium. Andrew Nadkarni, director of Between Earth & Sky, will attend to discuss his film which was shortlisted for the 2024 Academy Awards. All five shorts were selected for their relevance to the Film Days theme, "Boundaries." This program is a perennial Film Days favorite.

Complimentary popcorn and movie candy, cash bar

Films curated and presented by executive director Jane Steurwald

Jane Steuerwald is the executive director of the Thomas Edison Media Arts Consortium-Thomas Edison Film Festival. She curates and presents film programs for colleges, universities, museums, cinemas, and arts venues across the country and abroad. Her films have screened at MoMA; the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC; Anthology Film Archives; and festivals across the US. Steuerwald was a professor and chair of the Media Arts Department, NJ City University, for many years, where she taught media production, history, and aesthetics. She has worked with film and video as an art medium since 1980, creating installations, documentaries, found footage works, experimental films, and single edition art books. In 2012, she was a Women’s History Month Honoree in New Jersey for empowering women through education.

8:30 PM: A Life Like This

Screened as part of Selections from the Thomas Edison Film Festival

A documentary portrait, highlighting the lived experiences and creative work of four outsider artists working and living with disability in Central Pennsylvania. Artists with both mental and physical disabilities consistently face discrimination, inequity, and underexposure at both local and national levels. A Life Like This tells the stories of these artists who create as a means to communicate and express how art shapes and impacts their lives.

8:30 PM: A Place for Us

Screened as part of Selections from the Thomas Edison Film Festival

West Side Story is the tale of two rival male gangs who constantly fight to protect their territory. Their animosity is all consuming, to the point where the gang leaders fight to the death. Leonard Bernstein’s iconic score allows us to feel the joy, complication, and pain of what it means to love and lose. Six female cast members from Steven Spielberg's West Side Story play with a gender flip of the iconic prologue.

8:30 PM: Between Earth and Sky

Screened as part of Selections from the Thomas Edison Film Festival

Renowned ecologist Nalini Nadkarni studies "what grows back” after a disturbance in the rainforest canopy. After surviving a life-threatening fall from a tree, she must turn her research question onto herself to explore the effects of disturbance and recovery throughout her own life. This film was shortlisted in the 2024 Academy Awards Documentary Short Film category.

Post-screening Q&A discussion with director Andrew Nadkarni and producer Katie Schiller

Andrew Nadkarni featured as part of Selections from the Thomas Edison Film Festival) is a documentary filmmaker based in Brooklyn, New York. His directorial debut, Between Earth & Sky, was shortlisted for the 2024 Academy Awards. The film played more than 50 festival screenings, won Best Short at Big Sky and Hot Springs Documentary Film Festivals, and received nominations for two Critics Choice Awards and the Cinema Eye Honors. Andrew integrates community care and trauma-informed practices into his filmmaking process, exploring generational stories within diaspora communities. A 2023 BRIClab Artist in Residence, he also reads for grant organizations, and serves as a festival juror and programmer. He was an associate producer on Bel Canto (Peacock), production supervisor on the NY Unit of Glass Onion (Netflix), and produced the narrative feature, Actual People (MUBI).

Katie Schiller featured as part of Selections from the Thomas Edison Film Festival) is a queer filmmaker based in Brooklyn. She has developed, directed, and produced projects ranging from short films and branded content to television and feature-length productions. Katie received the John Cassavetes Award at the 2022 Film Independent Spirit Awards for her work on Shiva Baby (SXSW, TIFF 2020). Katie produced the narrative short film, Chaperone (Sundance 2022), co-produced the Netflix documentary series The Principles of Pleasure, and served as a segment producer on Lady Gaga's The Power of Kindness for Facebook Watch. Katie holds a BFA from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and a Masters of Social Work from Fordham University. Katie owns and operates It Doesn’t **** Productions.

8:30 PM: Note of Defiance

Screened as part of Selections from the Thomas Edison Film Festival

Filmed in early 2023, on the Ukrainian-Russian border, Note of Defiance explores two artists' use of art as a means of cultural survival. In Kharkiv, Ukraine, attacks on civilian centers have forced cultural sites to close. The Kharkiv State Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre is one of the biggest cultural sites forced to close due to these attacks. These two featured performers provide concerts and lessons anywhere they can: from parking garages to bomb shelters.

8:30 PM: Tracing Imperfection

Screened as part of Selections from the Thomas Edison Film Festival

As master conservator Naoko Fukumaru demonstrates “Kintsugi,” the Japanese art of repairing pottery using gold, she recalls how learning the practice has taught her to embrace her own imperfections as its mended her own life.

Location:
Templeton Hall
63 Pioneer Street,
Cooperstown, NY 13326

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