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Ithaca College (Ithaca, NY)
Cinema
on the Edge
Summary
Ithaca College faculty members and administrators created a multidisciplinary,
collaborative, service-learning project with the Southside African American
community in Ithaca through production of a short documentary film called
Passin it On. The project evolved from a one-time initiative
into a larger, on-going campus-wide project called the InVisible Histories
Project, dedicated to multidisciplinary local history projects to chronicle
underrepresented upstate New York communities with collaborative media
projects, on-line archiving of visual material, and K-12 educational units.
The Practice
An interdisciplinary group of faculty—filmmakers, historians, writers,
theorists—formed a cinema department film and media curatorial group
in the mid-1990s called Cinema on the Edge for touring film festivals,
visiting media artists residencies, and screenings with cross-disciplinary
panel discussions. Cinema on the Edge then established cross-campus collaborative
partnerships with the Office of Multicultural Affairs (OMA), the Office
of the Provost, and the Center for the Study of Culture, Race, and Ethnicity.
In spring 2002, we invited internationally renowned documentary filmmaker
Louis Massiah (Eyes on the Prize, WEB DuBois) as the OMA Distinguished
Artist in Residence. Massiah requested a collaborative documentary project
in Ithaca’s historic black community using the community media model
he developed at Scribe Video Center in Philadelphia.
A filmmaker, a film historian, a critic, a sociologist, senior and junior
faculty members, and administrators with expertise in African diaspora
communities and comparative literature formed the producing team. Massiah
was a draw for students, faculty, and community members. The project employed
a networked, horizontal collaborative model rather than a hierarchical
model, creating a powerful mentoring construct. Academic film conferences
and an international archive symposium invited the team to present this
unique model of local history and collaborative community media.
The project centered on the Southside Community in Ithaca, a traditionally
African American neighborhood that formed part of the Underground Railroad.
Community members worked collaboratively with the student/faculty/administrative
team to retell their own relatively unknown local history. Community members
decided on the topics, the voices documented, and the structure. A community
member scored the film. The project sustained a collaborative model of
documentary practice and local history. It employed collective decision-making
from the community’s viewpoint, rather than an individual director’s.
The film premiered at the Southside Community Center. All participating
community members received a complimentary copy of the tape.
Effectiveness
Unlike most media production courses, this special course was open to
all students. It attracted multicultural, international, and Anglo-American
students. Student involvement was significant: the production was framed
as a high-level professional production responsibly engaged with the community
rather than an isolated student project. Students enrolled in both the
documentary production course and the non-fiction film theory and history
course. The students and the faculty/administrator team addressed the
problems of representation of others by working with the community collaboratively.
The film earned the students, professors, and administrators high international
and national visibility, with a national award in the U.S. and international
screenings, including Southeast Asia.
This project galvanized a larger campus-wide, on-going initiative called
the InVisible Histories Project to document the unknown histories of upstate
New York underrepresented groups. A multidisciplinary team of filmmakers,
historians, anthropologists, theorists, sociologists, and artists across
all ranks and administrative units explore the intersections between local
history, community organization, collaborative documentary, and critical
historiography. The project garnered a substantial grant for another project
on upstate New York Native American communities to support visiting filmmakers
working on first nations issues, a production class entitled Collaborative
Media Practice, and a larger interdisciplinary team.
Resources
For more information visit: www.scribe.org
or www.ithaca.edu/oma
Contact Information
Patricia R. Zimmermann
Coordinator, Culture and Communication Program
Division of Interdisciplinary Studies
Professor, Cinema and Photography
Ithaca College
Ithaca, New York
Phone: 607-274-3431
patty@ithaca.edu
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