[Frameworks] Patricia R. Zimmermann

[Scott MacDonald]

*Thanks, Steve.*

*It was a blow for me--we'd worked together in various ways for 35+ years.*

*Hope you're well.*

*Scott*

On Sun, Aug 20, 2023 at 4:40 PM Stephen Anker <sanker at calarts.edu> wrote:

> I'm deeply sorry to hear about this, Scott.
> Although I didn't know Patricia myself, her writing informed my own work
> over the years.
> A sad and premature loss.
> My best, Steve
>
> On Sun, Aug 20, 2023 at 5:53 AM Scott MacDonald <smacdona at hamilton.edu>
> wrote:
>
>> Dear FRAMEWORKERS,
>>
>> The unexpected death of Patricia R. Zimmermann on August 17th shocked
>> those of us who were close to her and is a major loss for the world of
>> independent cinema and the field of Cinema and Media Studies. Zimmermann,
>> the Charles A. Dana Professor of Screen Studies, Media Arts, Sciences and
>> Studies at Ithaca College, was a charismatic college professor. a
>> remarkably productive scholar, and for the past 19 years, the director of
>> the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival (FLEFF).
>>
>> Zimmermann’s scholarship was broad ranging. *Her Reel Families: A Social
>> History of Amateur Film* (Indiana, 1995) and the collection, *Mining the
>> Home Movie: Excavations in Histories and Memory* (California, 2008), a
>> collaboration with Karen L. Ishizuka, were breakthroughs in the exploration
>> of vernacular cinemas.
>>
>> A long-time veteran of the Robert Flaherty Film Seminar, Zimmermann
>> collaborated with Erik Barnouw on *The Flaherty: Four Decades in the
>> Cause of Independent Cinema* (1995, a meta-issue of the journal *Wide
>> Angle*, edited by Ruth Bradley); and with me, on *The Flaherty: Decades
>> in the Cause of Independent Cinema* (Indiana, 2017), and *Flash
>> Flaherty: Tales from a Film Seminar* (Indiana, 2021), a collection of
>> 102 stories by Flaherty veterans, spanning the 7 decades of the seminar.
>>
>>             During the 2000s, she explored new media and the continuing
>> struggle of independent filmmakers, especially documentary filmmakers,
>> within an evolving technological world, in *States of Emergency:
>> Documentaries, Wars, Democracies* (2000); *Thinking Through Digital
>> Media: Transnational Environments and Locative Places*, co-edited with
>> Dale Hudson (2015); and *Documentary Across Platforms: Reverse
>> Engineering Media, Place and Politics *(2019).
>>
>> Her essay on William Greaves’ *Ralph Bunche *project was a capstone for *William
>> Greaves: Filmmaking as Mission* (2021, eds., Jacqueline Stewart and
>> MacDonald).
>>
>>             Under Zimmermann’s leadership the Finger Lakes Environmental
>> Film Festival grew from a regional event into a national and international
>> event, expanding beyond film to feature new media, art installations and
>> exhibitions, music, scholars across many disciplines, archives, writers,
>> filmmakers, artists, musicians, activists, policy analysts, and public
>> health professionals.
>>
>>             Up until her death, Zimmermann continued to lecture widely,
>> in North America and Europe. She helped establish and was Editor at Large
>> for the on-line journal *The Edge*, published by the Park Center for
>> Independent Media. She served on the editorial board of *Film Quarterly*,
>> and, during the summer of 2023, was actively involved with independent
>> film/photography exhibitors across central New York State working to build
>> a network of sites where independent image artists could show their work.
>>
>>             Zimmermann’s unabated, forthright energy and her kindness and
>> camaraderie with colleagues across the world made her among the best-known
>> and admired contributors to Cinema and Media Studies and to the expansion
>> of opportunities to see and produce independent media. It is difficult to
>> imagine a world without her.
>>
>>
>> RIP, dear Patty.
>>
>> *Scott MacDonald*
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
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>>
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