[Frameworks] Patricia R. Zimmermann

[Scott MacDonald]

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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