[Frameworks] Patricia R. Zimmermann

[Dominic Angerame]

Hi Scott, sorry for your loss I know you two were close and worked together. I met Pam only once when I was being interviewed for a teaching position at Ithaca College in the 80s. She was very supportive of me being a candidate for that position. I remember her kindness to this day. It is a great loss to the filmmaking community.

It saddens me to hear this.

Dominic

> On Aug 20, 2023, at 5:52 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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