The Flaherty Talent Award is added to the awards of the Nara International Film Festival from this year.
Having partnered with the Flaherty Film Seminar (http://flahertyseminar.org/), NIFF starts to present a new award, the Flaherty Talent Award, from this year.
The award winner is to be announced together with other winners at the closing ceremony on Sept. 22.

The Flaherty Talent Award
The winner is entitled to participate in the Flaherty Film Seminar of 2017 as the NIFF Fellow.
(NIFF covers the participation fee, travel cost and other necessary expenses.)

Candidates
- New talented Japanese filmmaker who participates in NIFF
- Emerging talent with creative non-fiction filmmaking and English skills to join the Flaherty Film Seminar.

About the Robert Flaherty Film Seminar
The Robert Flaherty Film Seminar is the longest continuously running film event in North America. Named after Robert Flaherty (Nanook of the North, Man of Aran, Louisiana Story) who is considered by many to be the father of documentary film. The Seminar began in 1955 when Flaherty's widow, Frances, convened a group of filmmakers,

critics, curators, musicians, and other film enthusiasts at the Flaherty farm in Vermont. The films of such directors as Robert Drew, Barbara Kopple, Albert and David Maysles, D.A. Pennebaker, Mira Nair, Satyajit Ray, Agnes Varda, and Frederick Wiseman, were shown at the Seminar before they were known generally in the American film community. New cinematic techniques and approaches first presented and debated at the Seminar have routinely made their way into mainstream American films.

The weeklong Seminar brings together over 170 filmmakers, artists, curators, scholars, students, and film enthusiasts to celebrate the power of the moving image. The Seminar is an intimate and intense experience where the traditional barriers between maker and audience are gradually obliterated. Registration is open to the public and participants gather for a communal living experience that includes meals, social hours, special events,

and at least three screening sessions daily followed by discussion. A different programmer is selected each year to shape the Seminar's theme and objective, which relates to a regional or national cinema, examines a stylistic feature, or responds to current world events.

Work presented at the Seminar is of exceptional artistic quality and includes documentaries, as well as narrative, experimental, installation, and new media works. The program schedule is not revealed beforehand and the audience only learns what will be screened just before the lights go down in the theater, thus enabling everyone to view the work without preconception. The Seminar has evolved over the years to become firmly established as a one-of-a-kind institution in the world of independent media, which provides a forum for the contemplation and discussion of media with the makers present.

Flaherty Seminar Fellows Testimonials
"The Flaherty Film Seminar was one of the most unforgettably exhausting film experiences of my life. I spent seven days of watching, discussing, and thinking about filmmaking from morning to night. I came away from the Seminar with a renewed sense of purpose in thinking about film's relationship with the world, as well as the moral and political implications behind every creative decision".
- KEVIN LEE

"The Flaherty inspired me in a way that I desperately needed at this critical juncture in my career. I'm still considering the macro-Flaherty implications for my work; I'm looking forward to burrowing down into the details".
- BETH BALABAN

"Having left the Seminar, I feel like a different filmmaker. I feel a renewed interest in exploring the boundaries of the medium. I feel empowered to continue making more radical choices, both in form and content".
- MALIA BRUCKER