The Finger Mullet Film Festival (FMFF), which was first held in 2022, is the passion project of three integral Flagler College community members: Director of CEAM Julie Dickover, Art and Design Adjunct Professor Kevin Mahoney, and Kenan Distinguished Professor of Art Patrick Moser.
One of the courses Moser instructs is Video Art, and through “conversations with students and colleagues in the art department,” the need for a general screening or video art show became apparent.
“It wasn’t until 2019 when we decided to stake the claim as a festival and describe it in the manner that we do,” Moser said. “Which is a way of bringing interesting time-based artists and storytellers together from all over the world, but simultaneously cultivating student art and reaching out into the community.”
Some of the most well-known film festivals stake a name in their location, like the esteemed Cannes Film Festival in France or the Toronto International Film Festival in Canada. Moser said “Finger Mullet” localizes the festival in a slightly different way.
Each year, massive schools of young mullet fish migrate south, filling the inlets and coastal regions of Northeast Florida. They’re nicknamed “finger” mullet for their shortness in length, a characteristic that nods to the length of the films included in the festival.
In following with this quirky brand, Russell Maycumber, a Flagler adjunct professor of sculpture and manager of the woodshop made “golden mullets” to be given as awards.
You can catch a glimpse of a “golden mullet” in this year’s promotional trailer and submission call video that Moser and Mahoney collaborated to produce ahead of the festival.
The trailer also features students who Moser works with from the Boys & Girls Club of Northeast Florida through after art programming. Their artwork from working with Moser was displayed during the opening of the festival, and as a part of the student screening block, Moser included a video he collaborated with these students on creating.
Moser filmed and edited the promotional trailer which features footage from the 2022 FMFF. And the music beats that you hear were produced by Mahoney, who is a musician as well as artist.
Mahoney, as well as Maycumber, is an alum of the College’s Bachelor of Fine Arts program, which features Moser’s Video Art class in its curriculum. It’s a program dedicated to helping students develop their art practice and become artists.
“When it comes to the festival, Kevin is a crucial part,” Moser said. “He’s absolutely necessary for the interactive music and video parts because he’s a musician.”
When it came to submissions for the festival- Moser, Dickover, and Mahoney use “time-based art” as a focal descriptor of the type of videos they seek. The phrase refers to auditory or visual art with a specific duration or that one experiences in a defined amount of time.
They believe this way of describing video works “gives them freedom from normal, entertainment, or narrative-based" expectations typically associated with “films” in festivals.
“We’re not like other film festivals is that sense,” Moser said. “We try our best to carve out a space that is free from the burdens of normal storytelling.”
The 2023 FMFF was curated across multiple elements of programming: screened work from an upcoming CEAM artist-in-residence- Ilana Harris-Babou- followed by a discussion panel, a student film screening block, and two main screening blocks dedicated to the chosen theme- “Local Waters.”
For the student film screening block, they put out an open call on Film Freeway for video submissions from creators under 18 years old. The submission was free with a five-minute video length limit. Dickover said they received more than 200 submissions, which she assessed alongside her gallery assistants over the course of a month and a half.
“I think it's very true that you can kind of tell if something's going to be good within the first five seconds,” Dickover said. “It's also true that part of our responsibility is curating people's time and attention”
More broadly than seeking “time-based art,” Dickover said the spirit of the film festival is meant to celebrate experimental art, content that takes risks. She underscored the importance of flexibility in curating programming for the FMFF.
For the two “Local Waters” screening blocks, Dickover, Moser, and Mahoney inquired among their networks among local and professional artists to elicit submissions for the festival.
“This year, we arrived at this idea of ‘local waters’ as a theme, because it avails itself of narratives that local makers would be interested in,” Moser said. “It also has political connotations and meanings, and room for material experimentation.”
The theme “is a conceptual framework for embracing the aesthetics of our landscape as a template for a creative community,” according to its description.
Dickover said it was interesting to see how different artists approached the theme, since it was broad and allowed for great creative liberty. When it came to narrowing the field of works considered for inclusion in the “Local Waters” blocks, she said it was a collaborative decision among the trio.
But Moser said it was the “amazing network of contemporary artists,” which Dickover has cultivated through CEAM, that proved extremely valuable for the festival.
“Nobody really understands how much Julie has transformed this space,” Moser said. “There are artists who participated in our film festival that have already shown at CEAM.”
While CEAM’s network of artists was a great group to gather content from for the festival, Dickover said they were also a part of what inspired the festival to begin with.
“It’s artists who we’ve met and love to work with, who have inspired us to do this sort of thing,” Dickover said. “It's always nice to know that there are so many great creative, artistic people that we can draw on for events like this festival, and who we continue to draw on.”
The 2024 Finger Mullet Film Festival will take place on Nov. 24, 2024, in the Crisp-Ellert Art Museum. For more information, stay tuned to the FMFF website or contact crispellert@flagler.edu.
