Last week, I attended my first Robert Flaherty Film Seminar, after hearing about it via various trusted sources. Hosted by the scenic Colgate University campus in Hamilton, NY, the Seminar is named after the notable American auteur—often called the “father” of documentary filmmaking (1884-1951)—and was founded in 1955 by his widow, Frances Hubbard Flaherty, to share her interest in film’s ability to “transform us in ourselves, to reveal a deeper communion with our own universal being.” The conference is an annual gathering of academics, filmmakers, programmers, and art/film administrators and several of the participants have been attending it for many years.

The Seminar consisted of six days of immersion in documentary film. Curated by Dennis Lim, the theme for this year’s program was “WORK.” According to conference print materials, the Seminar would cover “the ways in which artists depict and explore the daily rituals and larger implications of work as well as the changing nature of work and the workplace.” I was familiar with Lim’s criticism from reading his reviews in the Village Voice and The New York Times, and also knew that he was one of the programmers for The New York Film Festival, so I was eager to experience his selections. I anticipated films outside of the mainstream and especially more daring, experimental forms of documentary.

We were treated to three daily meals at the University’s dining hall, followed by three screenings and post-screening discussions with the filmmakers whose work we’d just watched. In the Flaherty spirit of “no preconception,” we were not informed what we’d be seeing, only the running time of each screening slot. We literally would not find out what we’d be watching until the credits rolled. With my own background as a programmer, I found this development a bit unnerving at first. Surprisingly, however, I quickly gave in to this quirk and even looked forward to it. It also helped that Colgate’s facilities were stellar, with a state-of-the-art film auditorium and computer lab, and surrounded by gorgeous green hills and lawn.

I certainly enjoyed some films more than others. Highlights included the Argentinian Lisandro Alonso (who was also enjoying a mini retrospective at MoMA later in the week), the Peruvian-American Alex Rivera, and the Mexican Pedro Gonzalez-Rubio. I was particularly impressed by Alonso’s languorous camerawork in the documentary La Libertad, which depicts a day in the life of a lone young man doing bush work in the Pampas. His next film, Los Muertos, while a fictional narrative in genre, picks up a few of the techniques and themes of his first piece. Gonzalez-Rubio followed a similar career trajectory with his debut Toro Negro (a documentary co-directed with Carlos Armella) and follow-up, the feature narrative Alamár, winner of this year’s Tiger Award at the Rotterdam Film Festival.

Unfortunately, these two filmmakers were not quite as articulate during the post-screening discussions. Both spoke English, although Alonso seemed to struggle with his responses at times. Perhaps the fissure was caused by the nature of the discussions; unlike at a conventional film festival Q&A, the audience was less interested in what lens was used for a particular shot. Instead, questions reflected the academic circles in which several of the attendees moved in—many were university professors who taught and wrote about film.

A key conflict arose around the third day of the seminar. Many of the films we had seen up until this point had exclusively featured the trope I loosely describe as “shirtless Brown men doing manual, physical labor in the East Asian or Latin American countryside.” Some attendees felt that this definition of “work” was too narrow and repetitive. What about office work, white-collar labor? More urgently, where was women’s work? As a well-known feminist refrain repeats, a woman’s work is never done. But according to this year’s seminar, women’s work was almost non-existent.

When confronted during an informal gathering on campus and asked to offer a statement on his choices, curator Lim countered, “the program is the statement.” He believed that the critique of what was missing was a strategy to avoid talking about what was represented onscreen. He deliberately picked films that were outside of the mainstream media and felt attacked for his intentions.

Two other related concerns arose as well: that of the romantization of blue-collar and low-income workers and of the exotification/objectification of the men of color represented in the films. Gonzalez-Rubio, in particular, was singled out for this practice, which he confirmed by arguing that he thought of his characters as part of his compositions, much like Caravaggio did with his studies of chiaroscuro. To the Mexican director, the caramel-colored flesh of the fisherman lead in Alamár is just another element that complements the film’s sky, sand, and sea.

German filmmaker Michael Glawogger (whose Megacities and Workingman’s Death were also showcased) explained the uneasiness by stating, “Filmmakers speak through their films. An issue is not an issue.”

Similarly, while a few filmmakers (the aforementioned Alonso and Gonzalez-Rubio, for example) stuck to honoring storytelling as a pure endeavor in their practice; others, like Rivera and the Ghanaian-American Akosua Adoma Owusu, preferred to ground their work in historical context and analysis.

That the arguments remained unresolved is somewhat irrelevant. The environment of rigorous inquiry fostered by the Flaherty Seminar was inspiring, and so was the camaraderie of the participants.