Cassilhaus Travel Fellowship Presentation

The inaugural Cassilhaus Travel Fellowship Presentation features the work-in-progress of 2016 Cassilhaus Travel Fellow Alina Taalman. The work, a 16mm digital video entitled "Kolmas Punkt (The Third Point)," "...traces past explorations and family lines across Estonian land and water, reflecting on former ways of seeing to interpret a strangely familiar landscape," Taalman says.

The Cassilhaus Travel Fellowship, made possible through a partnership between Cassilhaus, the Master of Fine Arts in Experimental and Documentary Arts (MFA|EDA), and the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University (CDS), was created with the idea that travel can be transformative in the life of an emerging artist. The biennial $10,000 fellowship, funded by Ellen Cassilly and Frank Konhaus of Cassilhaus, supports Duke University MFA|EDA graduates for an eighteen-month period in their artistic research and practice beyond the traditional educational environment. "We believe extended travel has a unique power to educate, enrich, and transform people and take them places far beyond the point they initially disembarked," Cassilly and Konhaus said. "We feel fortunate to have the MFA|EDA and the Center for Documentary Studies as partners in this adventure."

The recipient of the inaugural Cassilhaus Travel Fellowship, Taalman (MFA|EDA Class of 2015), traveled to Estonia to "make a film that explores my Estonian family history, which has always been broken into fleeting narratives," she writes.