Hello Sourcers!

Let’s polar plunge right into things this week, shall we?

🎞️ Film Fests!

🎶 Philharmonics!

🍻 Beers!

👩‍🎨 Art Installations!

First off, tonight and tomorrow night, Ithaca is host to the Ithaca Underground Music Video Festival at Cinemapolis. For two nights, they’re showing a whole slate of locally produced (dare we say “sourced”) music videos, including one by Locally Sourced’s own Mike Micha. This event launched last year, and this year has over two dozen filmmakers. WSKG is proud to be the media sponsor for this event. Tickets went fast on this last year, so grab ‘em while you can.

Elmira is set to launch its own film festival next weekend, put together by Community Arts of Elmira and the Park Church (which also hosts a regular Meaningful Movies series). They’re showing a collection of documentaries, including the world premiere of The Grand Incredible Story, a profile of Elmira hiphop pioneer Brandon Briggs. These screenings are free and open to the public.

If you like your films shorter and with less clothing, local filmmaker Austin Bunn (and WSKG Community Advisory Board member) is debuting his film, Getting Almost Naked, at Liquid State Brewing in Ithaca on Thursday at 7:30pm. This short documentary on the Bees Knee’s Burlesque Academy of Cortland will be accompanied by a performance from some of the film’s stars.

Finally, the Binghamton Philharmonic opens its 2026 season on Saturday at 3:30pm with Classic Style, a program that spans three centuries and features violin virtuoso Hina Khuong-Huu performing Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 3. The show will be preceded by a talk from Philharmonic’s Director of Education and Community Engagement Dr. Julia Grella O’Connell. WSKG’s Bill Snyder chatted with Binghamton Philharmonic’s Music Director Daniel Hege about the program, and you can read more here.

It strikes me just how remarkable it is to even have a philharmonic orchestra in your area. When I was a kid, there were ads on television where Frank Zappa told us about the value of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra (we also had Vincent Price extolling the virtues of the Albright Knox Art Gallery; it was a strange time), and it really stuck with me, the importance of that kind of cultural resource right in your backyard.

So tell me, Sourcers: what other cultural wonders does our region lay claim to? Is there a theater you treasure, or a gallery space you’ll go out of your way to visit? Events are nice, but I want to hear about flat out cultural institutions!

Hope your January wraps up on a high note.

See you soon, Sourcers.

Yours,

Bob Proehl

Locally Sourced editor

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There’s a new kind of creative hum coming from 415 N. Tioga Street. MACRE, short for Media Arts Collective + Research Exchange, is still young, but it’s quickly carving out space in downtown Ithaca as a hub for media-making, play, and community skill-building. Opened in June 2025, MACRE’s mission is rooted in expanding access to media tools and creative resources, especially for marginalized and underfunded communities. It also serves as a rentable studio space for a diverse range of paying members. MACRE is essentially a shared “third place” for sustained creative work, collaboration, and experimentation.



On Friday, February 6, from 5-8 PM, MACRE will host a gallery night that looks and feels very different from the typical wine-and-cheese art opening. The evening centers on work by artist and experimental theatre pioneer Leeny Sack, who will present “(my)BODY POLITIC: WA(L)KING in BED,” her first public exhibition in over five years.

Sack has been a significant voice in performance art for decades, and this exhibition carries that lineage forward while also tracing the more recent contours of her lived experience, particularly chronic illness, limited mobility, and the creative life that continues from bed. Sack has been largely house-bound in recent years, and rather than treating that reality as an absence, she treats it as material. The result is an installation that blends activism, prayer, protest, mysticism, and personal narrative.



Visitors can expect a mixed-media environment spanning multiple rooms. In the main gallery, three clotheslines stretch across the space, hung with standard white pillowcases printed, painted, and hand-drawn with poems, slogans, quotes, homages, images, and prayers. Sack likens these to a hybrid of prayer flags, protest posters, disability signage, and fortune-cookie slips; intimate messages elevated into banners. The gallery will also feature recorded personal, political, and spiritual texts playing in a loop, creating shifting, chance-based layers of sound and meaning as visitors move through the exhibition.

An adjoining long, narrow room becomes a somatic space for slow pacing and breath. Sack guides visitors through a gentle walking meditation via audio, inspired in part by the ongoing Peace Walk led by Buddhist monks. The effect is ambient and reflective, an invitation to notice the relationship between personal body and public procession, between bed and street, between inner trauma and collective hope.

Unlike many gallery nights, this one is intentionally quiet and contemplative. Guests are encouraged to linger, return, and experience repeated audio segments as they fall into new dialogues with the visual works. Sack notes that the imagery and sound are meant to “evoke and provoke associations and connections between past and present trauma in our psyches, our homes, communities, cities, states, in our wounded nation,” while also offering “peaceful, artful, soulful content.” It’s less social hour, more ritual; less spectacle, more felt-sense.

Because of health limitations, Sack will not be physically present. Instead, a monitor will provide a live Zoom connection to her bed-studio, where visitors can say hello or ask questions throughout the evening.

The event is free and open to all. For those curious about MACRE, or interested in performance art as activism, or simply craving a quiet space for reflection, “(my)BODY POLITIC: WA(L)KING in BED” offers a rare opportunity to engage art that is both deeply personal and insistently communal. 

And as always, let me know about art events happening in our community by emailing me at amicha@wskg.org.

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Light Years Fermentation is one of the newest breweries in Broome County, open since October of 2024. This was my second visit to Light Years; the first was when they had only been open for a month. I can see a lot of effort and love put into the space and their offerings. Currently sitting at seven beers on tap—two of which are poured on nitro—and three ciders, they have expanded to offer a wide range of styles so everyone can find something they enjoy, which was perfect for Jocelyn and I to try before we made it over to the Binghamton Black Bears game.

I ordered a Magee, Dry Irish Stout that was poured on nitro. True to the style, it is light in body and alcohol coming in at 4.5% ABV. The malt behind this beer gives a great coffee/chocolate flavor behind the creaminess of the nitro pour. Faint whispers of brown shine around the edges of the glass; it’s not as dark as my next pour, After Midnight.

After Midnight pours pitch black, with a thicker body and mouth feel that’s more coating, alongside its ABV of 6.5%, the highest of the Light Years beers. It brings huge flavor to any glass! This one was on normal CO2 while I visited but I got the inside info that this one too is going to switch over to Nitro, and I think it’s going to just get better with that!

While Jocelyn and I didn’t have time to try the food at Light Years, seeing the items coming from their kitchen, and hearing the feedback from people in the tap room while we were there, we may need to take another trip just to get some dinner. Everything looked amazing and some were making the quite bold statement that it’s the best pizza in the area!

Jocelyn started with Pompeii Pilsner, an Italian Inspired Pilsner (5.2% ABV) that most obviously takes inspiration from Peroni, a beer close to my heart and one that instantly brought me back to our honeymoon in Rome. This beer is crisp and clean, no haze to this one. It’s perfect for walking around some old Roman ruins on a 100 degree day, or sitting at the bar in single digits cold. (It was 5 degrees outside as I wrote this).



Jocelyn switched over to Cider for her other taste. Light Years makes their own, using fresh cider from the hometown favorite Cider Mill. Using only champagne yeast and juice as the base, the Holiday version adds cinnamon and seasonal fruit to bring a tart and dry clarity of flavors, nothing overpowered another. This one is great for a warm and cozy night in, get a bottle and call some friends.

Have some thoughts, comments or questions? What's your favorite brewery that I should try? Email me at pzayac@wskg.org with your feedback.