For more Film and Digital
Media and Arts Division news, visit the latest Arts
Division eNews.
Irene Lusztig and Caetlin
Benson-Allott join Film & Digital Media!
The department is pleased to announce the appointment
of Irene Lusztig and Caetlin Benson-Allott as Assistant
Professors in Film & Digital Media. Welcome!
Irene Lusztig
uses film and video to explore the production of historical
memory, and the intersections and disjunctions among
personal, collective, and national memories. Her work
has won film festival awards and has been screened around
the world, including at the MoMA in New York, at Boston's
Museum of Fine Arts, at IDFA in Amsterdam, and on television
in the US, Europe, and in Taiwan. She has also been
the recipient of grants from the Massachusetts Foundation
for the Humanities, Massachusetts Cultural Council,
LEF Foundation, and the New York State Council for the
Arts. She has worked as a freelance documentary editor
and taught at Harvard, New York Institute of Technology,
SUNY Purchase, and Temple University. She received her
BA in filmmaking and Chinese studies from Harvard and
her MFA in film / video from Bard College.
Teaching -
Fall -Film
20P, Intro to Production Technique
Winter - Film 172, Film and
Video Studio Spring - A new production course exploring
autobiography. Course info TBA
Caetlin Benson-Allott
received her Ph.D. from Cornell in 2008 with doctoral
minors in American; Feminist, Gender, & Sexuality;
and Lesbian, Bisexual, Gay Studies. She has published
articles on Cruel Intentions and the MTV Movie Awards,
Hairspray and camp nostalgia, and the sexual architecture
of the VCR, but she is currently revising pieces on
the queer corporeality of Philip Seymour Hoffman and
home video censorship. She teaches courses on feminist
and queer theory, American film history, cultural studies
of new media, and the horror genre. Her book manuscript
looks at how the home video revolution changed both
the spectator's and the industry's relationship to "film,"
with special attention to the work of George A. Romero,
David Cronenberg, and Alfonso Cuaron. She's currently
watching Terrence Malick's Badlands, Robert Rodriguez's
El Mariachi, and Howard Hawkes' Rio Bravo.
Teaching -
Fall -Film
80S, Special Topics in F&DM: Gender and Technology
Winter - Film 136C, Visual Culture
and Technology: History of New Media; Film 185S Special
Topics in Film and Video: The Technology of Horror
Professor Sharon Daniel
Honored with a 2008 Media Arts Fellowship from the Tribeca
Film Institute Read
the Currents article...
UCSC F&DM Alums' Award-Winning
Films to be Featured at Santa Cruz Film Festival, May
13-15 Read
the Currents article...
2007-08
Deans' and Chancellor's Undergraduate Awards Recipients
for Outstanding Achievement in Film & Digital Media
Congratulations to Film & Digital Media students
Catherine Gutierrez and
Samantha Yu whose creative
and scholarly excellence will be recognized with a 2007-08
Deans' Award. Their projects were among ten others from
the Arts Division that were put forward by their departments
and selected by Acting Dean Margaret Morse. In addition,
Samatha is furthered honored
as a recipient of a Chancellor's
Award. The Chancellor's Award is conferred upon
fifteen of the top candidates receiving a Deans' Award.
Both Catherine and Samantha will receive a cash award
and certificates at the closing ceremonies of
Student Achievement Week on Friday, June 6, 2008.
Samantha Yu (sponsor: Eli
Hollander) for "Dust to Dust" a film about
a boy and his encounter with a collective past that
only exists in pieces and fragments.
Catherine Gutierrez (sponsor:
Christina McPhee) for“Ideological Activism and
Ownership of Space” a research paper that examines
how human interaction with media creates spaces ruled
by a dominant ideology that can be challenged by other
creators of
media.
Professor Amelie Hastie
talks about her book "Cupboards of Curiosity: Women,
Recollection, and Film History" on a website devoted
to ephemera. Read
the interview...
Professor Gustavo Vazquez
premieres Que Viva la Lucha at the Mill Valley
Film Festival. Read
the Currents article...
Professor Shelley Stamp provides expert commentary in
new box set of rare films Read
the Currents article...
