Presented by the Center for Documentary Arts and Research (CDAR) and the American Indian Research Center (AIRC).
Date: Friday, November 14, 2025
Time: 4:00pm
Location: Communications Building, Room 150 (Studio C)
Description: SHIMMERING (Matte Hewitt, 2025, 20 min) is an essay film poetically investigating creation, extraction, and second lives. Guided by the luminous figure of Hummingbird, SHIMMERING moves through place-based ways of knowing, tracing the entanglement between biological studies of hummingbirds and the rise of military drone technology. The film also features storytelling and insights from Mutsun Ohlone and Tribal Chair of Indian Canyon, Kanyon “Coyote Woman” Sayers-Roods. Through interwoven narratives of land, militarization, taxidermy, Native regalia, the filmmaker’s relationship with their trans identity—and with a hummingbird they name Anna–the filmmaker learns about Central California Native Land and culture. Blurring the lines between documentary, personal letter, and ecological study, the film invites viewers to consider new forms of kinship across species, systems, and histories. Gentle yet provocative, SHIMMERING offers a multispecies meditation on knowledge, power, and connection.
The screening is followed by a Q&A with Matte Hewitt (SocDoc ’25), joined by the Assistant Director of the Kenneth S. Norris Center for Natural History, Gizelle Hurtado, Associate Professor of Film & Digital Media, Selmin Kara, and Director of the UCSC American Indian Resource Center, Angel Riotutar.