SocDoc alum (2020) and current PhD student Mahshid Modares's interactive documentary, Sanctions on the Sky, has won three awards so far in 2022: Silver Medal, Anthem Awards, Human and Civil Rights Category; Award of Merit, IndieFEST Film Awards, Contemporary Issues/Awareness Raising (Student) Category; and Award of Recognition, IndieFEST Film Awards, Documentary Short (Student) Category. The film explores U.S. economic sanctions on Iran’s civil aviation industry as a
contributing factor for plane incidents in Iran.
PhD student Lior Shamriz’s essay film, Port Saïd, Santa Cruz, Sarmad Kashani (2022) will receive its world premiere at the Oberhausen Short Film Festival this year.
Current PhD student Darren Wallace was featured in the UC Santa Cruz Arts Division Newsletter for screening his work at the at the Digital Arts and New Media open house. One of those films, Cinema as Ritual is, as he describes, a technoshamanic altar call retelling the social iniquities of life in the U.S. during 2020 (COVID-19, West Coast wildfires, anti-Black state violence). As an education fellow with IAS, Darren led a walkthrough of the Just Futures exhibition in February and March at the Mary Porter Sesnon Art Gallery at UCSC.
SocDoc alum Tad Nakamura was featured in the UC Santa Cruz Arts Division Newsletter in January after being awarded a prestigious Sundance Documentary Fund production grant.
Amy Reid, current PhD student, has been selected as to participate in the 2022 cohort of the CITL Graduate Pedagogy Fellows program.
Current PhD student Lalu Ozban has been accepted to the 2022 UC Santa Cruz SSRC-Dissertation Proposal Development Program. This award includes funding for pre-dissertation research and many workshops.