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Film by Livia Perez, Film and Digital Media Lecturer, Receives LASA Award of Merit
M is for Mothers, directed by Livia Perez, has received the LASA Award of Merit in Film and will screen at LASA on Sunday, May 25 at 5:10 p.m., followed by a Q&A with the director. This tender and intimate documentary offers a poignant portrait of queer motherhood. Through delicate camerawork, it meditates on pregnancy,…
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Slug 48 Celebrates Its Second Outstanding Year with Film industry Greats Harry Chotiner, Kevin Nolting and Ron Yerxa
Film and Digital Media recently wrapped its second annual Slug 48 48-hour film competition, founded in 2024 by UCSC alumnus and renowned Pixar editor Kevin Nolting. At 5 p.m. on April 25–27, 12 teams of students received a line of a dialogue and a prop that had to appear in their films, and then the clock began ticking.…
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S. Topiary Landberg, Lecturer in Film and Digital Media, Helps Get Landmark Lesbian Documentary Restored
Lecturer S. Topiary Landberg helped to get a landmark lesbian documentary, In the Best Interests of the Children (dirs. Frances Reid, Elizabeth Stevens, Cathy Zheutlin, 1977), restored, through UCLA with the help of National Film Preservation Fund and Women’s Preservation Fund grants. The newly restored film will be presented at the UCLA Film & Television Archive in a free screening…
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Lecturer Livia Perez’s Documentary Being Screened at Ford Foundation Gallery, New York
The documentary Lampião da Esquina, directed by Lecturer Livia Perez, is being screened as part of the Reverberations exhibition through May 3, 2025 at the Ford Foundation Gallery in New York. The film explores the history and impact of Lampião da Esquina, Brazil’s first openly LGBTQ+ newspaper, which challenged the country’s military dictatorship in the late 1970s. Through rare…
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Allen Riley, PhD Candidate in Film and Digital Media, Appointed Spring 2025 Curator at Indexical
Allen Riley is the Spring 2025 curator-in-residence at Indexical, a site for radical and experimental work located in the Tannery Arts Center in Santa Cruz, California. Riley is curating Oddly Satisfying, a series of audiovisual and performance works by artists who work with video as a physical material. The artists in this series incorporate hand-drawn animation,…
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Alumna Yasheng She, Film and Digital Media PhD, Hired as Assistant Professor in Film and Media Studies at North Carolina State University
Dr. Yasheng She (FDM Ph.D. 2024) is a current Postdoctoral Fellow in East Asian Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Idaho and has been hired as an Assistant Professor in Film and Media Studies at North Carolina State University’s Department of English in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences. Dr. She will…
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Allen Riley, PhD Candidate, Presented His Work at the International Conference for Interactive Digital Storytelling
Allen Riley shared new work at the International Conference for Interactive Digital Storytelling in Barranquilla, Colombia, in December 2024. Riley presented Popcorn Movie, an improvisational movie-making party game that relies on a humorous feedback loop between dialogue improvised by players and narrative summaries generated through an unconventional use of artificial intelligence. Riley’s paper on the subject was…
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Associate Professor L.S. Kim’s Book Honored by Association for Asian American Studies (AAAS)
Maid for Television: Race, Class, Gender, and a Representational Economy by Associate Professor, Film and Digital Media, L.S. Kim, has earned an Honorable Mention in Media, Performance, and Visual Studies by the AAAS Book Awards Committee and its panel of jurors.
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Maya Scherr-Wilson, PhD Candidate in Film and Digital Media, in Berlinale Talents
Maya Scherr-Willson, Ph.D. student, Film and Digital Media, recently participated in the Berlinale Talents, the annual summit and networking platform of the Berlin International Film Festival for outstanding creatives from the fields of film and drama series. This year’s theme is Listen Courageously: Cinematic Narratives in Times of Dissonance.
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Inês Pedrosa e Melo and Amy Reid Competing in Grad Slam
Inês Pedrosa e Melo and Amy Reid each won $250 for winning the first round of the UCSC Grad Slam and will be in the final competition at the Kuumbwa Jazz Center in downtown Santa Cruz on March 1. The winner of that contest advances to the UC Office of the President system-wide Grad Slam…
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Danza a la Rebeldía: Student-Created Mural Unveiled at Baskin Visual Arts Center is a Celebration
From the moment Professor John Jota Leaños, Film and Digital Media, began the first day of ART 139: Murals and Movements by offering sage gathered from his garden, it was clear the course would provide a rich, immersive experience. Exploring the history of muralism in the context of social and political art movements across the Americas, students worked…
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Meloddy Gao premieres thesis film at film festivals
SocDoc alumna Meloddy Gao (’24) premiered her MFA thesis film, SWIMMING LESSONS, this fall at the San Diego Asian Film Festival. Gao also screened her film at the Philadelphia Asian American Film Festival. [Taken from paff.org] SWIMMING LESSONS is a personal, reflexive film that follows a daughter of Chinese immigrants who yearns to understand her…