We recently caught up with Assistant Professor Veronica Paredes to talk about the undergraduate, upper-division Digital Media Studies course she taught this past Winter Quarter. Among other things, she says, the class contextualized technologies “not only in media history but in social, political and cultural contexts." There were also some meaningful conversations about The Matrix and Avatar. [Read more]
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ACADEMY AWARDS NOMINATIONS
Alumnus Eric Roth (producer, Mank), Garrett Bradley(director, Time, MFA ’12), Marcela Santibáñez (producer, The Mole Agent, MFA ’14) and Erick Oh (director, Opera, MFA ’10) have been nominated for Academy Awards. The 93rd Oscars, April 25, airs on ABC.
Time
PROMISE RECIPIENTS NAMED
Award-winning producer Stephanie Allain has announced eight students as recipients of the UCLA TFT Promise Social Impact Producing Scholarship, which launched in July 2020 and is aimed at attracting and retaining the most talented students in social impact entertainment producing. [Read more]
Jay Lopez
RIDING FOR THE ART OF IT
REMAP and TFT Professors Fabian Wagmister and Jeff Burke have created Civic Bicycle Commuting (CiBiC), a new project that envisions collaborative bicycle 'flows' that generate real-time digital art exhibitions throughout Los Angeles. [Read more]
Courtesy of Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition
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In Other News
CAS Awards: Oscar-nominated sound mixer William Kaplan (BA ’69) will be honored with the Cinema Audio Society’s highest accolade, the CAS Career Achievement Award.April 17, virtual.
Independent Spirit Awards Nominations: La Leyenda Negra, directed by Patricia Vidal Delgado (MFA ’18) and produced by Alicia Herder (MFA ’18), has been nominated for the John Cassavetes Award. The Mole Agent, produced by Marcela Santibáñez (MFA ’14), and Time, directed and produced by Garrett Bradley (MFA ’12), are Best Documentary nominees. April 22 on IFC and AMC+.
NAACP Image Awards:Gina Prince-Bythewood (BA ’91) received the Outstanding Directing in a Motion Picture award for her work on The Old Guard.
SXSW Film Festival:Aguilas, directed by UCLA TFT Professor Kristy-Guevara Flanagan and UCLA Professor Maite Zubiaurre, has won the Documentary Shorts Jury Award at SXSW. The film lineup at SXSW also included projects from Floyd R. Russ (BA ’06), director of Ayarand Erick Oh (MFA ’10), animator and director of Opera and Namoo. Additionally, Aguilas was named the best mini-doc prize at Montana’s Big Sky Documentary Film Festival.
WGA Awards: Alumnus Alex Gibney won a Writers Guild of America Award in the category of Best Documentary, Current Events for the HBO Documentary Film Agents of Chaos, Part I, an award he shares with Michael J. Palmer.
Professor Lap Chi Chu shares his thoughts in American Theatremagazine's one-year anniversary piece reflecting on the effects of the pandemic on the theater community.
Ross Goldman(BA ’10) will be the sound designer of San Diego Opera’supcoming drive-in production of Barber of Seville. His company, Event Wave Productions, is also providing services for the San Diego Mainly Mozart drive-in series.
Nora Kirkpatrick (BA ’07) is a writer on theforthcoming Amazon series Rodeo Queens, starring Dakota Johnson, and Daisy Jones and the Six, produced by Reese Witherspoon.
Nathaniel Meek (BA ’06) was nominated as Best Actor at the Oregon Short Film Festival for his role in I Knew Him Well, written by Meek and Sean Harrison Jones (BA ’07). The film, which also starred and was directed by Jones, screened at the festival.
Chad, the new TBS series created by and starring alumna Nasim Pedrad, premieres April 6. Pedrad is also the show's writer, executive producer and showrunner.
Writer-producer Davita M. Scarlett (MFA ’13) has inked an overall deal with CBS Studios.
Theater Professor Emerita Carol Fisher’s Sorgenfrei’s latest play, A Wilderness of Monkeys, had its world premiere for six live-streamed performances March 17-21, presented by Ophelia’s Jump Prods. The revenge comedy is a sequel to, and reversal of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice.
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Upcoming Events
Sounds of the Scene
April 7: The Herb Alpert School of Music and UCLA TFT present Sounds of the Scene: Creating Musical Scores for Visual Content, a panel discussion exploring the collaborative process of creating musical composition for visual media. Moderated by Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz's Daniel Seef. [Details]
Sketch to Screen
April 24: Check out the 11th Annual Sketch to Screen Virtual Costume Design Panel & Celebration with the 2021 Oscar nominees for Best Costume Design. Presented by the David C. Copley Center for Costume Design and Swarovski. [Learn more]
Lights, Camera...Register!
Registration is open for the Pre-College and College Virtual Summer Institutes in Acting and Performance, Camera Acting, Musical Theater and Voice-Over. Learn from industry leaders and work together to make artistic magic! [Learn more]
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A Year Like No Other
Courtesy Esther Shubinski
On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic. As the one-year anniversary mark passes, we spotlight Elegy for Those We Lost, created by Esther Shubinki (MFA ’12). The memorial video short honors the memories of 51 individuals whose lives were lost to COVID-19.
