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Cinema & Media Studies Professor John Caldwelland Production/Directing Lecturer Rory Kellyaccepted their UCLA Academic Senate Distinguished Teaching Awards for 2010 at the annual Andrea L. Rich A Night To Honor Teaching Awards dinner on Oct. 22.

Introduced in 1961, the Teaching Awards aim, in the words of the official citation, to “increase awareness of UCLA's leadership in teaching and public service by recognizing teachers for their achievements. The award gives UCLA an opportunity to demonstrate to the community, alumni, students, parents, donors and others what makes UCLA a beacon of excellence in higher education.”

Media studies scholar and filmmaker John Caldwell has written and edited several books, including “Production Culture: Industrial Reflexivity and Critical Practice in Film and Television" (Duke Univ. Press, 2008), “Televisuality: Style, Crisis and Authority in American Television” (Rutgers Univ. Press, 1995), “Electronic Media and Technoculture” (edited, Rutgers Univ. Press, 2000), “New Media: Digitextual Theories and Practices” (co-edited with Anna Everett, Routledge, 2003) and the forthcoming "Production Studies: Cultural Studies of Media Industries” (co-edited with Vicki Mayer and Miranda Banks, Routledge, 2009).

Caldwell is the producer/director of the award-winning documentaries “Freak Street to Goa: Immigrants on the Rajpath” (1989), a film about “the migratory pattern of ‘hippies’ in India and Nepal,” and “Rancho California (por favor)” (2002), a troubling look at migrant camps that house indigenous Mixteco workers within the arroyos of Southern California's most affluent suburbs.

For his film and video productions, Caldwell has also received fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts (1979, 1985), Regional Fellowships (AFI/NEA, 1985, 1988) and state arts councils (1984, 1985, 1989). His films have been screened in museums and festivals around the world and have been broadcast on SBS-TV Network/Australia, WTTW-Chicago, WGBH-Boston, WNED-Buffalo and WEIU-TV-Illinois.

Rory Kelly is an independent filmmaker whose first feature, “Sleep With Me” (1994), starring Eric Stoltz, Meg Tilly, Parker Posey and Craig Sheffer (and with a memorable cameo by Quentin Tarantino), had its world premiere as an Official Selection at Cannes and its North American premiere as a Gala Screening at the Toronto International Film Festival. It also screened at the London, Flanders, Seattle and Boston International film festivals and was distributed by United Artists.

Kelly's second feature, “Some Girl” (1998), with stars Juliette Lewis, Giovanni Ribisi, Michael Rapaport and Jeremy Sisto, premiered at the Los Angeles Film Festival, where Kelly won the DGA-sponsored Best Director Award. Millennium Films, a subsidiary of Miramax, distributed.

In addition to teaching at UCLA, Rory Kelly is a tenure-track assistant professor in the Film and Electronic Arts Department at California State University, Long Beach, where he is the producer and co-artistic director of the WideScreen Film Festival. He developed an Artist-in-Residence program for the festival, which he founded in 2002 with Steven Spielberg.

Kelly has co-written and plans to direct a new feature film called "The End of Something" in 2011.

Past TFT award winners include A.P. Gonzalez (2003), Howard Suber (1987) and William Melnitz (1982) among Academic Senate (roster) faculty members. Eric Marin (2007) and Bill McDonald (1997) received awards as non-roster teachers (McDonald became tenured in 1998). As teaching assistants, Ross Melnick (2009), Nina C. Liebtnan (1986) and Marilyn McMahon (1977) have been recognized.