Events
Events for Tuesday, May 7, 2019 - Wednesday, October 16, 2019 › Screenings
May 2019
Gulabi Gang
Gulabi Gang (2012) is set in the badlands of Bundelkhand in central India, a place of dust, oppression, and resistance. This film follows the Gulabi Gang, an unusual group of rural women led by the energetic and charismatic Sampat Pal. They travel long distances to fight for the rights of women and Dalits. Often they encounter apathy, corruption, and even ridicule. Sometimes whole villages connive against them to protect the perpetrators of violence. While we see Gulabi Gang members struggling against gender violence and state corruption,…
Find out more »New Waves: Red Sorghum
Directed by celebrated Chinese auteur Zhang Yimou (Raise the Red Lantern, Hero) and based on Nobel Prize-winning author Mo Yan’s novel, Red Sorghum is a landmark in contemporary Chinese cinema and culture. The film blends the stories of three generations of a family with their region’s journey through feudalism, war, and revolution. After several years as a cinematographer, Zhang Yimou chose Mo Yan’s novel for his directorial debut. In the film, he crafts an evocative rural landscape, and lead actors…
Find out more »New Waves: Memories of Underdevelopment
Based on Edmundo Desnoes’ novel and presented here in a new 4k restoration, Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’s Memories of Underdevelopment (1968) is a fictional meditation on disillusionment in post-revolutionary Cuba. Left behind by his wife and family, the protagonist Sergio elects to remain in Havana following the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, an historical moment that the film chooses to reflect on through Sergio’s unmoored, flâneur-like lifestyle and anomie. The Cuban capital engulfs Sergio and simmers beneath the social and political…
Find out more »New Waves: This is Not a Film
In 2010, after Jafar Panahi was arrested and charged with making propaganda against the Iranian government, he was banned from making films or operating a camera for twenty years. In 2011 he made This is Not a Film, which was shot entirely in Panahi’s home, using the help of his friends, a camcorder, an iPhone, and the legal loopholes in his ban. The film debuted at Cannes after being smuggled there in a cake. With a playful charm, This is…
Find out more »Reel Loud Film and Art Festival
The Reel Loud Film and Arts Festival is an annual student-organized event at UC Santa Barbara that celebrates student films, art, music, dance, performance, and more. The festival is incredibly unique due to its focus on student-made, silent films with a twist - each film premieres with a band playing musical accompaniment live on stage. In addition to films, Reel Loud hosts a pre-show courtyard reception that features original student art, live performances from local bands and DJs, custom photo…
Find out more »August 2019
Blue Horizons 2019 Film Premiere
Join us for the premiere of several engaging and topical short films produced by students in the Blue Horizons Summer Program for Environmental Media. During this nine-week summer program, students learn elements that are essential to producing documentary films – from developing a film’s core idea and story, to thinking about its impact on its audiences, to the nuts-and-bolts of video production. After examining the critical issues of our region’s oceans and seashores, students develop their own stories and produce…
Find out more »October 2019
Special Effects: Mad Max: Fury Road
With Kristen Whissel (Film and Media, UC Berkeley) The Carsey-Wolf Center is delighted to kick off its Special Effects series with George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road (2015). Winner of major awards for art direction, visual effects, costumes, stunts, and makeup, Fury Road pulses with stunning design elements and unforgettable action set pieces. Set in a post-apocalyptic desert wasteland where fuel and water are scarce commodities, the film follows Max Rockatansky (Tom Hardy), who is captured and enslaved by the tyrannical Immortan Joe…
Find out more »Special Effects: The Wizard of Oz
With Jocelyn Szczepaniak-Gillece (English and Film Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee) When a tornado rips through Kansas, Dorothy (Judy Garland), her house, and her dog Toto are whisked to the magical land of Oz. At the advice of a chorus of locals, they follow the Yellow Brick Road toward the Emerald City in search of the infamous Wizard. En route they are joined by a Scarecrow (Ray Bolger) that needs a brain, a Tin Man (Jack Haley) missing a heart, and…
Find out more »New Waves: This is Not a Film
In 2010, after Jafar Panahi was arrested and charged with producing propaganda against the Iranian government, he was banned from making films or operating a camera for twenty years. In 2011 he made This is Not a Film, which was shot entirely in Panahi’s home, using the help of his friends, a camcorder, an iPhone, and the legal loopholes in his ban. The film debuted at Cannes after being smuggled into the festival inside a cake. With a playful charm,…
Find out more »Mouth Harp in Minor Keys – Hamid Naficy
Professor Hamid Naficy will present Mouth Harp in Minor Key with an extended discussion to follow: In this film, Iranian filmmaker Maryam Sepehry follows the eminent film scholar Hamid Naficy in the United States and his family in Iran. It is a documentary portrait that elucidates the complexities of personal identity in a globalized world, where individual, national, and transnational forces interact. A timely documentary film about exiles in America and the families they left behind, MOUTH HARP IN MINOR…
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