Events
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March 2019
Beatles Revolutions: Yellow Submarine
Set in the psychedelic paradise of Pepperland, Yellow Submarine (1968) pits Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band against the Blue Meanies, enemies of fun and music. Director George Dunning and art director Heinz Eidelmann employ a constantly-shifting array of ’60s pop art settings in this revolutionary animated feature, which has inspired directors ranging from Terry Gilliam to John Lasseter. On its 50th anniversary, the film retains its ability to dazzle from its opening scene to the sing-a-long final credits. Artist…
Find out more »Palestine in Black and White: Race, Media, and Transnational Solidarity
In 2014, many in the United States were indulging in viral media campaigns like the Ice Bucket Challenge and the Hands Up, Don’t Shoot movement. Both eventually went global, even reaching the Middle East, and while some Israelis took part in the Ice Bucket Challenge, a number of Palestinians held up signs of solidarity with the Black protesters in Ferguson, Missouri. Both groups were constructing global racial imaginaries, and if the Israelis were making a claim to whiteness, the Palestinians…
Find out more »Floyd Norman: An Animated Life
Invoking the energetic and defiant spirit of its main subject, Floyd Norman: An Animated Life offers a captivating tour of the sixty-year career of its eponymous animator and writer. Dubbed by peers as “animation’s Forrest Gump,” Norman had a remarkable professional journey that included time at Disney (from Sleeping Beauty to Mulan), Hanna-Barbera (The Smurfs), and Pixar (Toy Story 2 and Monsters, Inc.). Floyd Norman will join moderator Vilna Bashi Treitler (Black Studies, UCSB) for a post-screening discussion.
Find out more »April 2019
Shakedown
Leilah Weinraub’s Shakedown (2018) chronicles the “high-femme performances” in the Los Angeles-based underground black-lesbian strip club Shakedown. The New Yorker claims that “Shakedown is neither an experimental art film nor an anthropology of gay, black femme performance in L.A. Rather, Weinraub sought to capture a moment and turn it into cinema.”The film chronicles the explicit performances and personal relationships of the party’s dancers and organizers in the early 2000s, revealing that Shakedown was more than a strip club; as one…
Find out more »Script to Screen: Game of Thrones
Based on George R.R. Martin’s best-selling fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire, HBO’s epic Game of Thrones is notable for its high production values, expansive cast and engaging backstory. The story of a succession war between powerful families is set against a genre-subverting backdrop of gritty realism. Created by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, Game of Thrones has become a widespread cultural phenomenon. In anticipation of the start of the eighth and final season of Game of Thrones (which begins on Sunday, April…
Find out more »Short Films from the Viet Film Fest: Diaspora, Family, Memory
Presented in conjunction with UCSB Reads 2019, this program of six shorts by filmmakers from the Vietnamese diaspora includes documentary, narrative, and experimental films. Like this year’s UCSB Reads text The Best We Could Do, these short films take up questions of Vietnamese heritage, family, and memory. This selection of films was curated in cooperation with the Viet Film Fest. Filmmakers Kady Le, Lan Nguyen, and Quyên Nguyen-Le will join moderator erin Khuê Ninh (Asian American Studies, UCSB) for a…
Find out more »New Waves: Rome, Open City
The production of Roberto Rossellini’s Rome, Open City (Roma città aperta, 1945) began only months after the end of the Nazi occupation of Rome and the arrival of Allied forces during the Italian campaign of World War II. The film triangulates the tension of the German occupation through a rich cast of characters: children, landlords, clergy, military men, unwed mothers, cabaret girls, collaborators, resistance fighters, and subversives of all kinds, and of course the city itself. Filmed with both professional and non-professional…
Find out more »New Waves: Hiroshima Mon Amour
Past and present, trauma and eros, the personal and the collective all intermingle in this groundbreaking film from French New Wave director Alain Resnais and visionary novelist Marguerite Duras. Centering on a short, intense affair between a French actress (Emmanuelle Riva) and a Japanese architect (Eiji Okada), Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959) unfolds in a rebuilt and modernized Hiroshima. As the central couple explore their powerful attraction, their trysts are interrupted by memories of the war and the surrounding traces of atomic mass…
Find out more »Ghana’s Electric Dreams
Ghana’s Electric Dreams presents the planning and wide-ranging impact of the Akosombo Dam, Ghana’s most ambitious development project. The film visits sites affected by the hydroelectric dam and by the broader vision of modernization that it represents. Historical footage and interviews with Ghanaians reveal the complexity and contradictions, unintended consequences, social inequities, rural/urban divides, and gender differences that underlie this confluence of energy, power, and creativity in the West African country. Rudo Sanyanga (International Rivers Network, Africa Program Director), R. Lane Clark (director/producer),…
Find out more »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,…
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