Upcoming Pollock Theater Events | |
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CWC Global: Devastated (Vidhvastha)
Thursday, February 19 / 7:00 PM
In Devastated (2024), a middle-aged policeman in present-day India opens up to his wife and lover about his work as a “sacrificial assistant,” a state-designated agent tasked with extrajudicial killings of Muslim men. Elsewhere in the city, Lord Krishna and the prince Arjuna enact a dialogue from the Bhagavad Gita. Avant-garde filmmaker Ashish Avikunthak uses images of animal sacrifice and ritual self-mortification, repeatedly intercut with the policeman’s defense of his killings, to raise questions about the hierarchy of violence and the nature of divinity.
Director Ashish Avikunthak and cinematographer Rumi (Pratyush Bhattacharyya) will join moderator Vivek Karthikeyan (Art, UCSB) for a post-screening discussion of Devastated.
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CWC Docs: The Memory of Justice
Saturday, February 21 / 2:00 PM
Director Marcel Ophuls’ magisterial documentary The Memory of Justice (1976) posits the Nuremberg Trials as the only consequential reckoning with crimes against humanity. The film asks a question that remains painfully urgent in today’s context of ongoing global conflicts: how do you seek justice after wartime atrocities? Made in the mid-1970s amid the shadows of Algeria and Vietnam, Ophuls’ film confronts this question with his signature candor and moral complexity. The Carsey-Wolf Center is proud to present The Memory of Justice in its full 278-minute running time with a critical and historical introduction by Marcel Ophuls' grandson Andréas-Benjamin Seyfert (Germanic and Slavic Studies, UCSB).
The Memory of Justice was restored by the Academy Film Archive in association with Paramount Pictures and The Film Foundation. Restoration funding provided by The Material World Foundation, Righteous Persons Foundation, and The Film Foundation.
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Connectivity: Chulas Fronteras
Thursday, February 26 / 7:00 PM
The Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Music and Carsey-Wolf Center are pleased to present a special fiftieth anniversary screening of Chulas Fronteras (1976), newly restored in 4K and paired with the 1979 short Del Mero Corazón. Chulas Fronteras celebrates the famed Mexican-American musicians of the borderlands, the migrant farming communities from which they come, the strong family bonds of Tejanos, and the social protest ethos of their music. Del Mero Corazón (Straight from the Heart) is a lyrical journey through the heart of Chicano culture as reflected in the love songs of the conjunto tejano and musica norteña traditions.
A performance by corrido singer-songwriter Gallo Armado (Fernando Ríos) will precede both films. After the screening, filmmaker Maureen Gosling (assistant editor of Chulas Fronteras and director of Del Mero Corazón) and doctoral student Juan Antonio Cuéllar (archivist of Arhoolie Records’ Frontera Collection) will join moderator David Novak (Director of the Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Music, UCSB) for a discussion of the films.
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CWC Global: The Art of the Benshi
Saturday, February 28 / 2:00 PM
This special program offers audiences the opportunity to experience the mesmerizing artistry of Ichiro Kataoka, one of Japan’s most celebrated benshi, or “movie orators.” At the peak of the benshi tradition in the 1910s and 1920s, over 7000 benshi were employed in Japan to introduce silent films and provide narration. Joined by Makia Matsumura on piano, Kataoka will perform a program featuring the legendary avant-garde film A Page of Madness, released a century ago this year, alongside Laurel and Hardy’s Liberty (1929) and the quirky Japanese animated short Half a Snake (1930). Kataoka’s narration will be in Japanese, subtitled in English on screen.
Benshi Ichiro Kataoka will join moderator Naoki Yamamoto (Film and Media Studies, UCSB) for a post-screening discussion.
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Awards Chatter with Scott Feinberg
Tuesday, March 3 / 7:00 PM
The Carsey-Wolf Center is pleased to welcome Scott Feinberg, Executive Editor of Awards for The Hollywood Reporter, for a timely and illuminating public discussion that pulls back the curtain on how Oscar races are really won. Feinberg is the author of the “Feinberg Forecast” column and the creator and host of the Awards Chatter podcast. Feinberg will guide audiences through the current awards season and the leading hopefuls for the upcoming Oscars, breaking down what to expect, the major rivalries, and the potential upsets.
Scott Feinberg (Executive Editor of Awards, The Hollywood Reporter) will join moderator Ross Melnick (Film and Media Studies, UCSB) for a comprehensive discussion of this year’s awards season and the race for the 98th Academy Awards.
| | | | News from the Carsey-Wolf Center | |
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Apply to GreenScreen!
Deadline to apply: Friday, February 13
GreenScreen is UCSB’s flagship environmental media production program where creativity meets advocacy. Students from across the arts, humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences come together to form dynamic production teams that tackle some of the most pressing environmental challenges of our time. From concept to screen, they collaborate with local environmental organizations to craft powerful short films that raise awareness and reimagine how environmental issues are told and understood.
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Apply to Media 4 Nonprofits!
Deadline to apply: Friday, February 13
The Carsey-Wolf Center is pleased to offer a new class for students who would like to develop their media production skills in order to work in an internship with a local nonprofit organization that focuses on social or environmental justice. Led by Professor Laila Shereen Sakr, the Media 4 Nonprofits course will equip students with a mixture of production skills in 3D modeling, data visualization, gaming, mixed realities, and digital video, tailored to create compelling content for local nonprofit organizations.
Students who participate in the course will have the opportunity to apply for scholarship support for their living expenses while they work in unpaid internships in summer or fall, either in the Santa Barbara area or in their local communities. The Carsey-Wolf Center will provide internship placement assistance to students in the program.
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Storytelling for the Screen: HIM
Video now available!
Last quarter, filmmaker and UCSB Film and Media Studies alumnus Justin Tipping joined moderator Ross Melnick (Film and Media Studies, UCSB) for a discussion of Tipping’s latest film HIM, a psychological horror film about a rising football star. Together, they reflected on Tipping’s path from film student to writer-director, especially the influence of film theory classes on his work. They also addressed HIM’s exploration of masculinity, violence, and power, as well as genre-blending as cultural critique.
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Connectivity: The Last Picture Shows (preview screening)
Video now available!
In December, filmmaker Rustin Thompson and film historian Ross Melnick joined moderator Rich Farrell (Film and Media Studies, UCSB) for a discussion of Thompson’s new documentary The Last Picture Shows, a portrait of the decline of small-town movie theaters in the American West. In the Q+A, they explored formative moviegoing memories, the history of film exhibition, lean-team documentary practice, cinema deserts, and the cultural importance of preserving theaters as communal spaces in an era of major industry change.
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