Upcoming Pollock Theater Events | |
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CWC Docs: Antidote
Tuesday, December 2 / 7:00 PM
Antidote (2024) is an immersive and chilling documentary that unfolds like a spy thriller, following three whistleblowers and activists who risk everything to reveal the inner workings of Vladimir Putin’s regime: an anonymous scientist from Russia’s secret poison program who attempts a daring escape; Vladimir Kara-Murza, a prominent political activist who survives two poisonings only to face trial for treason; and Christo Grozev, the investigative journalist whose reporting on state-sponsored assassinations places him in mortal danger and forces him into hiding.
Documentary participant Vladimir Kara-Murza will join moderator Sara Pankenier Weld (German and Slavic Studies, UCSB) for a post-screening discussion of Antidote.
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Connectivity: The Last Picture Shows (preview screening)
Thursday, December 4 / 7:00 PM
Ten states. 10,825 miles. 123 theaters. In his latest feature The Last Picture Shows, filmmaker Rustin Thompson journeys into the American West on a search for traces of what was once a center of small-town life: the movie theater. On the trip, he finds long abandoned and forgotten cinemas; movie houses that have fallen into disrepair; theaters recently closed, theaters struggling to hold on, and theaters that are not only surviving but thriving.
The Carsey-Wolf Center is pleased to present a special preview screening of The Last Picture Shows. Filmmaker Rustin Thompson and documentary participant Ross Melnick (interim director of the Carsey-Wolf Center, UCSB) will join moderator Rich Farrell (Film and Media Studies, UCSB) for a post-screening discussion.
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Connectivity: Familiar Touch
Video now available!
This past October, we welcomed filmmaker Sarah Friedland for a discussion of her latest film, Familiar Touch. She joined moderator Bhaskar Sarkar (Film and Media Studies, UCSB), exploring how her background in critical media studies and dance shaped her filmmaking, her alternative approach to representing memory loss, and the creative experience of making the film with residents of the Villa Gardens retirement community. Watch the full Q&A, now available on our website!
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Media Industries and AI: Emerging Trends and Critical Conversations
Video now available!
The Carsey-Wolf Center has assembled a team of academic researchers for a new initiative on Media Industries and AI led by Professors Jennifer Holt, Ross Melnick, and Lisa Parks. The initiative has funded fourteen groundbreaking projects from twenty-one scholars who represent universities in fifteen countries and three continents. Watch the full video from our panel discussion marking the launch of this multi-year initiative.
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CWC Presents: Connectivity
The Carsey-Wolf Center’s 2025-26 feature series Connectivity examines the evolving meaning of connection in our contemporary moment. While the term "connectivity" often invokes our ever-increasing entanglement with digital infrastructure and social media networks, this series reimagines the term not only as a technical feature of media, but as a humanistic value and a condition of social and public life. This series embraces connectivity as a framework for thinking critically about the ways in which people use media to connect with ideas and with one another, from the shared experience of moviegoing to the collective bonds forged through storytelling and public dialogue.
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Media Fields Special Issue: Media Inside Out
The latest issue of Media Fields is an archive and critical distillation of the work presented at the Media Inside Out conference (April 2024) honoring the distinguished careers of UCSB Film and Media Studies professors emeriti Constance Penley, Janet Walker, and Charles Wolfe. The conference was supported by a Faculty Research Award from the Carsey-Wolf Center.
The Media Fields research collective was formed by Film and Media Studies graduate students at UCSB in 2007 to advance scholarship on the spatial aspects of a range of media forms, including film, television, radio, and digital media.
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