Cinema and Digital Media combines the study of audio-visual and
digital media, theories about such media, and relevant modes of
artistic practice and production.
Three recent Department of Cinema and Digital Media majors from
the class of 2025 have launched their own videography and
video production company and have hit the ground
running. David Kouyoumdjian, Jihae Dong, and Ziyun
Zhang formed 175
Productions LLC (AKA. 175 Productions) in March 2025 and have
already built up an impressive list of clients.
The West coast premiere of Professor Julie Wyman’s
documentary The Tallest Dwarf will be part of
the San Francisco International Film Festival with
screenings on April 26 and 27.
For any anthropologist, fieldwork represents both a professional
obligation and a rite of passage. For Professor Fiamma
Montezemolo, as for Fred Murdock, the protagonist of
Borges’ El Etnógrafo (1969), this rite of
passage is a break and a crossing: a break from anthropology’s
traditional forms of expression and a crossing into the realm of
visual art.
Filmmakers and professors Glenda
Drew (of Design) and Jesse
Drew (of Cinema and Digital Media) have completed a project
decades in the making — a documentary about the roots of American
Country Music titled Open Country.
Please join us for a community event and celebration of the
Davis Humanities Institute’s (DHI) relaunch after a multiyear
visioning process in the College of Letters and Science at UC
Davis. Professor of Cinema and Digital Media Julie Forrest
Wyman, will present her feature-length documentary “The Tallest
Dwarf,” which charts her quest to find her place within the
little people (LP) community at a moment when dwarf identity is
poised to radically change. This campus premiere of the film
will feature a discussion with the filmmaker and a reception
following.
The Tallest Dwarf premiered at the
South by Southwest Film Festival (SXSW) in 2025, and, beginning
April 6th, will be broadcast nationally and streamed on the PBS
series “Independent Lens.” The film was made possible in part
with funding from campus entities including the Davis Humanities
Institute, the College of Letters and Science, Office of Public
Engagement, and the Academic Senate.
The Davis Humanities Institute is proud to host a screening of
the Tallest Dwarf as the inaugural event of its new
public programming. The event embodies the DHI’s renewed mission:
to support and showcase humanities research and artistic practice
in dialogue across disciplinary boundaries, and in service of
publicly engaged scholarship. Please join us for an evening of
celebration, and to learn what’s next for the DHI!
Schedule
4:00 p.m. – Doors Open
4:30 p.m. – Film (1 hour and 32 minutes) in the Recital Hall
6:00 p.m. (est.) – Q & A following the film with the film’s
director Professor Julie Forrest Wyman joined by Mark Povinelli,
an actor, lead participant in the film and also the former
president of Little People of America,
Moderator Natalia Duong, assistant professor of Asian American
Studies and Science and Technology Studies.
6:20 p.m. (est.) – Reception in the Grace and Grant Noda Lobby
with a live music interlude from the Department of Music.
