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.
UC Davis faculty members Glenda Drew, professor of design,
and Jesse Drew, professor of cinema and digital
media, in collaboration with Melissa Chandon, continuing
lecturer in design, and the International Class Conscious
Photographers Collective, created “WE ARE
ESSENTIAL,” a site-specific media arts installation
specially crafted for the “Salute to Labor Awards Gala.”
Lynn Hershman Leeson will be honored at the 2023 Mill Valley Film
Festival as a recipient of the
Mind the Gap Award for her visionary contributions to the
arts and lifetime achievements on October 8.
Recent alumna Sarah Sy (B.A., design and cinema and digital
media, ‘23) has received a scholarship through The Gotham EDU Film and Media Career
Development Program. The six-week summer program covers
development, pitching, marketing, distribution, and more.
In conjunction with the ten year anniversary of Verge’s
groundbreaking at 625 S Street in Sacramento, the Verge will
present “The
First 10yrs,” an inaugural biennial exhibition of works
produced during the first ten years of Verge’s Resident
Artist Studio Program (RASP).
Assistant Professor of Cinema and Digital Media Lishan Az has been named an
Emerging Artist at The Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD)
in San Francisco for the 2023–24 season. Lishan’s work is
titled Eugene’s Cove, and will be on view December 13,
2023, until March 3, 2024.
Associate Professor Julie Wyman has recently received a number of
honors over the summer. She is among the recipients of the 2022
American Stories Documentary Fellowships presented
by CNN Films and Points North Institute for her
Untitled Dwarfism Project. The fellows each receive
a grant to support production or post-production costs.
Artnet’s Tim Schneider has
named professor emerita Lynn Hershman Leeson’s “Twisted Gravity”
one of the most boundary-pushing works at this year’s Art Basel.
Professors Glenda Drew, design, and Jesse Drew, cinema and
digital media, and lecturers Alexa Bonomo and William Mead,
design, have created work that is featured in the installation
“memory.unshift( )” at the Axis Gallery in Sacramento.
Filmmaker Joseph Patel (B.A., economics, ‘94) won both an
Oscar and a Grammy this spring for the
documentary Summer of Soul. The UC Davis alumnus
credits his success to campus radio station KDVS.
In a recent San Francisco Chronicle Dateline feature, Tony Bravo
highlights the numerous contributions San Francisco artist and
professor emerita Lynn Hershman Leeson has made to the
contemporary art scene.
The
McEvoy Foundation for the Arts will hold a discussion on
technology and the female body on Saturday, March 5 at 3 pm with
professor emerita Lynn Hershman Leeson.
Emile Rappaport (B.A., theatre and dance, ‘19) currently
works in video production for Zach King Team which
specializes in making short, high concept videos that are shared
onto Tik Tok, Instagram, and YouTube. The team is currently
seeking Los Angeles based crew for a variety of positions.
Professor Margaret Laurena Kemp appears in the new
film Ten-Cent Daisy which has its world
premiere at this year’s Urbanworld Film Festival’s silver
jubilee in New York. The film will be shown Oct. 2 at 12:45
p.m.
The Cruess Hall renovation has been completed and includes new
labs and facilities for students in the Department of Cinema and
Digital Media. Scheduled to open in fall 2021, the new spaces are
the Media Lab, Alt-Ctrl Lab and two screening rooms.
Due to technical difficulties, the May 20 Film Fest @ UC Davis
program has been rescheduled for May 27 at 7 p.m. PDT, with a
Q&A and awards presentation to follow.
The festival features short films of eight minutes or less in
length, submitted by UC Davis students and recent graduates.
Submissions include a variety of genres, from animation to live
action to documentary to experimental. This year the
selection committee has also accepted submissions of original
screenplays of eight pages or less.
