Cinema and Digital Media

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.

The four artists/designers’ work exhibits their contemplations, memories, thoughts and meditations on the shifting and tenuous relationship between electronic technology and human consciousness.

Film Fest @ UC Davis was held May 16 and 17 at the Varsity Theatre in Davis with awards presented on the 17 following that evening’s screenings. And the winners were:

Best Editing – Dominic Dal Porto, Perspective

Best Original Soundtrack – Merritt Hill, Made Home

Best Experimental – Jada Simone Hayes, unconditional.

Best Experimental – Haohan Ding, The Red House

Maggie Morgan Award for Design – Tyson Park, Tracks of Life

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. ”Person. Woman. Camera. TV.” will be moderated by curator Corey Keller and include feminist scholar Peggy Phelan in the conversation with Leeson.

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 film is included in the American Black Film Festival which runs Nov. 3-14. The festival is online only with registration here. 

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. 

Senior Maddie Matsumoto won an Honorable Mention in the One Earth Young Filmmakers Contest for her animated, 1.5-minute film, Bee the Solution. Her film will screen online at 6:30 p.m.(CDT) Saturday, April 24, as part of the Earth Day Mini Film Fest, along with 6 other Honorable Mention winners. 

Julie Wyman, associate professor of cinema and digital media, has received grant funding from the IDA Enterprise Documentary Fund for her current work Untitled Dwarfism Project (in development). 

An IDA member, Wyman was recently interviewed by Veronica Monteyro for a profile on the IDA website. 

Margaret Laurena Kemp, associate professor of theatre and dance, and Julie Wyman, associate professor of cinema and digital media, have collaborated on a short experimental film, “She Who Is: The Adrienne Kennedy Fugues,” which is now being presented online by the Woman Made Gallery. 

Bike City Theatre Company continues its online radio play series which features UC Davis students and alumni on air and behind the scenes. The series, Radio Tuesdays, is pre-recorded and the plays are available on Bike City’s website.

Professors Glenda Drew, Department of Design, and Jesse Drew, Department of Cinema and Digital Media, have created new works using innovative technology that are featured in “Memories of a New Future,” an exhibition at the Barn Gallery in Woodland. The installation also includes work by Melissa Chandon, lecturer in Design, and Chris Daubert, MFA Art Studio (2018).

Bike City Theatre Company has been presenting several short radio plays over the summer which have featured the talents of UC Davis students and alumni on air and behind the scenes. The series, Radio Tuesdays, was pre-recorded and the plays are available on Bike City’s website.

CDM Professor Kriss Ravetto-Biagioli is the author of “Digital Uncanny” which has recently been published by Oxford University Press. 

Ravetto-Birgioli’s book examines the relation of surveillance to the uncanny, anonymity, and gesture and facial recognition in interactive media. “Digital Uncanny” crosses disciplines from surveillance studies, media studies, art history, critical theory, science and technology studies.