The Division of Arts & Humanities at UC Berkeley is pleased to welcome full professor Nicole Starosielski as of July 1, 2023. Starosielski is a professor in the Department of Film & Media and specializes in the global distribution of digital media.
Starosielski’s research focuses on the relationship between technology, society and aquatic environments, which her book The Undersea Network explores through transoceanic cable systems. Her works on topics such as Guam’s critical role in...
UC Berkeley’s Division of Arts & Humanities is pleased to welcome professor Iggy Cortez as of July 1, 2023. Cortez is an assistant professor in the Department of Film & Media and specializes in world art cinema; digital media ecologies; queer theory; comparative critical race studies; and American independent film.
His research interests include world art cinema, critical race studies, diasporic thought, the visual and sensory culture of digital media and questions of sexuality, cinematic performance and embodiment. Cortez...
You don’t hurriedly approach an Apichatpong Weerasethakul film, or watch one thinking you’ll catch up on text messages and voicemails.
To truly appreciate what’s unfolding, you need to slow down and surrender to the sensory, dream-like experience that the unique, award-winning filmmaker forms with such care. Tune out the mad dash of everydayness and commit yourself to Weerasethakul’s static scenes and long, telling takes in which the sights and sounds of nature and even city life sometimes provide more context than the dialogue.
So what a treat it is for Bay Area movie lovers...
How do border policies and technologies reanimate histories of racialized and imperial violence? How are climate and environmental changes affecting borders and their crossing? What are the possibilities and limits of humanitarian and human rights discourses on migration and refugees?
These are only a few of the complex questions posed and discussed at the inaugural two-day conference titled Borders and Crossings: Contemporary Arts and Techniques of Migration, hosted by the Center for Interdisciplinary Critical Inquiry (CICI) this March. Co-...
LS25 is a Big Ideas lecture course that is also open to the public. All lectures are located at BAMPFA in the Osher theater.
How have artists made use of the screen? What are the opportunities and hazards of using the screen as a vehicle for connection? A stunning roster of artists, curators, designers, and critics explore these questions and more as we explore the politics and aesthetics of video art. Developed from mixed media experiments of the 1960s through to new digital and virtual aesthetics of our current moment, video and media art offer...
“Isn’t it so fascinating that the simple act of drawing a line on a map can transform the way we see and experience the world?” Ronald Rael observes in the opening of the documentary film “Borderlands,” which looks at communities in San Diego and Tijuana, Brownsville and Matamoros, and El Paso and Juárez. Rael, an architect, explores the area near the border fence outside El Paso with an eye tuned to reimagining the space around him and plotting ways to transgress it. He is accompanied by his nine-year-old son, Mattias, and he teaches the boy how to interpret a wall that has come to...
The Outward Localities Collective aims to pay homage to the young soldiers who perished in a distanced war in the South Caucasus region. The brutalities of this uneven war were mostly unseen due to the insufficiency of media response. The fighting erupted on September 27, 2020, and lasted 44 days. It took the lives of many young soldiers, mainly born between 2000 and 2002. Those were people who had dreams, yet their struggle was unseen, their life was neglected, and they perished...
Working with three Bay Area writers, the Theater Department produced Curly Fries as an episodic web series to reflect student lives during the pandemic. Each writer tailored scripts to reflect the student performer’s actual experiences while sheltering in place. I played the character, Steven, in the first and final episodes of the web series. Acting with this creative team was one of the most rewarding performance experiences I have had at Cal.
Mikee Loria B.A. Theater and Performance Studies, Film and Media, 2021 | UC Berkeley Film Media | The TDPS...
As a queer child, my adolescence and authenticity were reared in suppression, guilt, and heartache. As one of many attempts to reconcile this time of my life as an adult, creative projects such as The Cinderella Cake (2021) have emerged. In a kaleidoscope of technicolor, innocence, sexuality, desire, voyeurism, and black and white, the film presents an autobiographical view of childhood memories. The diva is represented with the often-overlooked Betty Hutton, a performer whose exuberance and energy stand up to the modern music videos of today, and flawlessly...
