The Santa Cruz Film Festival takes place on October 3-7 at various locations around downtown Santa Cruz. This year, we have two films that will be screened at the festival that were produced by FDM and SocDoc students:
Social Documentation professor Jennifer Maytorena Taylor has a new documentary available to watch on PBS. Redneck Muslim follows the life and work of Shane Atkinson, the first Muslim chaplain in-training at North Carolina’s biggest trauma center and founder of the "Society of...
Social Documentation Professor and Editor of Film Quarterly, B. Ruby Rich, has been invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). Professor Rich is one of 928 new members (including actors, filmmakers and other members-at-large) that have been invited to...
The annual M.F.A graduate exhibition for the Social Documentation graduation class of 2018 will take place on Wednesday, June 13th at the Del Mar Theater in downtown Santa Cruz. Continuing this long tradition, the SocDoc cohort will premiere their thesis films that are two years in the...
Social Documentation Professor Jennifer Maytorena Taylor has received a fellowship for a summer residency at one of the nation's leading contemporary arts organizations, the MacDowell Colony. Professor Taylor is one of 85 artists that have been awarded the fellowship for 2018. ...
UC Santa Cruz as been ranked by College Factual as one of the best colleges in the nation for Film, Video and Photographic Arts. Coming in at #6, UCSC is ranked with NYU, UCLA and USC, recognizing programs in film studies. In particular, UCSC was noted for our graduate programs in...
The Society for Cinema and Media Studies will be holding their annual conference in Toronto on March 14-18. This year, we will have a strong mix of faculty and graduate students present at the conference. We are proud to have these members of our community represent our department...
Social Documentation Alumni Juan C. Dávila (MA 2013) is currently a correspondent for Democracy Now! and is in Puerto Rico covering the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. Please view the links below for his latest reports.
Social Documentation Professor Jennifer Maytorena Taylor is one of two UCSC Arts factulty and 107 recipients nationwide to receive a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Prof. Taylor has also recieved a grant from production company, Fork Films.
The Social Documentation graduate program is currently featured in the Spring 2017 issue of UC Santa Cruz Magazine. The article commemorates the programs 10th anniversary and its transition from an M.A. program to an M.F.A. program. We are extremely proud of the SocDoc program and...
The Margaret Mead festival in NYC is showing one SocDoc-made documentary and one SocDoc-alum documentary at noon on Saturday, October 15 Congratulate Lucas Bonetti (SocDoc'16) on his acceptance with his thesis documentary, Fishermen Without A Sea, into this extremely...
SocDoc alumni, Michelle Aguilar and Rana Jarbou (just graduated in June, 2015), will be showing their work in a curated "Emerging Visual Anthropologist's Showcase" at the prestigious Margaret Mead Film Festival in NYC, at the Museum of Natural History.
Rian Dundon's (SocDoc '12) new book FAN is now available at http://shop.modesvu.com/product/fan"I made these pictures while employed as an English tutor to one of China’s most celebrated actresses, Fan Bingbing. The job took me all over China, to Macau and Hong Kong...
The Social Documentation program held their annual screning of graduate films on Wednesday, June 10th at the Del Mart Theater in Downtown Santa Cruz. This year, seven student documentary films were presented at sold-out the public event.
Social Documentation student Michelle Aguilar was a receipient of an Alumni Association Award at the 11th Annual Graduate Research Symposium for her film "El Cacao." Congratulations, Michelle!
SocDoc Professor B. Ruby Rich was honored Sunday at the San Francisco Film Society’s fifth annual Essential SF, an event celebrating the Bay Area film community's most vital figures and institutions.
Kimberly Bautista (SocDoc '09), with the Justice for My Sister Collective, has launched their 16 Days of Activism campaign! The campaign began with a live webchat with advocates from 5 countries on November 25. It continues with 16 new short documentaries, to be released each day on the...
On Friday, Nov. 14, the University of Rochester hosted a symposium organized around Fixed, by Regan Brashear (SocDoc '08). Titled “Complicating Normalcy: Disability, Technology, and Society in the Twenty-First Century,” the event featured a screening of her thesis film and keynote from...
Comrade Sunshine and part 1 of the feature documentary Visions of Abolition, by Cameron Granadino (SocDoc '13) screening in New York City on October 1st through New Filmmakers New York.
We're excited to announce the publication of Rian Dundon's (SocDoc '12) new book: Out Here, Vol. 1. This is the first in a series of self published magazine-style photo books about change in California—the second and third installments of which will be out over the next year.
The Ovarian Psycos, by SocDoc Alums Kate Trumbull-LaValle ('11) and Joanna Sokolowski ('12), has received $30,000 in support from Cal Humanities, and additional support from ITVS - Independent Television Services!!!
Comrade Sunshine, by Cameron Granadino (SocDoc '13), was selected to screen and compete at the Independent Mzansi Short Film Festival, IMSFF on June 28th 2014.
In Rian's essay We Out Here, he was asked to "put a face on the displacement that is rolling in San Francisco. The article can be found through the first link listed below. Boom is a quarterly out of UCLA and UC Press. The new issue is dedicated to San Francisco.
Our Right to Sing, by Carolina Fuentes (SocDoc 10') screened in solidarity with Enriching Lives through Music. All funds went to benefit this great music program that encourages children to play instruments and appreciate art. The program serves the children in the canal area of San Rafael....
Lena Jackson (Soc Doc '14) won the Art Division Dean's Award at the 2014 UCSC Graduate Research Symposium on May 9th for her SocDoc thesis documentary - Crenshaw.
Social Documentation Professor, John Jota Leaños, is among six artists who will have their art displayed on Metro Buses in Los Angeles. This is part of FREEWAVES "OUT THE WINDOW" project.
Justice for My Sister, by Kimberly Bautista (SocDoc '09) won its fourth jury prize on Thursday, November 21 by the jury at the prestigious 16th Icaro Film Festival in Guatemala. Director/producer Kimberly Bautista and the film's protagonist Rebeca Eunice Perez accepted the prize. Rebeca...
The East Bay Premiere of Fixed: The Science/Fiction of Human Enhancement by Regan Brashear (SocDoc '08) will be held on Thursday Dec. 5th at 7pm at the Ed Roberts Campus in Berkeley. The evening begins with a live performance by the AXIS Dance Company. After the screening, there will be...
Meredith Heil (SocDoc '11) has taken a new position with WNET/THIRTEEN, the NYC PBS affiliate, as a Multimedia Producer. THIRTEEN is one of America’s most respected and innovative public media providers. A member of the WNET family of companies, THIRTEEN is a unique...
Growing People, by Dana Forsberg (SocDoc '13), and Vida Diferida, by Brenda Avila-Hanna (SocDoc '13), will screen at the Santa Cruz Film Festival on Saturday November 9th at 2:30pm at the Pacific Arts Complex at 1122 Soquel Ave. Santa Cruz CA.
Growing People, by Dana Forsberg (SocDoc '13), will be screened at the Hawaii International Film Festival on Thursday, October 17th at 5:45pm and Saturday, October 19th at 7:15pm.
Kimberly Bautista (SocDoc '09) was interviewed on CNN Latino's "Sin Limites con Elizabeth Espinosa." Kimberley spoke about the violence prevention campaign in Guatemala and Los Angeles, the recent win for Best Documentary at the LA Latino Int'l Film Fest, challenges during production, and...
The Infamous T, by Melissa Koch (SocDoc '12), will screen at the Margaret Mead Film Festival on October 19th, 2013 and will be co-presented by the Co-presented by NewFest and The Trevor Project.
Fixed: The Science/Fiction of Human Enhancement, by Regan Brashear (SocDoc '08), and Laal Pari: Not a Fairytale, by Sadia Halima (SocDoc '13) will screen at the United Nations Association Film Festival.
Justice for My Sister, by Kimberly Bautista (SocDoc '09) wins Best Documentary at the Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival. The jury unanimously voted for Justice for my Sister for best documentary.
Comrade Sunshine by Cameron Granadino (SocDoc '13) Wins Best Documentary at the 8th Annual Independent Television and Film Festival. The ITV Festival recognizes film, television, and new media professionals who demonstrate exceptional achievement in craft and creativity, and those who produce...
We are happy to announce that Social Documentation student Lena Jackson and Film & Digital Media senior Claire Miyamoto have each been awarded a 2013 Princess Grace Foundation Honorarium in support of their documentary film. Congratulations Lena and Claire!!!
Sistagraphy founded by Shelia Turner (SocDoc '08) celebrates 20 years of photography. The Sistagraphy Archives is the longest standing collective of African American women photographers who have exhibited yearly (57 exhibits total) over the past 20 years.
Comrade Sunshine by Cameron Granadino (SocDoc '13) recently received received an award of merit from the Accolade Competition and was selected for the Independent Television and Film Festival.
Lena Jackson (SocDoc '14) received on of the 2013 Princess Grace Awards. She joins 23 other awardees from the disciplines of theater, dance performance, choreography, and film who together received a total of over $1 million in awards.
Four Thesis Documentaries by recent SocDoc 2013 Graduates Brenda Avila-Hanna, Dana Forsberg, Kati Greaney, and Claire Weissbluth were shown at the Springfield Grange in part with teh Watsonville Film Festival on Friday July 26th 2013.
Bridgette Auger's (SocDoc '11) ongoing work with Syrian refugees is featured as "The Toll of Syria's War" on the CBS News website, from her current NYC exhibition of the work.
On Tuesday June 4th 2013 Kimberly Bautista (SocDoc '09) participated on a United Nations Panel about Violence Against Women and Girls in Latin America and the Caribbean. Please see the attached document for more information about the panel. The panel discussed studies of the region,...
Ricardo Velasco Trujillo (SocDoc '14) was selected as a University of California Human Rights Fellow for 2013. Through this fellowship he will receive funds to help support his SocDoc final project: After the Crossfire: Memories of Violence and Displacement in Colombia’s Northern...
Meredith Heil (SocDoc '11) was recently hired as the Marketing Coordinator for Women Make Movies. Women Make Movies was established in 1972 to address the under representation and misrepresentation of women in the media industry, Women Make Movies is a multicultural, multiracial, non-profit...
Lena Jackson (SocDoc '14) and Alex Melhuish (SocDoc '14) both received 2013-14 research grants from the University of California Center for New Racial Studies for their documentary projects.
Jake Shimabukuro: Life on Four Strings by Tad Nakamura (SocDoc '08) will have it's broadcast premiere on PBS this Friday, May 10th at 9p in most cities (some cities will broadcast it at different times -please check local stations listings). It has been 15 years since PBS (not...
Justice for My Sister, by Kimberly Bautista (SocDoc '09), won the jury competition for the Camera Justitia Award at the Movies that Matter Film Festival (in the Hague, the Netherlands) founded by Amnesty International.
Justice for My Sister also screened at the Minneapolis St. Paul...
Zac Buck (SocDoc '12) & Melinda James (SocDoc '12) will both have films featured at the First Food & Farm Film Fest in San Francisco at the Roxie Theater March 29-31, 2013.
Justice forMy Sister, Kimberly Bautista's (SocDoc '09) Thesis Project, wil be at Movies that Matter Film Festival in the Hague, founded by Amnesty International.
Kimberly will also be participating in post-screening discussions moderated by Marlies Stappers from Impunity Watch...
Regan Brashear (SocDoc '08) has been invited to be a visiting artist for two months at the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes at Arizona State University.
Also, Regan was invited to hold a pre-release screening of her SocDoc Project, Fixed, at the Pavilion of Knowledge...
Bridgette Auger (SocDoc '11) investigates the numerous gang rapes and attacks in Cairo's Tahrir Square. A record number of women were attacked at protests on the two-year anniversary of the revolution. Bridgette looks into why these attacks keep happening in this report for Global Post...
The Unique Ladies, a documentary by SocDoc Alum Gloria Morán, will have its World Premiere at San Antonio's CineFestival. The Unique Ladies will also screen at the San Diego Latino Film Festival.
NPR's Latino USA recently did a piece on the car club as well.
Melinda James (SocDoc '12) was featured by SF Weekly as one of Ten Future Bay Area Art Icons and she was one of three of the featured artists to receive the Masterminds Award Grant. SF Weekly writes, "The Bay Area residents in Melinda James' films have important things to say, but they often...
Those Names We Cannot Forget, by SocDoc Alum Carolina Fuentes, will be featured at SOMarts’s collective art exhibit, Mourning and Scars 20 Years After the War.
Melissa Koch (SocDoc '12) was awarded a Frameline Completion Fund grant for her thesis film The Infamous T. Frameline’s Executive Director, K.C. Price, said, "It is such an honor for the organization to support these five excellent film projects, each of which reflects the talent,...
Ovarian Psycos, a new documentary co-directed by SocDoc alums Kate Trumbull-LaValle and Joanna Sokolowski, has recently launched a Kickstarter Campaign. Kate Trumbull-LaValle recently received an award from the ITVS’s Diversity Development Fund in support of this documentary. Please visit the...
SocDoc alum, Nhu Tien Lu, is currently working for StoryCorps as their Military Voices Initiative Coordinator. StoryCorps is an oral history project whose mission is to provide people of all backgrounds and beliefs with the opportunity to record, preserve, and share their stories.
Kimberly Baustista, SocDoc Alumn, has been named the winner of the 2012 HBO and National Association of Latino Independent Producers (NALIP) Documentary Film Award for her thesis project documentary - Justice for My Sister.
Whistlin' Dixie by SocDoc Alum Meredith Heil won a honorable mention at aGLIFF - Austin Gay & Lesbian International Film Festival 2012. Whistlin' Dixie also screened recently at the Seattle LGBT Fest and Out in the Country in Atlanta.
Our Right to Sing by SocDoc Alum Carolina Fuentes will be screened at San Francisco State University at the Coppola Theater on Tuesday October 23rd at 2pm.
Jake Shimabukuro: Life on Four Strings by SocDoc Alum Tadashi Nakamura will be screened for FREE at the Pacific Rim Film Festival in Santa Cruz at 8pm on Satruday Oct. 20th at the Del Mar Theatre.
The Unique Ladies by SocDoc Alum- Gloria Morán will be screened on Friday October 19t at 12pm at Cervantes/Velasquez Rm., Bay Tree Building at UC Santa Cruz.
For more information, contact El Centro at 458-2427 or email elcentro@ucsc.edu.
We're All Meant to Be Queens by SocDoc Alum Miguel Astudillo will premiere at the 2012 San Francisco Latino Film Festival on Wednesday September 26th at 7:30pm as part of the LGBT Latino Shorts Program.
Latino Public Broadcasting recently announced the World Premiere of a documentary film directed by Kimblerly Bautista (UCSC SocDoc '09) at the Cine+Mas San Francisco Latino Film Festival: Please join the filmmaker and media arts activist Kimberly Bautista at the premiere of her...
John Jota Leaños' Imperial Silence: Una Ópera Muerta and El Muertorider will be featured at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. John Jota Leaños also presented Decolonial Disruptions: the Specter of Change on September 8, 2012 at the Museum's Artists Up Close...
Justice For My Sister, by SocDoc alum Kimberly Bautista, was accepted to Cine Mas Film Festival in San Francisco (September '12) and Women Make Waves Film Festival in Taiwan (October '12).
SocDoc Alum, Gloria Morán's thesis project, The Unique Ladies, is seeking support at Kickstart. The Unique Ladies is a short documentary that "flips the script" on lowrider culture and looks at the cruising life through the eyes of women.
On Tuesday August 28, 2012 , at the UC Berkeley Center for Race and Gender, Renee Tajima-Peña presented on her upcoming feature-length documentary ¿Más Bebés? (working title) which investigates the history of Mexican American women who allege they were coercively sterilized at Los...
POR FIN PARIÓ PAULA, co-directed/filmed/edited by SocDoc Alum, Christopher Newman, won the weekly Reel 13 Online Film Contest and was aired by WNET, the New York City public television station, in August.
Changsha, Rian Dundon's thesis book, reached its funding goal with Emphas.is Press and Rian's work was recently featured in Time's LightBox and on the New York Times Photography, Video and Visual Journalism blog.
Our Right to Sing by SocDoc Alum, Carolina Fuentes, will be screening for free at No Right Turn Studio 2988 Mission st (26th) San Francisco, CA 94110 on Friday, June 22nd at 7pm.
For more information, contact Chelis Lopez (415) 606-0167 chelitzz@yahoo.com.mx or Samuel...
SocDoc/F&DM Professor B. Ruby Rich received the Frameline Award at the closing night of Frameline 36 - the annual San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival. B. Ruby Rich was featured in an article in the San Francisco Chronicle on Sunday 6/17/12.
Whistlin' Dixie, by SocDoc Alum Meredith Heil, screend at Frameline36 San Fracisco International LGBT Film Festival - Find Your Story June 14th -24th, 2012.
Congratulations to SocDoc lecturer, Leo Chiang. His new film, Mr. Cao Goes To Washington, won the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival Inspiration Award and was named IndieWire's "Documentaries You Must See."
John Jota Leaños, Assistant Professor in Social Documentation, has been awarded a 2012 Guggenheim Fellowship for the creative arts. Leaños is one of a diverse group of 181 artists, scientists, and scholars selected this year by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation from a group of...
At the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival Tad Nakamura, SocDoc '09, wowed a packed house at the 1,300 seat Castro Theater with his new film, "Life on Four Strings - The Jake Shimabukuro Documentary," about the YouTube ukulele phenomenon-turned-international star who has...
SocDoc student Rian Dundon has an essay included in the recently published book Photographs Not Taken: A Collection of Photographers' Essays Edited by Will Steacy.
Congratulations to SocDoc Professor John Jota Leaños for being chosen as a USA Fellow for 2011. USA Fellows writes, "Every year, we honor 50 of America's finest artists with fellowship awards of $50,000 each. The new USA Fellows for 2011 respreset some of the most innovative and diverse creative...
Florencia Marchetti's show "Abrir la puerta para ir a jugar: serious play in documentary art interventions" is a piece that builds on the work she did at the SocDoc Program. The show runs in parallel with the American Anthropological Association annual meeting, at which Florencia will present...
Soc Doc lecturer, Leo Chiang, whose documentary "A Village Called Versailles" has been nominated for a national Emmy Award! We are fortunate to have Leo as a lecturer for the Soc Doc Program in the Department of Film & Digital Media:
Whistlin' Dixie, by recent graduate Meredith Heil (Soc Doc '11), invites the viewer to travel along as filmmaker Meredith Heil explores America’s Southern heartland in search of queer sound. The documentary screened on Sunday July 24, 2011 at NewFEST in New York as part of the Girls on...
Shelia Turner in conjunction with the Auburn Ave. Research Library, Atlanta, is curating an exhibition entitled "Charting the Course: African American Achievers in the 20th Century, A Photographic Exhibit Opening and Conversation." The show features work by Mr. Raymond Wilson with guest...
Soc Doc is proud to announce the PBS broadcast of “Two Films by Tadashi Nakamura” this week, including his award-winning thesis documentary, “A Song for Ourselves.”
Soc Doc proudly congratulates Juan Mejia '07, who has won the highly competitive Tribeca Latin America Media Arts Fund ($10,000 grant) for his new documentary, "The Battle for the Land." Juan's award-winning thesis project "Uprooted," also an exploration of mass displacement in Colombia...
B. Ruby Rich's conversation with James Schamus, recipient of the Kanbar Award for excellence in screenwriting, will take place at the festival on Saturday, May 1, 1pm, Sundance Kabuki Cinemas, followed by the West Coast premiere of the newly completed director’s cut of Ride with the Devil (1999...
Renee Tajima-Peña has been awarded a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship for her new ongoing documentary about the coercive sterilization of Latin women at the LA County-USC Medical Center in the 1960s and 1970s.
Shelia Turner, Soc Doc 2008, has been awarded the 1st Artist Residency for the LeVine Museum of the New South, in Charlotte. She will be in residence from September to November and will be working on a project in reference to Courage and the camera with 9th and 10th...
Uprooted by Juan Mejia Botero, screens as part of the AfroPop series. It will play on the World Compass Channel nation wide starting Feb. 2nd. Check your local listings for times. Even if you don't get the World channel your public station might still carry the series so please check it...
Professor John Jota Leaños will receive a 2011 Individual Artist Commission Grant in Media from the San Francisco Arts Commission for his documentary animation project on the makings of the southwest borderlands.
Rian Dundon, Class of 2012, now has photos up at Out Traveler on gay nightlife in China. "Photographer Rian Dundon first visited China in 2005, to stay in a remote city in Hunan province. A 10-month stay became five years, while Dundon pursued projects on youth identity, fringe cultures, and...
Rian Dundon, Class of 2012, also has a new project up at Time Online. "Estimates suggest that one-third of the Burmese population is between the ages of 15 and 24 years old. When photographer Rian Dundon visited the notoriously cloistered nation, he fell in with some of the young people in the...
Class of 2012 - Rian Dundon's new project entitled: Behind The Scenes With Fan Bing Bing is up on the new issues of Zone Zero. This project following Chinese film starlet and pop icon Fan Bing Bing is a backstage look at the culture of fame and celebrity image in China's entertainment industry...
Uprooted, by Juan Mejia Botero, has been bought by the National Black Programming Consortium to be aired as part of their AfroPop series. It will thus air on public television nation wide at the end of this year or in January 2011.
Eric Tandoc was interviewed on Kababayan LA on September 10, 2010. Eric discusses his documentary project, hip hop and Filipino culture, and the Sounds of a New Hope Live Remix Tour.
Soc Doc Alum Elissa Moon's thesis documentary, Far From Home, will screen at Superfest International Disability Film Festival Showcase of a Selection of 2010 Award-Winners on Monday, July 26, 2010 from 3-5 p.m. at the San Francisco Main Library – 100 Larkin Street (at Grove) Koret Auditorium -...
A new documentary executive produced by Renee Tajima-Peña and directed by Christopher Wong, will air nationally on PBS's Emmy Award winning series, "Independent Lens." The film chronicles the struggles and triumphs of the first year of an innovative new public high school in the South...
Two Soc Doc Students have received grants from the University of California Humanities Research Institute: Bridgette Auger - "Documentary of Resettled Iraqi Refugees living in El Cajon, California" Kate Trumbull - "San Diego Somali Refugee Documentary Project"
Soc Doc Alum Kimberly Bautista's thesis documentary, Justice for my Sister, was selected to partake in NALIP's inaugural year of the Latino Artist Mentorship program.
Soc Doc Faculty member John Jota Leaños' "Los ABCs ¡Qué Vivan los Muertos" will be featured as a Sundance Classics 2010 through an iPhone application. "Los ABCs" is one of five classic comedies to have screened at the Sundance Film Festival in recent years.
Congratulations to current Soc Doc students:Carolina Fuentes, University of California Human Rights Documentary Grant for "Our Right to Sing."Alexander Johnston, California Studies Initiative Grant and Jack Henning Fellowship from the Fund for Labor, Culture and History for "Way Down in...
Calavera Highway: Silver Hugo Television Award for Best History/Biography Whatever It Takes (Executive Producer): Grand Jury Prize for Outstanding Documentary and Audience Award at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific American Film Festival, Audience Choice Award at the New York Asian...
Eric Tandoc (Soc Doc '08), has an interview up at Asia Pacific Arts. Eric's thesis project, “Sounds of a New Hope” is currently screening at various film festivals.
Kimberly Bautista (Soc Doc '09), has received a number of grants to support her thesis project, “Justice for My Sister,” which she is planning to finish for the Summer of 2010.
Valerie Krex (Soc Doc '09), was a finalist for the Independent Television Service LINCS fund. The highly competitive grants are intended for independent producer / public television station production partnerships for documentaries that will air on PBS.
Tadashi Nakamura receives a media grant from Center for Asian American Media with funds from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The grants are highly competitive professional grants to projects intended for national broadcast on PBS.
“A Song for Ourselves”, by Tadashi Nakamura (Soc Doc '08), has won multiple awards from various film festivals, including: Best Documentary Short Film – Urbanworld Film Festival, 2009
Best Short Documentary – DC Asian Pacific American Film Festival, 2009...
“A Song for Ourselves”, by Tadashi Nakamura (Soc Doc '08), is currently screening at film festivals and was featured in the LA Times and in the Honolulu Weekly.
In 2006 B. Ruby Rich received the esteemed Society for Cinema and Media Studies Lifetime Achievement Award. Other winners include film studies luminaries Stan Brakhage, William K. Everson, Frances Flaherty, Stuart Hall, Lewis Jacobs, Jay Leyda, Laura Mulvey, Amos Vogel, and UCSC emerita...