Critical Studies faculty member Ken Ehrlich (Writing-Integrated Media MFA 99) screened his experimental documentary La Huelga (2012) in March at the Echo Park Film Center and as part of the West Hollywood Aesthetics and Politics (WHAP!) series at the West Hollywood Public Library. La Huelga examines a student strike at Mexico's largest public university, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM), in 1999-2000, by juxtaposing participant interviews with a lyrical portrait of the campus architecture.
Performance/media artist Carole Kim (Integrated Media-Film/Video MFA 03) has received a City of Los Angeles (C.O.L.A.) Individual Artist Fellowship for 2013. Her C.O.L.A. project is an installation "to which one must bring imagination and sensory-openness," according to the fellowship announcement. Opening reception at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery is May 19, from 2-5 pm. The exhibtion runs through July 7.
Choreographer and filmmaker Natalie Metzger (Dance-Integrated Media MFA 11) is completing post-production on the film adaptation of her award-winning dance/theater work, Sacrament, originally started as her MFA thesis project. Sacrament, which features Erica Carpenter (Dance BFA 12), is about a woman dragged into a cult ritual surrounding the creation and destruction of a god. Most of the 17 dancers in the film are CalArts alumni or current students. In March, Metzger's film, Barely, screened at the Loikka Dance Film Festival in Helsinki, Finland. Barely was created in collaboration with CalArts faculty member Colin Connor and CalArts alumni Robert Allaire (Music MFA 09) and Melissa Bourkas (Dance BFA 09). Metzger is collaborating with Connor again this summer in a film adaptation of his 2009 critically-acclaimed dance work, ARENA. Metzger will be directing the film and Connor will be choreographing it.
Kwaku Ananse [1], a film by Akosua Adoma Owusu (Art-Film/Video MFA 08) won the 2013 Africa Movie Academy Award for Best Short Film on Sunday, April 20 in Bayelsa State, Nigeria. The Ghana-Mexico-U.S. co-production was selected from 184 short films submitted from around the world.
First Take [2], a workshop of six new operas, will be presented by The Industry at the Hammer Museum on June 1. Among the works presented will be Winter's Child, with music by Ellen Reid (Composition MFA 11) and libretto by Amanda Jane Shank (Writing for Performance MFA 13), and The House is Open, with music and text byAlexander Vassos (Composition and Performance MFA 12). Performances feature the modern music collective wild Up, which includes many CalArtians. Wild Up will be led by the Industry's music director and CalArts faculty member Marc Lowenstein and wild Up's artistic director, Christopher Rountree. The Industry is a home for new experimental opera in Los Angeles. It's general manager is David Mack (Acting MFA 08). The free performances will run from 2 pm-5:30 pm.
Jesse Lee Stout (Art MFA 2011; Film/Video BFA 2002) has been busy overseeing creative direction and directing video environments for numerous musicians. Creative direction projects have included work for indie pop band, The XX, for Beck, and for The Weeknd's 2012 tour. Stout directed video environments for Rihanna's Diamondsworld tour and for all of her televised performances in 2012; he directed video environments for Drake's Club Paradise tour in 2012; he directed video environments for Jay Z's numerous festival shows and for the Barclays Center opening in 2012; and he directed video environments for the televised appearances of Florence + the Machine in 2011 and 2012.
Christine Gump (Interschool BFA 03) is leader of the Santa Clarita Valley Holistic Moms Network [3].
Kenyatta Hinkle (Art & Writing MFA 12) has accepted the position of CalArts Community Arts Partnership [4] (CAP) Program Coordinator.
Black Sunshine, the first feature by artist/filmmaker Akosua Adoma Owusu (Film/Video and Art MFA 08 ), was nominated for the first ever Tribeca Film Institute Heineken Affinity Award for African American filmmakers. Set in a village in Ghana, Black Sunshine [5] is a film about the love triangle of a promiscuous Ghanaian hairdresser, her European lover, and her teenage albino daughter.
Anonymization: The Global Proliferation of Urban Sprawl [6] (2012) features the photography of Robert Pitman (Art and Film/Video 02). Currently, he is working on a new documentary film about open-pit coal mining with with actor Martin Sheen.
Jory Prum (Music and Film/Video BFA 97) was responsible for the recording, editing, and mastering of the dialogue in 2012’s hit video game The Walking Dead: The Game, which has won numerous “Game of the Year” awards.
Aurora Guerrero (Interschool/D.T.V.C. MFA 99) directed and wrote Mosquita y Mari [7], which premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival.
Deaf Jam [8], Judith Lief's (Dance & Film/Video MFA 92) film about a "deaf teen introduced to American Sign Language (ASL) Poetry, who
then boldly enters the spoken word slam scene," has been screened at the Woodstaock Film Festival and on PBS' Independent Lens. Also, it will be shown in the New York Jewish Film Festival in January.
Amy Vuckovich's (Art & Film/Video BFA 85) sets for The Finder will be feautred in the Set Decorators Society of America's Day With the Set Decorator tour on February 11th.
Akosua Adoma Owusu [9] (Art & Film/Video MFA 08) has won Expresion en Corto International Film Festival's Best Experimental Film Award for her film Drexciya.
Larry Eisenberg (MFA DTVC '99) is directing Dion Boucicault's The Poor of New York at the Group Rep at the Lonny Chapman Theatre in North Hollywood on June 3.
Aurora Guerrero (DTVC MFA 99) wrote and directed her new film, Mosquita Y Mari [10].
Rachel Schreiber [11]'s (Art & Critical Studies MFA 95) book Gender and Activism in a Little Magazine: the Modern Figures of the Masses was released by Ashgate Publishers in February, 2011. Shreiber completed her Ph.D. in History at the Johns Hopkins University in 2008 and is currently Director of Humanities and Sciences and Associate Professor of Critical Studies and Interdisciplinary Studies at the California College of the Arts in Oakland, CA.
Links:
[1] http://www.ama-awards.com/film/kwaku-ananse
[2] http://theindustryla.org/projects/first-take/
[3] http://www.holisticmoms.org/
[4] http://calarts.edu/cap
[5] http://akosuaadoma.com/artwork/2956376_Black_Sunshine_2014.html
[6] http://www.amazon.com/Anonymization-Global-Proliferation-Urban-Sprawl/dp/3868282882
[7] http://www.mosquitaymari.com/
[8] http://www.deafjam.org/
[9] http://www.akosuaadoma.com/
[10] http://www.mosquitaymari.com/CastCrew.html
[11] http://www.gowerpub.com/default.aspx?page=637&edition_id=13344&title_id=10207&calctitle=1