Film and Television (Audio)

Karen McCullah and Kirsten “Kiwi” Smith are one of the most prolific and successful female writing teams in Hollywood. Among their many credits is She’s the Man (2006) that resets William Shakespeare’s cross-dressing comedy Twelfth Night in a contemporary boarding school. Series: "Carsey-Wolf Center" [Humanities] [Show ID: 33504]

Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet (1948) was adapted and directed by its star. Mark Rose (English, UCSB) and Jim Kearney (English, UCSB) discuss this cinematic treatment of Hamlet and examples of Shakespeare on film. Series: "Carsey-Wolf Center" [Humanities] [Show ID: 33503]

Oscar, Golden Globe and Grammy-nominated composer, Robert Kraft, talks with David Novak (Music, UCSB) about the power and influence of film scores and the unique challenges with the process. Series: "Carsey-Wolf Center" [Humanities] [Show ID: 33501]

Populist rhetoric, the influence of religion in politics, and the role of the media in elections all arise in this conversation about Gregory La Cava’s 1933 film Gabriel Over the White House. Carsey-Wolf Center director Patrice Petro and renowned journalist Jeff Greenfield explore the influence of financier William Randolph Hearst on the film’s ideology, and the circuitous legacy of this once-popu...

Revenge, justice, and betrayal in Shakespeare’s play and in the history of the politically-disputed Kashmir region arise as core topics in this discussion about the Hindi film Haider between Priya Jaikumar (USC) and Bhaskar Sarkar (UC-Santa Barbara.) The two professors interrogate and celebrate the film and play’s ability to combine local cultural specificity and popular accessibility. Arguing Hai...

Filmmaker Anne Galisky joins UCSB’s Helen Morales for a discussion of her 2014 film 14: Dred Scott, Wong Kim Ark, & Vanessa Lopez. The director explains the process of locating family members of the individuals the film focuses on, scoring the film, and developing conversations about citizenship including birthright citizenship but also recent debates about the status of people who are already cit...

Screenwriters Todd Louiso and Jacob Koskoff join moderator Jim Kearney (UCSB, English) for a conversation about their 2015 adaptation of Macbeth starring Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard. Louiso and Koskoff discuss how the film was originally intended to star the late Philip Seymour Hoffman, the challenges of making the supernatural elements of the play scarier, and unraveling the metaphor...

Writer/director/producer Jordan Peele joins UCSB’s Matt Ryan for a Script-to-Screen discussion of Get Out (2017), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. Peele explains how the tone of the film was influenced by his background in comedy, the work of Ira Levin (The Stepford Wives, Rosemary’s Baby), and the desire to subvert the tropes of African American characters in the h...

The real-life married couple Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon (they co-wrote the script, and Nanjiani stars as a character with his own first name) discuss their acclaimed film "The Big Sick," loosely based on their own relationship's rocky start. Series: "Carsey-Wolf Center" [Humanities] [Show ID: 33375]

Screenwriter Vanessa Taylor joins UCSB’s Matt Ryan for a Script-to-Screen discussion of "The Shape of Water" (2017) which Taylor co-wrote with Guillermo Del Toro. Taylor recounts her experience sharing the screenwriting duties with the director and developing characters to round out the initial vision of the film. They discuss at length the challenges of writing the unusual two main characters, th...

Join the co-directors of the documentary "Nostalgia for the Future," Avijit Mukul Kishore and Rohan Shivkumar, in conversation with UCSB Professor of Film and Media Studies Bhaskar Sarkar. The film looks at Indian modernity, the making of the citizen and the architecture of the home. Series: "Carsey-Wolf Center" [Humanities] [Show ID: 33185]

Sonia Kennebeck, producer and director of "National Bird," talks with UCSB PhD candidate in the Department of Film and Media Studies Daniel Grinberg about her documentary on the US drone program told through the eyes of three military veterans and survivors. Kennebeck is an independent documentary filmmaker and investigative journalist with more than 15 years of directing and producing experience....

Lisa Bruce has made feature films both domestic and internationally, both independently and with major studios. She was a producer on "Darkest Hour," a film starring Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill that follows his early days as Prime Minister while Hitler closes in on Britain during World War II. She is joined in conversation with Matt Ryan at the Pollock Theater at UC Santa Barbara. Series: "Ca...

Vienna-born Fritz Lang’s first American film "Fury" was released in 1936 after he left Germany for Hollywood. Fury raises issues about race, technology, mob violence, the corruption of political and legal institutions that remain remarkably current. Harvard Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures Eric Rentschler, and Carsey-Wolf Center Director Patrice Petro sit down for an in-depth discus...

Billy Wilder's "Some Like it Hot" is one of the great comedies of Hollywood's golden age. Wilder was an Austrian-America filmmaker who moved to Paris then Hollywood after the rise of the Nazi party. David Mandel (Veep, Seinfeld) joins Carsey-Wolf Center Director Patrice Petro to discuss the film that starred Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon posing as women after witnessing a mob massacre in Chicago. Se...

Ernst Lubitsch’s controversial anti-Nazi political satire "To Be or Not To Be" is celebrated as one of the most subtle meditations on power, politics, and performance to emerge from Hollywood during the war. Professor Emily Carman (Film and Media Arts, Chapman University) joins Carsey-Wolf Center Director Patrice Petro for a discussion about the original ambivalent reviews and how perceptions have...

A legendary director noted for his uncompromising passion, Werner Herzog joins Carsey-Wolf Center Director Patrice Petro for a discussion about his 1979 film “Nosferatu The Vampyre” which he says is a tribute to the classic 1922 film "Nosferatu” by F.W. Murnau. Herzog also discusses his career and the film’s significance as a bridge to the masterworks of interwar cinema. Series: "Carsey-Wolf Cente...

The Carsey-Wolf Center at UCSB spotlights the work of individuals on the autistic spectrum in entertainment. The panel addresses the work of Actors for Autism and the role of people with autism in entertainment industries from multiple perspectives. Panelists: Actors for Autism Executive Director Alisa Wolf, Actors for Autism participant Patrick Doran, Patrick's mother Mary Doran, and Animator San...

Award-winning documentary Still Black: A Portrait of Black Transmen centers on the stories of six thoughtful, eloquent and diverse transmen. Director Kortney Ryan Ziegler joins Jennifer Tyburczy (Feminist Studies, UCSB) to discuss the film. Series: "Carsey-Wolf Center" [Humanities] [Show ID: 32541]

Michael Westmore is a scion of the famed Westmore makeup dynasty, which dates back to Hollywood's golden age. He was nominated for an Academy Award for his work on Raging Bull. He talks with Anna Brusutti, UCSB Department of Film and Media Studies, to discuss that film and his other work. Series: "Carsey-Wolf Center" [Humanities] [Show ID: 32543]

Dante Alencastre, director of Raising Zoey, talks with Abigaíl Salazar of the UCSB Resource Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity about this docuemntary that follows Zoey's transition. Series: "Carsey-Wolf Center" [Humanities] [Show ID: 32540]

The documentary In Utero explores how experiences in utero affect our lives. Director Kathleen Man Gyllenhaal and Producer Stephen Gyllenhaal are joined by Professor Brenda Major (Psychological and Brain Sciences, UCSB) and Professor Maya Rossin-Slater (Economics, UCSB) for a discussion moderated by Professor Maryam Kia-Keating (Counseling, Clinical, & School Psychology, UCSB). Series: "Carsey-Wol...

Academy Award Winning Production Designers David Wasco and Sandy Reynolds-Wasco have colloborated with some of the most talented filmmakers today, most recently, Damien Chazelle on La La Land. The film received the Academy Award for Best Achievement in Production Design, the Art Directors Guild Award for Excellence in Production Design and a BAFTA nomination for Best Production Design. Series: "Ca...

The documentary Free CeCe confronts the culture of violence surrounding transwomen of color. Director Jacqueline (Jac) Gares and Documentary Subject CeCe McDonald discuss the process of making the film with Lal Zimman, UCSB Department of Linguistics. Series: "Carsey-Wolf Center" [Humanities] [Show ID: 32542]

Actress/Producer Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Writer/Executive Producer/Director David Mandel and Actor Tony Hale talk about realizing the HBO series Veep - an American political satire. Series: "Carsey-Wolf Center" [Humanities] [Show ID: 32412]