UC Santa Barbara (Video)

Director Deborah Stratman joins moderator Alex Lilburn (Film and Media Studies, UCSB) for a discussion of her film, Last Things. Stratman discusses the varied ecological, geological, literary, and cinematic inspirations of the film and thinking beyond anthropic time scales. Together, they also discuss the structure of the documentary, the use of voiceover and outside excerpts, the scientific conce...

Kashif Shaikh, co-founder and president of Pillars Fund, joins moderator Mona Damluji (Film and Media Studies, UCSB) for a discussion of the film Polite Society. Shaikh discusses working closely with director Nida Manzoor and themes of sisterhood, class hierarchy, and patriarchal power in the film. Together, they also discuss ways of subverting cliches and stereotypes in South Asian and Muslim rep...

Filmmakers Valerio Ciriaci and Isaak Liptzin join UC Santa Barbara moderator Stephanie Malia Hom to discuss their film, Stonebreakers. They detail the origins of the project and their interest in monuments as a trigger for political action and historical discourse. They also discuss their experiences filming protests and broader political action against police brutality and systemic racism, and sh...

Filmmaker James N. Kienitz Wilkins joins moderator Tyler Morgenstern, Assistant Director of the Carsey-Wolf Center, for a discussion of Still Film. They discuss its narrative and formal structure, as well as its thematic interests in the problems plaguing contemporary Hollywood. They also reflect on the film’s use of language and larger questions of cinema, memory, and nostalgia. Moreover, Wilkins...

Lucas Hilderbrand of UC Irvine joins UC Santa Barbara moderator Graham Feyl to discuss the film Paris is Burning. They review the history of its exhibition and the film’s enduring legacy as a powerful portrait of queer life, resistance, beauty, and art. They also discuss the unique structure of the documentary, the cultural contexts of drag balls for trans communities of color, and Paris is Burnin...

Director Miguel Coyula and actor Lynn Cruz join UC Santa Barbara's Kiley Guyton Acosta and Cristina Venegas to discuss their film, Corazón Azul. They discuss the allegorical significance of its imagery, which draws from Cuban political and historical contexts for its alternate reality narrative. They also share insights into the long, complicated development of the film over the years and reflect...

The dramatic housing shortage in California affects millions of residents and leads thousands to homelessness. The 2024 Arthur N. Rupe Great Debate addresses this issue by asking, “Is Housing a Human Right?” If so, our state faces a massive undertaking. Experts with diverse specialties and experiences wrestle with some of our biggest challenges. How, for example, can we build low and moderate inco...

Filmmaker Juel Taylor joins UC Santa Barbara moderator Mireille Miller-Young for a discussion of his film They Cloned Tyrone as part of our Black Hollywood series. Taylor details the development of the film and its narrative and thematic inspirations and ideas. Together, they discuss each of the three main characters and the film’s playful subversion of racial stereotypes and Blaxploitation tropes...

Filmmaker Alejandro M. Flores Aguilar and moderator Giovanni Batz discuss the film Ixiles: Voices from the Shadows of Time. Aguilar details the origin of the project, as well as the historical contexts of Indigenous resistance in the Ixil region of Guatemala. They also discuss issues surrounding ethnographic research, the responsibilities of academics, and the future of anti-colonial resistance. S...

Filmmaker Anthony Banua-Simon joins moderator Patrice Petro to discuss his documentary film Cane Fire. They explore the historical and colonial relationships between the plantation economy, the film industry, and tourism in Hawai’i, and larger questions posed by the film. Banua-Simon also discusses his approach to interrogating Hollywood history and how archival materials, oral records, and conspi...

Writer/producer Gabe Liedman and moderator Tyler Morgenstern discuss the film Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, a screening programmed alongside a workshop on comedy writing. Liedman discusses the collaborative work of comedy and the unique comedic style of the film. He also shares his favorite jokes and moments in the movie, and how the film has been impactful for their own work as a comedian an...

Director Arthur Jones and producer Giorgio Angelini join moderator Chelsea Kai Roesch from UC Santa Barbara to discuss their film "Feels Good Man." They talk about working with artist Matt Furie and unpack the social and political contexts behind Pepe the Frog and its cooptation by the alt-right. They also reflect on the cinematic challenges in telling a story about the internet and discuss the la...

Timothy Corrigan of the University of Pennsylvania joins moderator Patrice Petro to discuss Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s classic film Ali: Fear Eats the Soul. Together, they examine the larger body of work and influences of the German filmmaker, which include Brechtian aesthetics and classical Hollywood melodramas like that of Douglas Sirk. They also offer close readings of scenes from the film, ana...

What is bionic vision? Michael Beyeler, director of the Bionic Vision Lab and assistant professor of computer science at UC Santa Barbara, talks about how technology is being used to help people see again using bionic vision. Series: "GRIT Talks" [Science] [Show ID: 39443]

What role do oil companies have in tackling climate change? In this program, Paasha Mahdavi, Assistant Professor of Political Science at UC Santa Barbara, talks about the challenge of getting big oil to take climate change seriously. Mahdavi's research broadly explores comparative environmental politics and the political consequences of natural resource wealth. He is the author of Power Grab: Poli...

Filmmaker Sam Kadi joins moderator Juan Campo, professor of religious studies at UC Santa Barbara, for a discussion of the film Lamya’s Poem. Together, they consider how the film employs magical realism to interweave scenes from the lives of contemporary Syrian refugees with the experiences of 13th century poet Rumi. Kadi discusses the uses of animation in crafting a fantastical world, and shares...

Māori novelist Witi Ihimaera, author of the 1987 novel The Whale Rider, joins moderator Nicola Daly (University of Waikato) for a post-screening discussion of Niki Caro’s 2002 film Whale Rider. Ihimaera discusses the novel’s relationship to Māori stories and cultural practices, his writing process, and the film’s enduring legacy. This event was presented in conjunction with the 26th biennial Congr...

In this UC Santa Barbara GRIT talk, Dr. Meghan Morrissey discusses her work to get immune cells to eat cancer. Her goal is to uncover fundamental principles of macrophage signaling and tune macrophage function in the tumor microenvironment. Series: "GRIT Talks" [Health and Medicine] [Show ID: 39441]

How can we use raw materials to improve the environment? In this program, Susannah L. Scott, professor of chemistry at UC Santa Barbara, discusses how to efficiently use catalytic conversion of unconventional materials, such as biomass and synthetic polymers to create sustainable routes to renewable energy, fuels and chemicals. Series: "GRIT Talks" [Science] [Show ID: 39440]

In the coming decades, individuals around the world must adapt to changing environmental conditions, often driven by climate change. Adaptation requires significant resources, prompting the question of whether existing economic and social inequities may be exacerbated when adaptation become accessible to some, but not others. Kyle Meng, associate professor of economics at UC Santa Barbara, explore...

How can we improve the human connection for people with autism? In this program, Ty Verno, director of the UC Santa Barbara's Koegel Autism Center discusses novel methods for measuring, understanding, and altering the social developmental trajectories of individuals with autism and related conditions. Series: "GRIT Talks" [Health and Medicine] [Show ID: 39439]

In Rome in 1644, four butchers were accused of killing seven of their fellow Roman citizens, stripping the meat from their bones, and grinding it together with pork to make sausage, which was then sold from their shop behind the Pantheon. Although the butchers were quickly executed, their tale was not so easily forgotten. In pamphlets issued around the event, the story of the butchers turned into...

What are the shapes of stories? This is a longstanding question in narrative arts, from the plot arcs of novels and rhyme schemes of poems to the shot sequences of films. This program discusses two narrative media forms: interactive branching stories (as in games, gamebooks, and hypertext fiction) represented as networks, and graphic narratives (as in comics, manga and webtoons) with individual pa...

Based on co-authored research, this talk shows how historical framing--drawing parallels between past and present events or actors--can mobilize protesters and keep them politically engaged in the face of unpopular policies and violent repression. Nicaraguan and Chilean activists and citizens saw their presidents and security forces as repeating reviled dictatorships’ behavior, making clear the im...

As sailors use constellations, wind direction, and current to determine their heading, so, too, do animals process diverse sensory information to set their course. Via this sensory processing, the animal’s brain develops a sense of direction, a prerequisite for navigating between points. To understand how the sense of direction is generated in the brain, we interrogate neurons in the brain of the...