Humanities (Audio)

Editor Maryann Brandon joins Pollock Theater Director Matt Ryan for a conversation about the process of editing Star Trek (2009). The Star Trek franchise has captured the imagination of audiences for over fifty years using a blend of spacefaring high-adventure and futuristic, utopian themes. In 2009, J.J. Abrams refreshed and extended the series with the series’ eleventh film. Brandon explains what is was like to edit a film that was part of such a beloved franchise, as well as how she maintained her own editing style while staying true to the original series. She discusses the process of manipulating footage and cutting on set, as well as how she shapes each scene around an actor’s performance while maintaining a delicate balance between exposition and effects. She also discusses her professional relationship with Abrams, sharing anecdotes from the sets of both Star Trek and Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker, which she is currently editing under his direction. Series: "Carsey-Wolf Center" [Humanities] [Show ID: 34953]

Professor Michael Berry (Asian Languages and Cultures, UCLA) joins PhD candidate Wesley Jacks (Film and Media Studies, UCSB) for a post-screening conversation about Zhang Yimou’s 1987 film adaptation of Mo Yan’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Red Sorghum. Berry explains the legacy of the so-called “Fifth Generation” of Chinese filmmakers including Yimou, and how Red Sorghum’s production during the era following Deng Xiaoping’s 1978 shift to an open door policy resulted in a film that was both uniquely a product of its own time, and subject to less censorship and thematic restriction than other eras of Chinese filmmaking. A milestone adaptation of an important literary text, Berry describes some of the history of Yimou’s work on the project, and how many of the cast and crew involved in Red Sorghum have since gone on to have celebrated careers. Series: "Carsey-Wolf Center" [Humanities] [Show ID: 34884]

Director Nishtha Jain joins UCSB’s Bishnupriya Ghosh (English and Global Studies) for a post-screening discussion of her 2012 film Gulabi Gang. The conversation includes Jain’s early career as a documentary filmmaker, the film’s examination of violence against women in India both as a result of the dowry system and a general social devaluation of women, and how she worked with Gulabi Gang leader Sampat Pal on location with individuals that were sometimes reluctant to speak on their own behalf or who felt conflicting familial loyalties. Jain addresses the film’s unusual three-part structure and her desire to let the complexities of the film’s subject shape the structure, rather than the reverse. Series: "Carsey-Wolf Center" [Humanities] [Show ID: 34844]

Hunting is considered a key human adaptation and is thought to have influenced our anatomy, physiology and behavior over time. This symposium explores the evidence pertaining to the origins of hominin hunting. Variation exists within and among chimpanzee populations in the social importance of hunting and meat eating. David Watts, Yale University. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny" [Humanities] [Science] [Show ID: 33573]

Lucy Fischer (English and Film Studies, University of Pittsburgh) joins Carsey-Wolf Center Director Patrice Petro for a post-screening discussion of Alain Resnais’ 1959 film Hiroshima Mon Amour. Fischer places the film, which features a screenplay by the French novelist Marguerite Duras, in the context of other French New Wave cinema; drawing attention in particular to the juxtaposition of images that are simultaneously fictional and documentary, and to the ways in which Duras’s influence is felt throughout the finished film. Fischer and Petro discuss the critical reaction to the film, as well as its meditation on the nature of memory as one of the first major post-WW II art films. Series: "Carsey-Wolf Center" [Humanities] [Show ID: 34843]

The atmosphere is composed of gases such as oxygen, nitrogen and carbon dioxide. Other gases are present at much lower concentrations and include ozone, nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxides and formaldehyde just to name a few. But there is something else in the air we breathe: microscopic particles called aerosols. Vicki Grassian discusses aerosols, their many sources, and how they impact the Earth’s climate and human health in ways we are just starting to understand. Series: "Exploring Ethics" [Health and Medicine] [Humanities] [Science] [Show ID: 33719]

Archivist Regina Longo (Brown University) joins UCSB’s Harold Marcuse (Department of History) for a discussion of Claude Lanzmann’s final film Shoah: Four Sisters (2018), a four-part miniseries that was screened over two days at the Pollock Theater. Longo’s work includes extensive restoration of Claude Lanzmann’s landmark documentary footage of testimonials from the Holocaust, and in conversation with Marcuse she offers deeper insight into the history of the film and the women it concerns. Longo explains how Lanzmann’s Shoah was initially funded and produced, how hundreds of hours of footage is being carefully restored from original prints and made available online, and how Four Sisters both influences and is situated in a legacy of film, legal testimony, memoir, and other post-war efforts to represent the un-representable horror of the Shoah. Series: "Carsey-Wolf Center" [Humanities] [Show ID: 34842]

Filmmakers Kady Le, Lan Nguyen, and Quyên Nguyen-Le join moderator erin Khuê Ninh (Asian American Studies, UCSB) for a post-screening discussion of their short films “Like Mother, Like Daughter,” “Bị Kẹt,” and “Nước (Water/Homeland).” The directors each speak to their creative process and how they each worked to articulate subtle and often complex themes with their differing narrative, documentary, and experimental approaches. They explain how personal questions of family, home, community, history, and identity shaped their work, as well as the influence of other Vietnamese-American authors, activists, and filmmakers. This event was co-curated by the Viet Film Fest and presented in conjunction with UCSB Reads 2019. Series: "Carsey-Wolf Center" [Humanities] [Show ID: 34770]

Ecologist Rudo Sanyanga and filmmakers R. Lane Clark and Stephan Miescher join moderator Janet Walker (Film and Media Studies, UCSB) for a post-screening discussion of Clark and Miescher’s documentary film Ghana’s Electric Dreams. The film concerns the history of Ghana’s Akosombo Dam, and its complex legacy as a strategic modernization project launched during the presidency of Kwame Nkrumah. The panel conversation highlights the impetus for the film and its multi-stage development, the importance of the availability of archival footage and the filmmakers’ personal familiarity with this region of Ghana, and the far-reaching human and ecological impacts of large hydroelectric infrastructure projects. This event was hosted by the Carsey-Wolf Center in collaboration with the Mellon-Sawyer Seminar for Energy Justice in Global Perspective. Series: "Carsey-Wolf Center" [Humanities] [Science] [Show ID: 34883]

Director Leilah Weinraub joins Mireille Miller-Young (Feminist Studies, UCSB) for a conversation about Weinraub’s 2018 documentary Shakedown, a film that documents the L.A.-based underground black-lesbian strip club of the same name. Weinraub explains how she discovered the club and her decade-long project of capturing the experience of Shakedown on film. The talk also includes discussion of black ownership and labor, the visibility of black identities and sexualities, gentrification in the aftermath of historic riots, and the fragility of contingent cultural spaces under the dual pressures of over-policing and the politics of respectability. Series: "Carsey-Wolf Center" [Public Affairs] [Humanities] [Show ID: 34769]