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May 26, 2003
Santa Cruz Film Festival spotlights UCSC faculty
on May 30
By Scott Rappaport
The Santa Cruz Film Festival will spotlight works by the faculty of
UCSC’s Film and Digital Media Department on Friday, May 30, at
7:30 p.m. at the Media Theater on the campus. Admission is $8 general,
$7 students.
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Images from El Zócalo, a film by Chip Lord and
Gustavo Vazquez that will be screened May 30.
Photos courtesy of Chip Lord
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The program will include selected personal films by department chair
Chip Lord, Associate Professor Lawrence Andrews, Assistant Professor
Gustavo Vazquez, and lecturer Irene Gustafson.
"They are all nonfiction films or documentaries, but none fall
in the traditional documentary form as we know it," noted Lord.
"They’re not Ken Burns-style documentaries; none of these
films really have interviews. They’ve all been shaped as a work
of art. We’re artists working in digital video with nonfictional
material."
"I think this program is representative of what the production
faculty do in our department," Lord added.
Program:
Irene Gustafson, Distracted: A Trip Around the World, 15:00
minutes 1997. This experimental documentary narrates a journey through
the impossible spatial and temporal landscape of a 1950s-era miniature
golf course.
Gustavo Vazquez, RE: Group/No Homeland (A post 9/11 intercultural
Poltergeist), 12:00 minutes 2003
Filmmaker Gustavo Vazquez was asked to produce a segment for a PBS documentary
on "new performance art in San Francisco." Vazquez, in turn,
decided to work with his colleague Guillermo Gómez-Peña
and shoot a jam session of a new collective named Re:Group. PBS ended
up censoring 80 percent of the footage. This video consists of the outtakes
of the work session where Re:Group explores the new culture of fear,
paranoia, censorship, and superficial jingoism permeating every corner
of society.
Chip Lord and Gustavo Vazquez, El Zócalo, 28:30 minutes
2002. El Zócalo is an observational portrait
of Mexico City's central Plaza de la Constitución across one
day in August. Soldiers, Aztec dancers, clowns, food vendors, protestors,
rain, dogs, tourists, kites, balloons, and dignitaries all meet in the
public space of the Zócalo. This documentary observes daily life
in one of the largest and most vibrant urban centers in the world.
Lawrence Andrews, we just tellin stories, 57:00 minutes 2001:
We just tellin stories is about the Medea Project for incarcerated
women. It shows the process that enables this theater ensemble to take
a group of incarcerated women to a place where they are able tell their
often painful and disturbing stories publicly. During the process of
building a stage play, they reclaim a sense of self worth and the ability
to dream again. The telling and retelling of tragic personal stories
becomes the way they gain new perspectives on what they have lived through.
Ultimately, their stories are presented to sold-out audiences and do
nothing less than rock the house.
UCSC’s Media Theater is located between the Mainstage and the
Baskin Arts complex in the Performing Arts area on campus. Advance tickets
are available at Streetlight Records, the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium,
and the Santa Cruz Metro Office. For more information, call (831) 459-3204.
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