Title photo: Cine Solar Rodante by Eli Jacobs-Fantauzzi
The Media Arts & Culture Department (MAC) invites you to participate in our MAC Spring 2021 Cinematheque. This year's program is curated by Visiting Assistant Professor Vivian Wenli Lin in conjunction with the MAC 250 Media Activism Through Participatory Video course. The series will feature practitioners and filmmakers working with participatory methodologies to create media with and alongside disadvantaged or migrant communities. This free series is open to the public, so whether you’re a current student, an alum, or a community member, we hope that you will join us. All events will be hosted online, please register for details on how to join.
Una Platica con: An artist talk with Eli Jacobs-Fantauzzi
Thursday, Jan. 28, 2021 5:30-7 pm PST
We welcome filmmaker and activist Eli Jacobs-Fantauzzi to share and discuss clips from his work and process of what he refers to as "just filmmaking".
Eli Jacobs-Fantauzzi is an internationally-recognized and award-winning filmmaker. He is the founder of FistUp.TV, a media platform uplifting and telling stories from underrepresented communities across the world. His work has circulated through National Broadcast: Free Speech TV, Teaching Channel, and PBS. Online he has created content for remezcla, okayafrica, TIDAL, and VIBE. Spike Lee is one of the reasons Eli became a filmmaker, and in 2019 he hired Eli to work on set with him as a photographer for "She's Gotta Have It Too." Eli is the co-founder of Defend Puerto Rico, a multimedia project designed to document and celebrate Puerto Rican creativity, resilience, and resistance. He is currently touring the world with his new film Bakosó: Afrobeats of Cuba and curating his 12th Annual Fist Up Film Festival. His dedication to his craft is deeply connected to his commitment to social justice and the belief in the transformative power of film.
Website: www.fistup.tv
View recording of Cinematheque Event 1 here:
Game Girls Film Screening and Q&A with Director Alina Skrzeszewska and Special Guest Teri Rogers
Thursday, Feb. 18th, 2021 5:30-7 pm PST
Film screening: Game Girls (2018) 81 mins. *The film contains strong language, descriptions and scenes of abusive behavior.
GAME GIRLS follows Teri and her girlfriend Tiahna as they navigate their relationship through the chaotic world of Los Angeles’ Skid Row, aka the “homeless capital of the U.S.” A dilemma fuels the tension between the two women: while Tiahna seems comfortable being a player in the underground economy of Skid Row, Teri is driven by a powerful desire to get out. Together with other women from the neighborhood, they attend a weekly Expressive Arts workshop where they are looking to reflect, dream, and heal. Can their love survive the violence of their past and their current environment?
Teri Rogers is the Founder and CEO of Breaking Stigmas LLC. Certified Peer Specialist and Advocate for those experiencing Homelessness, Mental Health, Substance Abuse and Women’s Health issues. In May 2018 she was featured as one of the two protagonists of the 2x Award Winning & 6x Nominated documentary Game Girls. Teri currently lives in Los Angeles, California. Teri was born on 13th of November, 1980. The oldest of four children and the only girl, she would help her parents out around the house in which she grew a passion for caretaking and cooking and credits her family for instilling in her certain values that has served her well throughout her journey. In 2015, she stumbled across a flyer advertising a free workshop for women living in downtown Los Angeles’ SKID ROW area. “I didn’t know it at the time but that moment changed my life”, says Teri.
Alina Skrzeszewska (1977) was born in Wroclaw, Poland. During the politically charged years after the outbreak of the Solidarity movement her family emigrated to West Germany, and Alina grew up in Munich. She studied Stage Design and Art&Media at the University of the Arts in Berlin, and received an MFA in Film&Video from the California Institute of the Arts. In 2007/2008 she lived in an SRO hotel on Los Angeles’ Skid Row, where she made her first documentary feature Songs from the Nickel (2010). Since then, Alina went on to make several films in the neighborhood. Songs from the Nickel (2010) was shown at many film festivals around the world (Visions du Réel, DocLisboa, Gijon, among others) and has won several awards (see filmography below). Alina is the recipient of multiple scholarships and grants among them a 12 month DAAD artist grant (2007/2008) and the Nipkow project development grant in Berlin 2012. She lives and works in Los Angeles.
Filmography
- 2018 Game Girls Documentary, France/Germany & ZDF/arte 85’ World premiere at Berlinale 2018 (February)
- 2013 Traviesos (German Title: Wildfang) Documentary, Germany, ZDF/3Sat, 28'
- 2010 Songs from the Nickel Documentary, USA/Germany, 83' Festivals: Visions du Réel (Nyon, Switzerland), DocLisboa (Portugal), Gijon (Spain), FIFF Créteil (France), Document 9 (Glasgow, Scotland), Astra Film Festival (Sibiu, Romania), Athens International Film & Video Festival (USA)... Prizes: Prize for a Best Documentary at Athens International Film & Video Festival, Best Film at Document 9 of Glasgow, Sibiu Award at Astra Film festival Romania, Special Mention of the Jury at Festival Films de Femmes de Créteil 2011
- 2009 Last One Left Documentary, USA, 21’
- 2006 Stories of a Promised Land - part 1, essay, USA/Germany, 11' Festivals: Internationale Kurzfilmtage Obrhausen, Cambridge Film Festival, Stuttgarter Filmwinter
- 2002 The Scent Of The Sky (German Title: Der Geruch des Himmels) Documentary, Germany, 15' Festivals: Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen
Website: http://www.films-de-force-majeure.com/portfolios/game-girls
Beyond the Frame: A talk with Pooja Pant
Thursday, April 1, 2021 7:30 - 9 pm PST
Pooja Pant is a women’s rights activist and media artist skilled in video, radio, and photography. In 2007, she founded alongside Dr. Vivian Wenli Lin the organization, Voices of Women (VOW) Media in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. In 2014, she founded FinalTake Films in Kathmandu, Nepal where she actively produces video journalism in the region. VOW Media has been focusing participatory media work with girls and young women in South Asia, a sub-continent that is rife with various intersectional women's issues. Pooja will share and discuss how the participatory media created by these communities have been used to highlight issues of human trafficking in Nepal, addressing concerns of child marriage in India, and the rights of female construction workers in Bangladesh.
Website: www.voicesofwomenmedia.org
Media Activism Through Participatory Video Student Showcase
Monday, April 26, 2021 5:30-7 pm PST
Come join our last Cinematheque event of the semester as we welcome students and community members to share and showcase their transnational participatory video projects. Students from Occidental College’s Media Activism Through Participatory Video course teamed up with students from The University of Hong Kong’s course, Globalization and Migration. Students worked in 4 teams profiling the lives of activists from the International Women's Network Against Militarism. The resulting collaborative media projects look at the impact of militarism on women’s lives in Guam, Okinawa, South Korea and The Philippines.
Dr. Vivian Wenli Lin is the 2020-2021 Visiting Assistant Professor in Media for Social Change at Occidental College's Media Arts & Culture Department. She is the founder of Voices of Women Media, an organization dedicated to engaging communities of migrant women and allies in media literacy – including teenage girls, asylum seekers, victims of human trafficking, and women in the informal, emotional and domestic labor industries primarily in the Global South.
For more information on the series, contact Vivian Wenli Lin at vlin[at]oxy.edu
For any technical issues during the events, please contact Leslie Torres at ltorres3[at]oxy.edu
Events are sponsored by the Media Arts & Culture Department, the Mellon Foundation, the Remsen Bird Fund and the Center for Community Based Learning at Occidental College.