The Billy Wilder Theatre, my place of employ, is now offering free admission to WGA members. I'm very proud.
The Wilder is, as you may know, run by the UCLA Film & Television Archive, which shares administrative space and some personnel with the School of Theatre, Film and Television, from which I hail. I'm happy to be part of the TFT family, and also happy that this family is now doing something in acknowledgement of the strike.
Our theatre screens classic and foreign cinema, as well as featuring the work and words of well-known writers, cinematographers, and directors. We premiered Anthony Hopkins' directorial debut, Slipstream and have previously welcomed the likes of Alejandro Inarritu, Vidhu Vinod Chopra, and Jon Jost.
You can visit our website for a list of screenings and more information. In addition to free admission for WGA members, we offer discount admission for students. And while I can't say this on the record, if you come up to the box office and mention Miss Anthropy, I'll see what I can do to get you a free ticket...
1.19.2008
My Wonderful Class
Well, we've had a lot of twists and turns over the past two weeks. The good news is the class is still going, although it may have a few surprises ahead of it yet. For one thing, we are now seriously confronted with the fear that the Centre for Student Programming will shut us down, for a variety of reasons that are too much of a headache to get into. Fortunately, our faculty sponsor is doing everything in her power to prevent that from happening. I really do owe a great debt of gratitude to her.
Attendance was rather poor last week. My understanding is that most who signed up were faced with a harsh editing deadline. My cynical opinion is that if you can't make it to the first session, you can't make it to the class, period. I'm sure I'm just responding out of retaliation, though, since far beyond the lack of turnout, I was annoyed that only two contacted me in any way saying what was up. Personally, I find this sort of rude behaviour rather intolerable out of classmates and friends as much as potential students.
But everyone's saying I'm being too strict, so what do I know?
This upcoming Monday, we will be talking about surrealism in anime. I admit that even though this is a subject of great interest to me, I haven't as thoroughly researched it as I should. I'm depending on my co-presenter, Erik, to draw upon Japanese theatre for much of the lecture. I would also pose a closer association between Japanese animation and experimental cinema, but without a strong theoretical basis for that, I have only my experiences, really, to draw from.
This is also something I'm running aground with in my thesis, the fact that there is little critical literature directly applicable to my subject. My ambition with my paper was to create that literature, so to found a body of work from which future theorists could hopefully draw, but I hadn't anticipated having to do it again for my class. It seemed a lot easier to stick DVDs in without comment if there were more than just a handful of students.
Well, maybe this coming week will surprise me.
Attendance was rather poor last week. My understanding is that most who signed up were faced with a harsh editing deadline. My cynical opinion is that if you can't make it to the first session, you can't make it to the class, period. I'm sure I'm just responding out of retaliation, though, since far beyond the lack of turnout, I was annoyed that only two contacted me in any way saying what was up. Personally, I find this sort of rude behaviour rather intolerable out of classmates and friends as much as potential students.
But everyone's saying I'm being too strict, so what do I know?
This upcoming Monday, we will be talking about surrealism in anime. I admit that even though this is a subject of great interest to me, I haven't as thoroughly researched it as I should. I'm depending on my co-presenter, Erik, to draw upon Japanese theatre for much of the lecture. I would also pose a closer association between Japanese animation and experimental cinema, but without a strong theoretical basis for that, I have only my experiences, really, to draw from.
This is also something I'm running aground with in my thesis, the fact that there is little critical literature directly applicable to my subject. My ambition with my paper was to create that literature, so to found a body of work from which future theorists could hopefully draw, but I hadn't anticipated having to do it again for my class. It seemed a lot easier to stick DVDs in without comment if there were more than just a handful of students.
Well, maybe this coming week will surprise me.
12.15.2007
Anime Pancake
It's been my dream since I came to UCLA to direct a course while still in undergrad. Unfortunately, UCLA doesn't allow students in the professional schools to participate in the USIE programme-- a huge injustice, if you ask me. However, largely thanks to Belinda, we've managed a work-around.
A few weeks ago, per Belinda's advice, I founded a new student club with Erik and one of the film juniors. We're calling ourselves MelGowan, after the film and theatre buildings, Melnitz and MacGowan. (A proposed Art-Theatre-Film-Music club would be called Brogownitzberg, but we didn't want to get too ahead of ourselves.) While I'd love to see MelGowan go places, including setting up a roster of students by specialisation, for the here and now, being incorporated as a club nets us funding and, even more importantly, legitimacy.
With MelGowan as our banner, Belinda was able to convince the head of scheduling to let us secure the most coveted of all screening rooms, the Design Room, on Monday nights for the duration of the winter quarter. We'll have full access privileges, able to use any of the given media playback stations (video, DVD, 16mm, etc) to screen any content we like, to whomever we like.
So, it's not a class, per se, but rather a set of seminars. Light on lecture (good, because I could never lecture in a way to give the material justice) and heavy on the crazy. We're screening feature-length anime, particularly from auteurs known for their superflatist and socially-critical leanings. And it's because of their dabbling with this uniquely-Japanese style of postmodernism, superflat, that there could only be one name for the series: Anime Pancake.
(Erik and I considered briefly naming it Okonomiyaki, but thought that was being a little mean.)
A webpage with all the details will come soon, as well as a page for MelGowan. At the moment the screening series is open to all comers, although we're giving preference to TFT students and faculty if there's exceptional interest. But interest will, of course, depend on me ensuring more than 10 people know about it...
A few weeks ago, per Belinda's advice, I founded a new student club with Erik and one of the film juniors. We're calling ourselves MelGowan, after the film and theatre buildings, Melnitz and MacGowan. (A proposed Art-Theatre-Film-Music club would be called Brogownitzberg, but we didn't want to get too ahead of ourselves.) While I'd love to see MelGowan go places, including setting up a roster of students by specialisation, for the here and now, being incorporated as a club nets us funding and, even more importantly, legitimacy.
With MelGowan as our banner, Belinda was able to convince the head of scheduling to let us secure the most coveted of all screening rooms, the Design Room, on Monday nights for the duration of the winter quarter. We'll have full access privileges, able to use any of the given media playback stations (video, DVD, 16mm, etc) to screen any content we like, to whomever we like.
So, it's not a class, per se, but rather a set of seminars. Light on lecture (good, because I could never lecture in a way to give the material justice) and heavy on the crazy. We're screening feature-length anime, particularly from auteurs known for their superflatist and socially-critical leanings. And it's because of their dabbling with this uniquely-Japanese style of postmodernism, superflat, that there could only be one name for the series: Anime Pancake.
(Erik and I considered briefly naming it Okonomiyaki, but thought that was being a little mean.)
A webpage with all the details will come soon, as well as a page for MelGowan. At the moment the screening series is open to all comers, although we're giving preference to TFT students and faculty if there's exceptional interest. But interest will, of course, depend on me ensuring more than 10 people know about it...
12.13.2007
I guess I'll log out and go check my email or something.
Of course, it's also possible the exceptionally large check from my grandparents was actually my inheritance from my great-grandmother, who died this past summer.
That's a fact I still feel numb about. In fact, I keep blocking it out and forgetting it until someone reminds me, and then I scramble desperately to muffle the thought again. Part of me thinks that if I actually tried grappling with it, it'll ruin me, just like I've so far been unable to properly face my maternal grandfather's death.
I think sometimes I'm so "new media" oriented because I don't want to think too hard about human life and its predictability. I don't want to deal with the immensity of the human record thus far. It's a cowardly position to take, but it's been a mentally debilitating quarter. Ask me next year.
~
The year is, fortunately, nearly over for me. I completed my last final today-- a history class, appropriately enough; I haven't dealt with US history since I was 16. I didn't forget very much, apparently.
This past Tuesday I also delivered a DVD to my faculty advisor, containing captured footage from .hack to better illustrate the thrust of my paper and what I've been working on this quarter. I'd've like to shown more, but it was a very last-second thing, and I didn't really want to waste his time. Though one of these days I'm going to have to start behaving very selfishly if I want him to take the slightest active interest in the project.
But that, too, is nothing new.
I treated a friend to a graduation dinner last night, and tomorrow I'm taking Josh, my alter-ego, to Write Aid, the WGA comedy benefit being hosted at my school. A nice thing to go out on, apart from the mini-movie we're shooting together with the third member of our Three Amigos, Kevin. But that's Monday. Friday through Sunday is a movie set, and a fairly exciting one, at that. Dan knows how to get a good energy flowing, even for an exhausted, long-suffering crew. Stills and video coming soon.
That's a fact I still feel numb about. In fact, I keep blocking it out and forgetting it until someone reminds me, and then I scramble desperately to muffle the thought again. Part of me thinks that if I actually tried grappling with it, it'll ruin me, just like I've so far been unable to properly face my maternal grandfather's death.
I think sometimes I'm so "new media" oriented because I don't want to think too hard about human life and its predictability. I don't want to deal with the immensity of the human record thus far. It's a cowardly position to take, but it's been a mentally debilitating quarter. Ask me next year.
~
The year is, fortunately, nearly over for me. I completed my last final today-- a history class, appropriately enough; I haven't dealt with US history since I was 16. I didn't forget very much, apparently.
This past Tuesday I also delivered a DVD to my faculty advisor, containing captured footage from .hack to better illustrate the thrust of my paper and what I've been working on this quarter. I'd've like to shown more, but it was a very last-second thing, and I didn't really want to waste his time. Though one of these days I'm going to have to start behaving very selfishly if I want him to take the slightest active interest in the project.
But that, too, is nothing new.
I treated a friend to a graduation dinner last night, and tomorrow I'm taking Josh, my alter-ego, to Write Aid, the WGA comedy benefit being hosted at my school. A nice thing to go out on, apart from the mini-movie we're shooting together with the third member of our Three Amigos, Kevin. But that's Monday. Friday through Sunday is a movie set, and a fairly exciting one, at that. Dan knows how to get a good energy flowing, even for an exhausted, long-suffering crew. Stills and video coming soon.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)