Hal Ackerman retired from UCLA in 2015 – but he’s been back every winter quarter since. After retiring from his 30-year career as a screenwriting lecturer and returning to his hometown of New York, Ackerman has evaded East Coast winters to teach at UCLA on emeritus status, he said. As the co-chair of UCLA’s screenwriting […]
Category Archives: Film & TV
Death within family, setbacks spur on alumnus’ film production
Creating the film “Sandy Beach” was no walk on the beach for Thanos Papastergiou. But after hospital visits, multiple delays and a thunderstorm, “Sandy Beach” has gone on to screen at the Toronto International Film Festival and was shortlisted for a British Academy of Film and Television Arts Student Film Award. Papastergiou, a UCLA alumnus, […]
Alumni weave sincere immigrant stories in “The Tiger Hunter”
One scene during “The Tiger Hunter” features a dozen men sleeping on the floor of one room. Although the circumstances are extreme, writer and director Lena Khan tried to make the scene more funny than tragic, a tonal shift she said characterizes the film as a whole. “The Tiger Hunter,” which has been showing in […]
Second Take: ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ draws from past, offers timeless lessons
Imagine a society in which the state forbids women from owning property, speaking out of turn or even reading. “The Handmaid’s Tale,” a winner in five categories at the 69th Primetime Emmy Awards, presents a United States in the near future that imposes such archaic rules on women. The state punishes reading, for example, by […]
New class explores black horror genre’s themes of survival, racism
This fall, students will delve into the hidden meanings of “Get Out’s” bloody brain extractions for course credit. Professor Tananarive Due’s fall course, African American studies 188A: “Special Courses in African American Studies: Sunken Place: Racism, Survival, and Black Horror Aesthetic,” will explore “Get Out” and other black horror films through the lenses of racism, […]
Alumni to produce, write film with New York Times bestselling author
This post was updated Sept. 23 at 12:18 p.m. Dave Pelzer’s first book happened to make The New York Times Best Sellers list on the day of his first-ever meeting with a Hollywood producer in 1997. Around the same time, 10-year-old David Goldblum plucked Pelzer’s book from an elementary school library shelf as required reading. […]
Second-year theater student makes off-Broadway debut in ‘Blamed’
Lillie Muir was a sophomore in high school when she was cast in “Blamed: An Established Fiction,” the show that would eventually lead to her off-Broadway debut at the SoHo Playhouse earlier this month. The second-year theater student was a part of “Blamed” from its conception in 2014. As a core part of the play’s […]