Illustration by Maren Slobody.

For many people, sustainability has become an empty word, devoid of action. However, the term will find itself refashioned, expanded and refreshed under an artistic lens for UC Santa Cruz’s upcoming Earth Week celebration — Digging Deeper: The Arts & The Earth.

“Art is rarely seen as an important part of sustainability and other environmental efforts,” said Earth Week intern Kelsey Smith. “The arts are such a great way to form a bridge and express a connection to the planet. That connection is the first step to saving the Earth.”

Taking center stage at the kick-off event Festival of Arts, the UCSC student community will be showcasing their creative talents, contributing to a broader creative understanding of sustainability. The evening will include performances of spoken word, dance, song, poetry, theater monologues, photographs and paintings, to name only a few.

Many campus organizations concerned with sustainability and the environment will also be present, tabling and raising awareness of on-campus opportunities to get involved in Earth Week activities year-round. This is part of the Earth Week team’s larger effort to make the event accessible to all disciplines at UCSC, asserting the universality of sustainability.

“My hope is that [participants] will come away inspired and confident that they can affect change right where they are — in their study,” said McKenzie Laird, the Chancellor Undergraduate Internship Program (CUIP) intern and creative mind behind this year’s theme. “They don’t need to change their major, they don’t need to join numerous environmental organizations – it all is important and it all has a role to play.”

Gena Hoggard, who is scheduled to perform a solo dance piece to Michael Jackson’s “Earth Song,” views the event as a way to open up an educated and emotional dialogue surrounding Earth Week concerns.

“If I am reaching out to someone and expressing my ideas, I am hoping for a reaction from [my audience],” Hoggard said.  “If you have a successful piece of art, you have made someone think about what you’re doing … It’s a cycle between the audience and the expresser.”

Interactive installments will also play a large role at the Festival of Arts, including an open mic segment after scheduled performances and collaborative art projects. One such project is the “community art project,” where participants are encouraged to add their own painted fingerprint to a leafless tree painted on a large piece of canvas.

“That interactive art piece is to have people take ownership of what they are seeing and hearing,” Laird said. “Even though a majority of the students present will not be having art displayed … they can still contribute and leave their mark. It’s our way to say that you are powerful.”

The Festival of Arts will be followed by campus-wide Earth Week related events, publicized on the Earth Week calendar. Winding down the week of festivities, participants are urged to attend the College Eight Earth Week finale — a film festival.

Beginning with a screening of “Wasteland” followed by a panel and discussion and ending with “Borne into Brothels,” both documentaries focus on a sustainability that is artistic and human-centered.

Ultimately, as Earth Week intern Dana Frederick said, the College Eight Earth Week events aim to create a dialogue surrounding and acknowledging all definitions of sustainability.

“I’ve come to have a much greater appreciation for the complexity and weight that it carries as a term.” Frederick said.  “Now, to me, ‘sustainability’ is ultimately about promoting longevity — whether that be the longevity of an ecosystem, an individual or our civilization at large.”

Festival of the Arts kicks off Friday April 19 at 7 p.m. in the College Eight dining hall. The Film Festival is April 27 at 1 p.m. in the College Eight Red Room. Both events will have free food provided. For more information please visit ucscearthweek.com

Sierra Parsons (right) and Nikki Fathi (left) perform various works of confessional poetry at Barnstorm’s “Confessions” event on Jan. 26. Photo by Daniel Green.

“As I get older / it gets harder to convince myself / that monsters aren’t under my bed / that monsters aren’t real / aren’t make believe / aren’t just figments of my imagination.”

These are the final words of Sierra Parsons’ poem “Sandy Hook,” which she wrote the night of the tragedy and performed at Barnstorm’s “Confessions” on Jan. 26. The event had two speakers, Parsons and Nikki Fathi, who performed the work of confessional poets such as Sylvia Plath, Marie Howe and more.

Confessional poetry emerged in the ‘50s and ‘60s as a form of intensely personal poetry that often explores heavy subject matter. Parsons and Fathi each had the chance to perform their own poetry as well.

“I wrote that just after [the tragedy at] Sandy Hook happened and stayed up until four in the morning writing it,” Parsons said. “I was just completely overwhelmed.”

Barnstorm presented “Confessions” in the Theater Arts Center of UC Santa Cruz. The event’s eight poems explored various confessional topics, opening with the multiple admissions a girl shares in Dolly Lemke’s “I Never Went to That Movie at 12:45.” The poem is constructed around a series of inner revelations like “I wish girls liked me more” and set the tone for the night’s personal subject matter.

Barnstorm is a student-run theater production company managed by three UCSC graduate students. Kathryn Wahlberg, the artistic director at Barnstorm, said all the shows are directed by students and are often written by students as well.

“[Barnstorm is] a vehicle for students to produce work that’s personally meaningful to them and to take more of an active role and ownership in the art and performance that is produced,” Wahlberg said.

The director of “Confessions,” Nikki Oneil, a fourth-year film and digital media major, created a short film that served as a backdrop to the poetry readings. Instead of using a storyline, the film consisted of different scenic views of Santa Cruz, ranging from the streets and buildings of downtown Santa Cruz to an angled shot of tree branches in the sun.

Oneil used Super 8 film, which is an older type of film commonly used in the ‘60s. It was typically associated with home videos and other private recordings, adding to the overall theme of personal confession.

“[Super 8] is not commonly used anymore,” Oneil said. “It’s one of those technologies that, at the time, everybody had one. It was used for home filming, but now nobody knows of it.”

Oneil said that with theaters now projecting movies on digital, celluloid film like Super 8 will no longer be used anymore.

“As [Super 8] plays, it deteriorates, which is something that happens with celluloid film. If you play it over and over again, it dies a little bit,” Oneil said.

When asked about her intentions in developing this piece, Oneil traced her inspiration to her frustrations with new technology.

“I was sort of dissatisfied with the film department … I was dissatisfied with new technology in general,” she said. “In film classes, we’re learning about this technology now and in 10 years it’s going to be obsolete. Poetry, because it speaks to the human condition, will always transcend technological advancements.”

Upcoming Barnstorm events include The Little Dog Laughed on Feb. 17–19 and Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead on March 2–4. For more information go to barnstorm.ucsc.edu.

The Del Mar Theater, which has adapted to digital projection over the last two years. Photos by Sal Ingram.

Correction: City on a Hill Press has updated this version with two changes, one removing an error in the piece and in the other replacing a quote with another more accurate. CHP apologizes for any concern caused by these errors.

The age of the flickering celluloid filmstrip is fading.

Late in 2011, 20th Century Fox declared that by the end of 2013, it would stop making film prints for distribution to theater chains. Soon, other film studios followed their lead and in a very short amount of time, celluloid film was given an expiration date and digital cinema rapidly emerged as the standardized form for theatrical projection.

More than 80 percent of the approximately 39,500 theater screens in the United States have upgraded to digital. Because of the exorbitant financial costs of going digital, many smaller “art house” theaters with limited funding are facing a dire situation. The National Association of Theatre Owners estimated about 20 percent of all small theaters and drive-ins across the country will be forced to close their doors due to the impending standardization of digital projection.

For Santa Cruz independent theaters like the Nickelodeon affiliates — the Nick, Del Mar and Aptos theatres — the major transition from film to digital has altered the way they are conducting business.

The new computer system used for digital projection at the Del Mar Theatre.

The Big Shift

In the summer of 2010, the Nick and the Del Mar theatres began the extensive shift from film to digital. Scott Griffin, the chief operating officer at the Nick, Del Mar and Aptos Cinemas, sensed that the digitalization of film was impending.

“For years, we had heard everyone was going to go digital,” Griffin said. “But as soon as the major exhibition chains [like Regal] signed a financial agreement to go digital, everyone had to follow suit.”

Over the course of the next year and a half, the Nick and the Del Mar implemented all of their screens with digital capabilities. By December 2011, every screen between the two theaters had gone digital at the cost of $750,000.

Griffin attributes the industry-wide digital shift to the major studios’ desire to find a more cost effective way of exhibiting movies. Film prints cost approximately $1,500 per film, whereas digital files cost at most $150 — a margin that saves the studios a huge sum.

Although studios may have found a cost effective way of presenting films, theater chains have been forced to work with the more expensive digital technology.

“Logistically, it’s a lot more expensive working with digital than working with film,” Griffin said. “With digital, you have to update constantly. The software only operates in 10 year cycles, whereas with film you could have a 35mm projector which would last 30 years or more.”

Film vs. Digital

Whereas movies were once printed on large rolls of celluloid filmstrip and lugged around in metal canisters, now they are being projected through the use of a small set of convenient digital files. The files for feature films are typically stored on external hard drives called Digital Cinema Packages (DCPs).

Aesthetic differences between the two formats are slight, but noticeable. Film prints carry on them bits of dirt, scratches and the occasional spliced image. Digital is clean, brighter and delivers a sharp clarity without any of the haziness of celluloid.

“Film prints will start to run down over time,” said Marianne Lawlor, manager of the Del Mar Theater. “They’ll start to get vertical black lines, scratches, and really noticeable flaws. With digital, that possibility is never going to happen. It’s always going to look as clear and amazing as the first time you play it.”

For most theatergoers the difference between the two formats is negligible, but some celluloid enthusiasts ardently defend its qualities.

“Most people would prefer the clearest picture, and digital provides just that,” said third-year Film and Digital Media major Anthony Stratos. “But to see a film on celluloid means experiencing the movie purely. Maybe it’s just nostalgia, but there’s a unique quality to celluloid.

Now that film is being projected digitally, the entire process is dependent on computer technology. Whereas film projectionists were once quite familiar with the technical qualities of celluloid projection, now they have to adjust to the many hiccups in a new computer system.

“With digital, because you’re working with computers, you’ll sometimes experience problems and have no idea what is wrong,” Lawlor said. “The transition has really been like learning a new language.”

The Nickelodeon theatre, first opened in 1969, has undergone many changes in its transition from celluloid to digital projection.

Adapting

After the Nick and the Del Mar made the hefty investment in digital projection, Griffin and his co-workers decided that the process of digitalization lended itself to an overhaul of the two theaters’ amenities.

“Because we’re spending all this money on digital, we decided to make some other upgrades to the theaters,” Griffin said. “The Nick was re-painted and re-networked to have more accessibility for the Internet. Every auditorium got a bigger screen and better sound. We just want to do more and take advantage of these technologies.”

One way both the Nick and the Del Mar have adapted to digital has been to implement special screenings and events using digital or Internet technology.

“When we rent out the theaters for special screenings, instead of asking the renters for a 35mm print, we can just use a DVD,” Lawlor said. “It’s much easier and more convenient for people interested in renting the space.”

Griffin said although the theaters rarely ran on-screen advertising before going digital, the switch to digital has forced them to subtly shift these business practices.

“We do have to run a little bit of on-screen advertising now,” Griffin said. “When weighing our options, we thought that ads would be the least impactful on our audience. It’s two minutes of something you don’t really have to look at that helps keep our business in a safe place.”

Dinner and a Movie

In an age dominated by Internet streaming, going to the theaters isn’t as common anymore. More than half of all homes in the U.S. currently stream T.V. shows and movies, and one-fourth of them use Netflix to access content. The Internet has quickly risen as a viable alternative to theater chains.

“If in a hypothetical future the only projected movies are super huge blockbusters, then the only way to access alternative cinema will be online,” said fourth-year Film and Digital Media major Dylan Hunter. “Little theaters like [the Nick] are what bring people out to go see that kind of content.”

Despite the rapid rise of online streaming, film lovers say there are major benefits to watching movies on the big screen.

“When I teach classes, I know students want to skip screenings and go watch stuff on a little screen, and I fight that as much as I can,” said Film and Digital Media lecturer Greg Youmans. “There are some movies that aren’t meant to be watched on a tiny screen.”

Throughout the process of adapting to digitalization, the Nickelodeon and the Del Mar have strived to retain their authenticity as a local business. The theaters serve food from Santa Cruz businesses like The Buttery and The Penny Ice Creamery, and they are on the only West Coast theater chain that serves non-GMO popcorn.

“A lot of other theaters exist because they want to sell stuff to people, but the Nick and the Del Mar exist because we just love showing movies and we think movies are important for people to watch,” Griffin said. “They spark conversations about subjects you might never have thought about before … It’s this amazing communal experience that you just don’t get if you watch a movie at home.”

Despite the Nick and the Del Mar’s many adaptations to this digital age, people may still prefer to stay in the comfort of their own home when they watch a flick. For Jahnavi Anderson however, the manager of the Nickelodeon, the communal cinematic experience continues to not only be relevant, but invaluable.

“When you go into this large dark room with the sound all around you, it’s like ducking out of reality for awhile,” she said. “It’s never just about watching a movie, it’s about the entire experience of going out and being swept away from your normal surroundings.”

A FILM STILL from the movie “Where Heaven Meets Hell.” Photos courtesy of Ann Parker.

Over the past 24 years, The Pacific Rim Film Festival (PRFF) has brought hundreds of documentaries from around the world to theaters across Santa Cruz. This year, the festival will open with the screening of “Noodle” on Oct. 19 at the Del Mar Theatre.

Over the course of six days, the PRFF will screen 20 films at five local theaters including the Rio Theatre and Riverfront Stadium Twin.

This year’s theme, “When Strangers Meet,” aims to establish a sense of community and promote cultural education and dialogue through film. The films featured in the PRFF come to Santa Cruz from around the world, bringing with them stories of places and people from different walks of life.

“When you’re sitting in a film, you’re forming connections with people as an audience member,” said Ann Parker, publicist for the PRFF. “One of the great things about film is that it does spark many different pieces of our reactions. It’s visual, it’s almost tactile. You’re surrounded by the experience.”

The six-day festival will offer screenings and Q&As with directors including UC Santa Cruz professors Marc Smolowitz and Gustavo Vazquez. Smolowitz directed the film “The Power of Two” and Vazquez directed “Playing With Fire,” alongside producer and Assistant Dean of Arts Keith Muscutt. Both films will be screened on Oct. 22.

“Playing With Fire” offers festival attendees a unique perspective of community conflict in a Peruvian Andes. The film follows firework makers who, from homemade gunpowder, create firework shows in honor of their patron saint. This is documented through Vazquez’s lens.

A FILM STILL from the movie “Playing With Fire.”

“[Film] is a way of sharing communities with communities,” Vazquez said. “A few may not solve problems but because it’s an artistic expression, hopefully it will inspire other communities.”

Vazquez’s first film to be featured in the PRFF was “Que Viva la Lucha,” which was screened at the festival in 2008. In this film, Vazquez documented the lives of extreme wrestlers, or luchadores, in his hometown of Tijuana.

“[Both films] have similar elements,” Vazquez said. “They’re both about popular cultures in Latino America, they’re both spectacles, and they’re about collective community gatherings and rituals.”

In “The Power of Two,” Smolowitz, a lecturer in film and digital media at UCSC gives viewers a glimpse into the lives of half-Japanese twin sisters who become renowned athletes, authors and activists despite being diagnosed with cystic fibrosis.

Santa Cruz filmmaker Sasha Friedlander’s documentary “Where Heaven Meets Hell” will also be screened at this year’s festival. Friedlander follows the plight of miners from Indonesia who work in an active volcano under dangerous conditions to support their families.

“A lot of the themes and storylines [in the film] are very universal,” Friedlander said. “Even though [the miners] … have completely different life circumstances, there are things that you and I would experience here.”

These miners, Friedlander said, worry about money and feeding their families while still maintaining good relationships with the ones they love. Friedlander said she hopes that the audience will walk away with an understanding of the miners’ working conditions and the struggles they face every day.

In a more explicit manner of connecting two communities, director Ela Their’s film “Foreign Letters” follows an Israeli immigrant who becomes friends with a Vietnamese immigrant. Two different worlds collide and create an inseparable bond between the girls who are able to relate to each other in a unique way.

A FILM STILL from the movie “Playing With Fire.”

By choosing to show these films, the PRFF has connected Santa Cruzans with unfamiliar cultures and exposed them to causes they may not have known about before watching the documentaries.

Contributions from the Santa Cruz community and donors, including Ow Family Properties ensure free screenings to the public with the exception of a benefit event on Oct. 24. The closing benefit will include a live mariachi band and the screening of the film “Mariachi Gringo.”

“There is a great open-heartedness about diversity [in Santa Cruz],” Parker said. “There is a great willingness, which means that this festival is just soaked up by the community, and it’s just ready for it.”

For filmmaker Daniel Eisenberg, the label “avant-garde” means very little. A purveyor of essay films on human history since 1976 and professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Eisenberg does not subscribe to a single contemporary genre. His work, loosely referred to as “film meditations” on history, poses a series of inquiries into the shifting interests of the viewer, which try to examine the historical subject’s movement from expression to understanding.

On Oct. 22, Eisenberg will make a stop at UC Santa Cruz as he tours the West Coast for the screenings of his latest documentary, “The Unstable Object,” which will be the first installation of a three-part series. The film was screened last spring at UCSC as part of the “Moving Parts” film series, a collection of documentaries exploring themes of global capitalism, the movement of commodities and people across national and geographic borders.

“A lot of us [in the film department] have known about his work because he makes these amazing documentaries based in research and historical analysis …  it’s very thoughtful and beautifully made,” said Irene Gustafson, associate professor of film and digital media at UCSC. “When it came time for us to choose visiting artists, [Eisenberg] was an obvious choice.”

In his presentation, titled “The Uses of Subjectivity,” Eisenberg will be speaking about his film work excavations of recent history. Eisenberg will demonstrate how past events accrue new meanings and power with new forms of expression, through clips from his formal cinematic timepieces.

The evening will cover his film repertoire, especially in dialogue with “The Unstable Object,” an interrogative portrait of three factories with radically different models of labor. The film paints each scene with an emphasis on the subjects’ senses.

Eisenberg demonstrates healthy versus unhealthy labor, projecting both the archival sum of artifacts as an intermediary for the transmission of sensation, and the resulting radical shift in “the nature of making.”

Eisenberg stressed the importance of keeping the work open and unlimited to a single point of view, decidedly leaving it to the viewer to choose where to invest themselves within that context.

The multiple dislocations in contemporary working life are depicted in 20-minute portraits without narration, or intrinsic meaning. The proof, for Eisenberg, is in the paint.

“These are not narratives, they’re fragments, formal experiments where the viewer is positioned relative to the work itself,” Eisenberg said. “Truth is always contextual in media — there’s a world outside the frame … my duty is simply trying to understand the subject and interrogate the image.”

Eisenberg sees the urgency of the moment as a medium through which young filmmakers have the freedom to reproduce stasis, sounds and imagery.

“There is an enormous amount [in film] to invent, and you have the freedom to form and dispense ideas on a micro- and macro- level,” Eisenberg said. “I take risks in my work, and one of the most important things I communicate to my students is to invest themselves in their work completely. Failure is often your best friend … if failure isn’t possible, then risk isn’t possible.”

Daniel Eisenberg will give his presentation on Oct. 22 at 7:00 p.m. in Communications 150 (Studio C)

Illustration by Leigh Douglas

The first annual Reel Change Film Festival will feature films, art and workshops from students and professionals, illuminating environmental and social issues.

“We can use the powers of our creativity and our intellect in collaboration to make the changes we want to see a reality,”  said event organizer and fourth-year politics and economics major Jeremy Kirshbaum.

Although the event will be held on campus, it is not just for students. The festival’s organizers aim to make the event a collaborative effort for the entire Santa Cruz community.

“We want to incorporate the community with the UC campus as much as possible,” said event organizer and first-year literature major Jacqueline Grohs.

The festival will feature activities and workshops to educate festival-goers in both the arts and the social sciences. One workshop will explain the process of documentary filmmaking and teach the basics of making your own.

“I’m personally hosting a poetry writing and performing workshop,” Grohs said.

Artwork by student and local artists will be on display in Quarry Plaza throughout the festival. Artists will be painting, creating screen prints and performing interactive artwork at the event. Many Santa Cruz organizations have contributed to the event, including the Santa Cruz Film Festival, which provided support and guidance in getting Reel Change off the ground.

The Campus Sustainability Council, Education for Sustainable Living Program and Environmental Education for the Next Generation are also supporting the event.

“There are a lot of chances for collaboration … a lot of really, really talented students on campus who are doing films, and there are a lot of people off campus who are doing film and art,”
Kirshbaum said. “The organizations on campus could benefit from collaboration off campus.”

All proceeds from the festival will be given to the Rise Up Development Collective, a relief organization with aims to provide humanitarian aid in Ghana.

“We are currently raising funds to help build a clinic in Ghana,” said second-year environmental studies student and Rise Up member Daisy Garcia.

The collective hopes to create a sustainable income for the clinic through eco-tourism, Garcia said.

Social and environmental justice are pressing issues with many factors that aren’t that obvious to the public, Grohs said.

“Through the power of film and through the power of arts,”  Grohs said, “we can spread a lot of awareness.”

Event Info: 

Location: Quarry Plaza — Films will be shown in the Bay Tree Conference Rooms and the nearby Classroom Units 1 and 2.

Admission: Free, with a suggested donation of $5–10

Date: Saturday

Time: 5–10 p.m.