Harvey Milk was an outspoken human rights activist and one of the first openly gay U.S. politicians elected to public office; even after his assassination in 1978, he continues to inspire disenfranchised people around the world.
An early student film directed By Francis Ford Coppola during his time at UCLA School of Film and Television. This short would later be expanded on in Coppola's debut feature, Tonight for Sure
An eight-year-old boy experiences his first heartbreak when he falls in love with his male third-grade teacher.
Writer-director Robert Wheaton’s story of a shy guy, Mark (Parros), trying all the wrong moves to meet the right girl rides high on a romantic sensibility. Although at first it’s hard to imagine the handsome Mark having trouble with the ladies, Parros gives a charming performance as the nice guy who finishes last. UCLA’s north campus features prominently as this would-be Romeo’s ever-hopeful hunting ground.
Serena starts reflecting on the commitment in her own relationship with Donielle when she is asked to be the maid of honor for her former lover Tisha's wedding.
Francesco takes an unsparing look at the most pressing challenges of the 21st-century, asking deep questions about the human condition. The film is guided by Pope Francis who, with tremendous humility, wisdom, and generosity, offers moving lessons from his life that illuminate what it will take to build a better future. In doing so, he addresses issues such as climate change, immigration, peace and religious tolerance, LGBTQ support, gender and identity justice, and economic equality.
A voodoo doll must find the courage to save his friends from being pinned to death.
As a woman anxiously awaits her overdue period, she performs African-based rituals of purification. She cleans house and body, and calls on the spirits (Orishas in the Yoruba tradition), receiving much needed inspiration and assurance in a dream. The film combines beautifully intimate still and moving images of the woman’s body and home space, along with playful stop-motion sequences. —Jacqueline Stewart, UCLA Film and Television Archive
Daydream Therapy is set to Nina Simone’s haunting rendition of “Pirate Jenny” and concludes with Archie Shepp’s “Things Have Got to Change.” Filmed in Burton Chace Park in Marina del Rey by activist-turned-filmmaker Bernard Nicolas as his first project at UCLA, this short film poetically envisions the fantasy life of a hotel worker whose daydreams provide an escape from workplace indignities. —Allyson Nadia Field
When an aged man feels the need to confess to the new catholic priest, his gay lover of many years is hurt and upset.
An Alien is sent to earth to investigate the "incubators." She discovers that she is replacing a rogue agent. She questions her mission.
An improvised late '60s short-subject student film, and debut movie of Charles Burnett, done in the neo-realist, documentary film style. A day-in-the-life South Central L.A. tale about a rag-tag group of unemployed black male pals.
Jamaa Fanaka’s first project plays off the Blaxploitation’s genre conventions, an adaption of Goethe’s “Faust” presented with a non-synchronous soundtrack and superimposed over a remake of Super Fly (1972). Often out of focus with an overactive camera, the film immediately exudes nervous energy, but unlike Priest’s elegant cocaine consumption in Super Fly, Willie’s arm gushes blood as he injects heroin. A morality tale in two reels. —Jan-Christopher Horak
A maan is trying to decide if he should go to Vietnam with the US army.
A lucid view on an extraordinary character, recognized and loved or reviled by the crowd of wrestling fans. Cassandro, the exotic gay lucha libre fighter.
A chronicle of lives lost in a school shooting. In the wake of another tragedy, we get a glimpse of each victim and see who they were, who they loved, who they hurt, and who they wanted to be.
A woman who works in a night club starts having obsessive thoughts, beginning to lose her hold on reality.
Filmmaker Don Amis was one of the very few Black student filmmakers at UCLA (including Carroll Parrott Blue and Denise Bean) working in a documentary mode. In this film, preparations, parade and performances from the Craft and Folk Art Museum’s annual Festival of Mask illustrate L.A.’s diverse racial and ethnic communities (African, Asian, Latin American) expressing themselves through a shared traditional form.
A woman from Nigeria seeks work in the United States while her daughter struggles with premonitions and homesickness.
Ben Caldwell’s Medea, a collage piece made on an animation stand and edited entirely in the camera, combines live action and rapidly edited still images of Africans and African Americans which function like flashes of history that the unborn child will inherit. Caldwell invokes Amiri Baraka’s poem “Part of the Doctrine” in this experimental meditation on art history, Black imagery, identity and heritage.
