UC Santa Cruz Arts Division News and Events UC Santa Cruz Arts Division

The annual Social Documentation (SocDoc) Graduate Exhibition presents premieres of new master's thesis documentaries by nine graduate students in the Social Documentation M.F.A. program at UC Santa Cruz. In this episode, six of the students talk about their films.

The nine documentaries in this year's SocDoc program are the culmination of an intense two years of immersion by the students into the art of documentary media and craft, scholarly research and analysis, nonfiction storytelling, and the politics of representation. These new media makers are trained to go "Beyond The Story", documenting communities, cultures, issues, and individuals who are marginalized in the current landscapes of representation, and the films shown here are the finished results of these studies.

This year, the screening will be available online through August 31, 2020. To see the films, go to: https://film.ucsc.edu/socdoc

This year's filmmakers and their films are:
Kyle Baker: The Eighth Province
Andrés Javier Camacho: Open Line
Carlos Campos: Campos de Sueños-Fields of Dreams
Melanie Dang Ho: sống ở đây | to live here
Jeanne Rachel Lieberman: Desiertos Verdes
Mahshid Modares: Sanctions on the Sky
Brian Myers: Far From Kawthoolei
Deepika Shrestha Ross: Momo America
Boris Yaikin C.: The Songwriter's Mission

Founded in 2005, SocDoc has a contemporary view of documentary that sets it apart from traditional approaches. Students considering enrollment should have a clear idea of a project, a commitment to social justice and human rights, and a desire to study their subject areas in depth.

UCSC's SocDoc program prepares graduates for careers in independent media, documentary, human rights work, and creative contributions to a range of fields.

The Irwin 2020: Collective Solitude exhibition has had to go virtual this year due to continued COVID-19 restrictions, and the outstanding, award student artists talk about the challenges of not only doing their work in isolation, but also coming together to produce a virtual show using a 3D tool called SketchUp to create a virtual gallery experience. Visit: https://arts.ucsc.edu (Produced, edited, written and hosted by Maureen Dixon Harrison, Asst. Director of Communications, Arts at UC Santa Cruz.)