Fall 2024 UConn M.F.A. in Digital Media Design Open Studio

 

The UConn Digital Media & Design (DMD) Department is excited to announce the semiannual M.F.A Open Studio will be held on Friday, December 6th, 2024 from 3:30 – 6:30 PM in the first floor of Bishop Center at UConn’s Storrs campus.  This event will be featuring work from all three years of M.F.A. candidates across all departments of the Digital Media & Design program: 2D and 3D animations to narrative and documentary films, mobile apps, websites, and games.

Featured Artists Include:

Musawir Abrar (first-year candidate), undecided working thesis title, Film/Video Production focus

Sabrina Claman (second-year candidate), Melancholy Comfort, Motion Design & Animation focus

Nooshin Farashei (third-year candidate), Woven Garden, Motion Design & Animation focus

Maria Farhadi (third-year candidate), Mindmaze, Web/Interactive Media Design focus

Amara Khaled (third-year candidate), the [re]Voiced Collective, Web/Interactive Media Design focus

Yuna Kim (second-year candidate), undecided working thesis title, Web/Interactive Media Design focus

Hongchan Lee (second-year candidate), undecided working thesis title, Web/Interactive Media Design focus

Soyeon Lee (first-year candidate), undecided working thesis title, 3D Animation focus

Nurudeen Musa (third-year candidate), Of Home and Now, Motion Design & Animation focus

Tariq Rakha (third-year candidate), A Soft Heart is Stronger, Game Design focus

Evgeniia Rein (third-year candidate), The Furthest East, Game Design focus

Christian Romero (third-year candidate), The Festival, 3D Art & Game Design focus

Mohammad Edalati-Tabrizi (first-year candidate), undecided working thesis title, Film and Web/Interactive Media Design focus

Michael Toomey (second-year candidate), Deep Sea Journey, Web/Interactive Media Design focus

Maham Waqar (second-year candidate), Gulab, Film/Video Production focus

This event is free and open to the public.

 

The University of Connecticut’s Department of Digital Media & Design creates future leaders in entertainment, design, business, and communications. Students study animation, film/video production, game design, web/interactive media design, digital media business strategies, and digital culture. Our commitment to experiential learning prepares our students to respond to real-world challenges, and we encourage students to find and express their voice, building from their unique background and perspective. We acknowledge that a diversity of thought and expression is needed in today’s society and see great promise in our DMD students’ abilities to make a difference in the world as future digital media content creators, distributors, and analyzers.

 

The University of Connecticut’s School of Fine Arts balances artistic and cultural legacies with the innovative approaches and techniques of contemporary art. In doing so, the School of Fine Arts serves students at UConn in both their educational and their professional development. The outstanding faculty from the four academic departments (Art & Art History, Digital Media & Design, Dramatic Arts, and Music) are committed to providing rigorous professional education and all offer undergraduate and graduate degrees. The academic programs are supported by specialized and uniquely focused showcases, stages, exhibition spaces and forums which include the Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts, The Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry, The William Benton Museum of Art, Contemporary Art Galleries, Connecticut Repertory Theatre, and von der Mehden Recital Hall.

 

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If you would like more information about the 2024 UConn DMD MFA Open Studio, email Meredith Friedman at digitalmedia@uconn.edu.

 

August 22, 2024 | Mikala Kane

UConn Departments Collaborate to Enhance Quantum Science Education for Connecticut Students

 

If you have recently shopped for a new TV, did you wonder what the Q means in QLED? It stands for quantum, or the behavior of particles at the smallest scales, and it’s just one of the many ways a new era of quantum-based technology is revolutionizing everyday life.

However, most of the knowledge surrounding quantum science is understood and studied in college-level classrooms or by researchers. So, there is an immediate need to bring quantum instruction to high school chemistry classrooms, not only to cultivate the next generation of innovators in this area but also to educate all citizens about the current and future impacts of quantum on their lives.

Earlier this summer, faculty from UConn’s departments of Chemistry, Curriculum and Instruction, and Digital Media and Design hosted three days of professional development for high school chemistry educators, with the goal of creating new K-12 curriculum that teaches quantum chemistry concepts. The hope is for the new curriculum to eventually be used across the state and possibly nationwide.

“Professors possess enthusiasm about and knowledge of quantum concepts, while high school chemistry teachers possess knowledge of student-centered pedagogical strategies needed to support K-12 learners,” wrote Clyde Cady and Fatma Selampinar of the Department of Chemistry and Todd Campbell of the Department of Curriculum and Instruction in their grant proposal to support the project.

The three-day workshop was only the first step in their work, which is part of the larger QuantumCT partnership between UConn and Yale striving to make Connecticut “a leading hub for quantum technologies.” In late June, educators from around the state arrived in Storrs, where they spent their first day learning an overview of quantum science and its importance. They also toured different campus labs to view quantum dots using a microscope, and learning more about lasers and photochemistry; transmission electron microscopy (TEM); and scanning electron microscopy.

Day Two was dedicated to exploring and improving K-12 curriculum based on these topics. This was a highly collaborative effort, drawing on the UConn faculty’s expertise but also that of the high school teachers.

“We propose to focus on the teaching of atomic structure in general chemistry,” Cady, Selampinar, and Campbell said. “This topic already includes teaching quantum topics such as quantum numbers, electron orbital shapes and hybridization, and molecular orbital theory. These topics are the entry point to quantum mechanics but are often difficult to teach.”

To help with this, Jihyun An-Chakrin, a Ph.D. student in Curriculum and Instruction, collaborated with Campbell, Cady, and Selampinar to develop phenomenon-based curriculum that could anchor teacher professional learning experiences and collaborative refinement.

The third and final day was dedicated to helping the high school teachers visualize quantum concepts using virtual reality technology, so they in turn can help students do so as well. Cady, Selampinar, and Campbell note that most educators find it extremely hard to teach quantum science because the field is based on objects so small that you can’t touch, feel, or in any way easily interact with them – so, traditional teaching methods rely on mathematical equations. That’s where the work of Tomoyasu Mani and Jing Zhao of the Department of Chemistry and Ting Zhou of the Department of Digital Media and Design comes in.

 

“Visualization generally helps students learn concepts most effectively,” the three wrote in their project proposal. “VR can enhance the students’ engagement and interests during the learning process by enabling students to interact with 3D objects and improve their comprehension of challenging topics. … VR will help us create an interactive and immersive environment that connects the key phenomena/technologies and quantum concepts without excessively focusing on equations.”

Their first VR game focuses on Quantum Dots and their synthesis. Danial Ezzati, an MFA student in digital media design, collaborated with Mani, Zhao, and Zhou to develop this VR game.

In addition to VR learning, the team – named QuanXR – is also working to develop hands-on experiments and kits that help students visualize quantum theory. One of the kits is a series of quantum dots used in the Day Two activity. They are building a user-friendly website featuring the mascot “Qutie,” along with illustrations, animations, and films, to connect quantum concepts to real life. These can be used in tandem with the VR modules or alone, allowing more educators to utilize them even if their school or district doesn’t have access to VR equipment.

With the professional development workshop complete, both research teams hope to finalize their respective educational materials – curriculum guides, student worksheets, and other instructional materials for Cady, Selampinar, and Campbell, and the VR modules, hands-on experiments, and a website to distribute them all for Mani, Zhao, and Zhou – and support teachers who attended the workshop to test them in classrooms across the state. Feedback from teachers and students will continue to be crucial in these phases of the projects.

The materials were developed in alignment with the Next Generation Science Standard (NGSS), which are K-12 content standards that emphasize engaging learners in explaining things that happen in the world or solving problems of societal consequence and have been adopted either completely or partially by most of the states in the U.S.

“By developing curricular resources… we will not only improve how quantum science is taught in Connecticut but also in more than 40 other states [that have adopted or developed standards that have been adapted from the NGSS],” Cady, Selampinar, and Campbell say.

 

To learn more about QuantumCT, visit quantumct.org.

 

UConn Today Article: https://today.uconn.edu/2024/08/uconn-departments-collaborate-to-enhance-quantum-science-education-for-connecticut-students/

July 9, 2024 | Jaclyn Severance

Stamford Alumni Earn Accolades as UConn’s Film Program Continues to Grow

 

When the undergraduate seniors studying in UConn Stamford’s digital film and video production concentration start preparing for their capstone projects, their professor advises them to go personal.

“When they pitch me an idea, and they say, ‘Oh, I want to do the next Marvel movie,’ I’m like, man, you have no budget,” says Oscar Guerra, an Emmy-award winning documentary filmmaker and associate professor of film and video production.

“But use the capital you have. And the capital you have is telling your own story.”

It’s a challenge to share your own story – it means you have to be vulnerable. And you’ll undoubtedly be critiqued – by your professor, by your peers, by your audiences – along the way, something made all the more difficult by that oh-so-personal investment in the story.

But it’s also an opportunity, says Guerra, for a young filmmaker to write their own narrative.

And to learn a valuable lesson about trust – trust in your mentors; trust in those working alongside you; and trust that, when you tell a great story, it will resonate.

A group of young filmmakers at UConn Stamford embraced that challenge in their senior year, offering their own personal stories through a budding partnership with Connecticut Public that’s brought their work to an entirely new audience.

And they’ve racked up accolades for their efforts, most recently at the 47th Boston/New England Emmy® Awards Gala – not only notching wins for the hard-earned skill demonstrated through those personal projects, but also recognition for the young film program at the UConn School of Fine Arts.

New and Growing

The University launched its digital film and video production concentration through the Digital Media and Design program in 2019 with the addition of two new faculty, including Guerra.

“It’s wild to me that there was no film major until then,” says Heather Elliott-Famularo, an award-winning filmmaker and head of the Digital Media and Design department, or DMD, at UConn Stamford and UConn Storrs. “At a Research 1, flagship university, it’s kind of was crazy that there wasn’t even a film production option at UConn.”

Now, students in both Storrs and Stamford can choose a concentration in film as they pursue a Bachelor of Fine Arts, or BFA.

Just five years into the program, the film concentration has become one of the most popular DMD offerings in Storrs, says Elliott-Famularo, where the program is currently home to about 50 undergraduate film students.

But it’s at UConn Stamford – with its close proximity to New York, with a blossoming industry in the city of Stamford itself, and where UConn’s program will soon be expanding to offer narrative as well as documentary production – that the program’s growth has really been on display.

“There’s real grassroots efforts to build the film industry within the state of Connecticut,” says Elliott-Famularo. “That we can have a key role, as the flagship university, is really exciting for us, for the students, and for the industry – it’s a real way that we can give back to the creative economy of the state in helping to prepare these students for their careers.”

The film program in Stamford offers a more intimate experience – the classes are smaller, and students work even more closely with their professors.

They also work closely with each other, which is by design.

“Film is, inherently, a very collaborative process,” says Elliott-Famularo. “You have a crew. You have a cast. Occasionally we make films as one person. We’ve all done it. But ideally, you have a really collaborative group.”

And that’s part of what’s made it so special, according to Agustina Aranda ’23 (SFA), one of the first students to pursue the film concentration at UConn Stamford when the program began in 2019.

“Stamford is just so intentional about teamwork – they really put that in the front,” says Aranda. “No shade to UConn Storrs, I guess. But I just know that I thrive with Stamford.”

Thriving in Stamford

Aranda and her classmates in the first film production cohort at UConn Stamford started in the brand-new program right as UConn students in every school and major were about to feel the impact of the global pandemic.

“It was wild, because we basically worked all the theory portion online,” says Guerra. “That was one of the biggest challenges when we went online for the production classes – it was very challenging to do high-end production.”

Physical distance during the start of the program, however, didn’t stop the cohort from connecting.

Rather, the classmates formed some uniquely tight bonds, each leaning into their own strengths and skills as they collaborated on their own individual projects as well as their group ideas.

“The part that I love the best was working on stuff together,” says Christopher Orrico ’23 (SFA), a member of the inaugural cohort. “Because when you’re working on your individual project, and you’re doing everything yourself, it can get a little stressful, and obviously it takes a lot more time. But when you’re working together with such a talented group of people, then it’s a lot easier to get stuff done.”

What they got done was a series of short productions in which each member of the cohort – Aranda, Orrico, Jayvell Gray ’23 (SFA), Shannon Nasution ’23 (SFA), and Yazmine Uvidia ’23 (SFA) – contributed and collaborated toward the ultimate end-goal of creating high-end documentary films.

Their work also was the first slated to be distributed through a new collaboration between UConn’s DMD program and Connecticut Public called UConn Reels.

“PBS Connecticut was really committed to finding ways to work with us,” says Guerra, who’s produced multiple documentaries for PBS Frontline and who worked to start discussions with the network to find ways to collaborate. “They really liked the idea, because it’s not just that they want content, they want good content. So, it was just a matter of everyone getting connected to see the type of work that we’re doing.”

The cohort ultimately produced five short documentaries that published online and aired on the broadcast channels through UConn Reels – largely Connecticut-centric stories, ranging from a profile of the local indie-pop band Similar Kind; to an examination of the once-thriving, now-waning skateboard culture in Bridgeport; to a glimpse into the innovative Bridgeport fashion scene pioneered by Black and brown designers, models, and promoters.

For each project, the students used their relationships with each other to develop concepts, film, edit, refine, and ultimately distribute their collaborative work.

“For ‘Made In Bridgeport,’ specifically, it was a group project,” says Orrico. “Agustina directed. I filmed the entire thing – that’s kind of usually what I do. I film most of the projects. I’m the cam person and the technical person, and Jayvell edited. We all had our roles, and sometimes we collaborated even more. Hey, what do you think of this? What can we do better? What could we change? It was a great group effort.”

But they also shared those personal stories – the ones where they had to be vulnerable and allow themselves to be present in the work.

For Aranda and Orrico, those came through vastly different portraits of their fathers. Aranda’s “Say Something” offers an intensely intimate look at the de-evolution of a father-daughter relationship portrayed through interview, archival footage, and animation.

For Orrico, “The Ladder” explains the events that helped shape his own father’s life and shares the lessons of that life that are now passed onto new generations within their family.

For each of them, their willingness to share such personal aspects of their lives was made easier by the relationships they’d developed with their teachers and classmates.

“I think being vulnerable came kind of easy,” Aranda says, “because I knew these guys for my entire college career, and I knew the guidance they’d given me and would give me, if I wanted to do this.”

“We’re friends at this point,” says Orrico. “We had built this relationship, and we knew what each of us was good at. In terms of Agustina and myself, she was like, I’ll direct something and you film it. And I’m there for it. I know my strengths. I know her strengths. And it’s just really important to trust.

“Sometimes, working with other people, it can make or break something. So, trust was very much the biggest thing.”

Accomplishment and Acclaim

Aranda, Orrico, and their classmates all graduated from UConn in 2023, and they were no longer students when their films first appeared through UConn Reels. Though they’ve moved on to different pursuits – Aranda and Orrico are both currently working in different roles at ITV America in Stamford – their student work continues to achieve acclaim.

“The way that these particular students who are featured through UConn Reels were able to work together and work collaboratively on realizing these films is a real testament to the kind of community we create within the department,” says Elliott-Famularo, “and to some of the special uniqueness of the Stamford campus, in particular.”

At the Boston/New England Emmy® Awards Gala, held in Boston on June 8, Aranda won two Pillar Awards, the equivalent of a student regional Emmy®, taking the College/University – Video Essay category for “Say Something” and the College/University – Arts/Entertainment/Cultural Affairs category for “Made In Bridgeport.”

Orrico was also recognized with an Honorable Mention in the College/University – Video Essay category for “The Ladder.”

Aranda also won Best Documentary 2022 at the Bridgeport Film Festival for “Public Hazard” and the Student Documentary Award of Excellence at the BEA Festival of Media Arts 2024 for “Made In Bridgeport,” and she premiered “Say Something” at the Slamdance 2024 film festival.

“It’s always cool to accomplish something, and feel proud of something, and move forward with your work when you’re so young, because it feels like you’re on the right track,” says Aranda. “As a student, I think it’s just an extra layer of accomplishment. I did it, and I’m just a student. Imagine what I could do when I’ve done it for a while.”

It was also, Aranda says, an acknowledgement of her identity – something critically important to her and deeply apparent in all of her work.

“I’m a Paraguayan American multimedia artist and filmmaker from Bridgeport, Connecticut,” she says. “All these layers, that’s all me, and every single layer comes into every moment of my work. That could be good or bad, because it’s the way I navigate the world and a way that other people don’t navigate the world. So, all of these proud and public acknowledgements of my work, its extra special for me, personally.”

It’s also special for Guerra, and for the program he, Elliott-Famularo, and their colleagues are nurturing in Stamford – a young program, not even technically its own major at UConn, that’s already competing with larger, more established film programs in the Northeast region.

“A night like that one was a night of a lot of satisfaction and a lot of pride, to see them thrive,” says Guerra, who was in Boston with Orrico, Aranda, and Gray as they accepted their Pillar Awards for their student work. “And also, for us as educators, to know that what we do has some impact.

“Sometimes, you don’t get to see that at all, and that’s what we do as educators – you plant a seed that you’re not going to get to see grow. But on some rare occasions, like this, you do actually get to see it bloom.”

The second season of UConn Reels, which will include short films produced by a new cohort of students from UConn, is slated to air on Connecticut Public this coming fall.

 

 

UConn Today Article: https://today.uconn.edu/2024/07/stamford-alumni-earn-accolades-as-uconns-film-program-continues-to-grow/

June 10, 2024 | Kimberly Phillips

Iranian Pair Designing App to Help International Students Navigate New Campus, New Life

 

When Zahra Zare ’24 MFA emigrated from her home in Iran five years ago, she left behind more than family and friends. The blue curtains in her bedroom, the piano at which she spent hours, the sight of street vendors at New Year’s became memories when she arrived in the U.S.

“Last year I visited Iran and many things had changed,” she says. “My city, my country, even my family were different, and I’ve changed too. It’s almost like I don’t have any roots, like I’m split in two parts and trying to fit in wherever I am.”

Maryam “Maria” Farhadi ’25 MFA says that over the two years since she left Iran, she oftentimes also feels like she doesn’t belong anywhere, the strength of familial bonds and friendships tested with distance.

The idea of home, she says, is the place where she grew up, not necessarily where she lives now or where she stays when she visits.

“It’s a very bold change,” Farhadi says of the decision to move abroad. “You have lots of things on your mind. How does transportation work? What should I do for housing? What should I do for even small things like grocery shopping? There are lots of questions.”

Having family members already in the U.S. helped make the move 6,300 miles across the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean fractionally easier for the two digital media and design grad students, although it still was nonetheless challenging.

And while they say many other international students they’ve spoken to at UConn also have someone here they can look to for help, routine things can still be a struggle – like accidentally going to the Communication Department in the Arjona Building for a meeting instead of University Communications in the Lakeside Building clear across campus.

For someone new to the University, never mind new to the country and its culture, campus life can be daunting. Knowing that struggle, Zare and Farhadi had an idea to help.

In spring 2023, they teamed with two other students in associate professor Heejo Gwen Kim’s DMD class, Experimental & Alternative Techniques, to develop an app that at first was meant to help international students navigate airports in the United States.

They pivoted to test a smaller area first and instead developed NavGenie, an application that provides users a GPS-like, augmented reality map of the UConn campus – one that’s unlike existing programs because it can show the inside of buildings and locations of classrooms and offices.

At the culmination of the experimental techniques class, Farhadi and Zare agreed to keep going.

They successfully applied for funding from UConn’s Connecticut Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation (CCEI), in which they were members of the 24th cohort of Accelerate UConn, the University’s National Science Foundation I-Corps site. That’s allowed them to develop the concept further.

Farhadi says all new students could benefit from NavGenie, but it is geared specifically to international students like them. She and Zare recently added a social component like what someone might find on Discord, which offers channels and rooms for people to converse in.

It also can be tailored to any school’s specifications.

“Even before international students come to America, they have lots of questions, so we tried to create a way for them to ask their questions and find their answers,” Farhadi says. “NavGenie will help them get familiar with their new environment and ease the transition and sense of isolation.”

They surveyed about 50 international students at UConn, starting with people they knew and asking for the names of others and soliciting through the Daily Digest, to discern exactly what app features could be beneficial.

One student told them he lined up a place to live on a popular app that offers homes and apartments for short- and long-term rent, paid in advance, and when he got here learned it was a scam and there was no place to stay.

Zare says that when she arrived in the U.S., she not just leaned on her sister for help, but also relied on gut instinct and moved into a slightly more expensive apartment because she knew it would be safe. This is, after all, not her first time abroad.

“This is my third master’s degree,” she says, explaining that she got her bachelor’s in painting and her master’s in animation in Iran. She then moved to Italy and got a second master’s, this one in art history.

At UConn, she just earned her MFA in motion design and animation, developing the animation, “My Lost Connections,” as her thesis project.

She says her experience in Italy was more difficult than the one here, mostly because she didn’t speak Italian. At least in the United States, people speak English as does she.

“At least I can communicate,” she says. “But things are very different than in Iran. Here, for example, UConn’s campus is not like a college campus in my home country. We don’t have such big campuses. The other challenging part when you are in a new place is that you don’t know anyone. There were four other Iranian students in my program, and that helped.”

Farhadi says finding friends is difficult.

“You leave everything, all your friends, all your family, back in your country, and when you arrive at a new place it’s very hard to find others in your own community,” she says.

Farhadi immigrated here two years ago after getting her bachelor’s in Iran, where there weren’t any DMD master’s degree programs in UX/UI design.

UConn’s MFA program just graduated seven DMD students, including Zare; Farhadi’s class has nine. For her thesis, she’s designing an application for dementia patients.

“I try to make American friends,” says Zare, who’s applied for full-time work and hopes to stay in the U.S. “One of the reasons is the English language.”

“Also, the culture,” Farhadi notes.

“I like to find ways to connect with American people, especially because I’m a teacher,” Zare adds. “There are things that happen in class that can be confusing because we do things differently in Iran, so I’m learning about the culture and the language. But I don’t want to lose my connection to my country. I have Iranian friends too.”

The two are happy to have found each other, each complimenting the other and saying they are sources of inspiration and motivation for the other.

And they hope to continue with NavGenie.

“CCEI really helped us, but we need more grants to continue to develop the technical side of it,” Farhadi says. “We are looking for any kind of collaboration and appreciate the guidance so far from Professor Kim and the head of DMD, Heather Elliott-Famularo. If anybody is interested in working with us, we’re open to partnerships.”

 

 

UConn Today Article: https://today.uconn.edu/2024/06/iranian-pair-designing-app-to-help-international-students-navigate-new-campus-new-life/

March 25, 2024 | Kimberly Phillips

Latest Project from UConn Filmmaker a Personal One; Uncle’s Story Told in ‘A Double Life’

 

When Catherine Masud was young, maybe 9 or 10 years old, she happened to be home alone after school one day when two men wearing sunglasses and long dark trench coats, dressed as if they were out of a movie, showed up on her family’s front stoop in inner city Chicago.

The front door of the home was a full pane of glass, completely see-through and screaming for curtains by today’s standards, she says, so there was no hiding from the men who showed her an FBI badge and asked for her mom.

“She’s not home yet,” she told them. “Can I ask your names?”

“No need for names. Just tell her we’ll come by another day.”

Masud says she watched as the men turned and walked away, down the sidewalk and into a dark-colored Cadillac parked on the street, then drove away.

The minutes-long encounter might have rattled anyone – young or old.

For Masud and her family, though, the FBI at that time surveilled much of their lives, tapping phones and tracking whereabouts as government agents searched for Masud’s uncle who was accused of passing a gun to prisoners’ rights leader George Jackson and sparking an uprising at San Quentin Prison in 1971.

“I was told you never talk to your friends about this,” Masud says of the FBI and the story of her extended family. “I was told you never mention the name Stephen Bingham to anyone.”

‘The past is never dead’

An assistant professor-in-residence jointly appointed in UConn’s Department of Digital Media & Design and the Gladstein Family Human Rights Institute, Masud was 8 when her uncle vanished from his life in California after the tumultuous events of 1971 when Jackson, three correctional officers, and two inmates were killed.

She says she and her brother didn’t really understand what had happened, especially since Bingham had visited Chicago only a few months prior, roughhousing with the children in favorite uncle style.

“I grew up thinking he was probably dead,” Masud says, noting that even her grandparents in southeastern Connecticut contended they didn’t know what happened to their youngest child. “But the FBI kept coming by our house and our phones were tapped, so you could say it cast a shadow over my childhood.”

Nonetheless, as children do, Masud grew up. She went to college at Brown University, then went to work for an overseas nongovernmental organization.

By the time Bingham returned home, turning himself in to police and later facing charges of first-degree murder, Masud had settled in South Asia where she made films with her Bangladesh-born husband, Tareque. Geography stymied a chance to reconnect, more than just hearing about one another in family circles, until a few years ago when she herself came home.

What did he do all those years?

What was it like to assume a new identity?

Who was this person he’d become?

“I approached him about telling his story in a documentary. He waffled at first and said he wasn’t sure he wanted to talk about it,” she says. “He said that what happened was in the past. But as I found out later, it was very much in the present for him. The past is never dead.”

Over the course of three long interviews with Bingham, Masud learned about her uncle’s involvement in the Freedom Summer Project in 1964, his work with Cesar Chavez and the farm worker strikes in California, and his early career as an advocacy lawyer.

She answered the questions of what he did during those 13 years, where he went, and how he survived. She learned about his French wife, his continued activism, his child.

And in interviews with his legal team, friends, family, acquaintances, and supporters, she learned so much more about the Stephen Bingham who she remembered only as the fun uncle who wore a leather jacket and rode a motorcycle.

Telling more than just one story

“A Double Life,” which premiered late last year and will be screened at UConn in April, lays out not just Bingham’s story, but considers the roles of lawyers in social movements and how racial tensions in America in the late 1960s and early 1970s affected so many aspects of life, including Bingham’s case.

“The family is also part of the story,” Masud says. “There are intergenerational tensions that were important to talk about and it was important to address the legacy out of which Steve came – this background of white privilege, grandson of a U.S. senator, son of a state senator.”

Throughout the film, Masud lets Bingham and his associates tell the story, interjecting as narrator only a few times. The film isn’t her story after all.

Privately, hers is one of speculation: Could she have walked by her uncle on the streets of Paris in 1983 when she was studying there abroad? It’s also part shared experience: Both had close loved ones, a husband and a daughter, killed by motor vehicles in different years and different places, and still both found strength in that loss to fight for improved road safety.

“I remember the moment I met Steve after he came out of hiding because I have this visual of him kind of backlit and all I could see was his hair. Somebody said to me, ‘Oh, here’s Steve.’ I couldn’t believe I was meeting him, and he was walking toward me. It was very strange because here was this person who all these years I thought was never coming back and might even be dead, yet there he was,” she says.

Masud says that even nearly 30 years later, as she was getting up the nerve to approach him with the idea for a documentary, she was intimidated – her, an award-winning filmmaker who’s worked with survivors of mass atrocities and genocide.

“Even though he’s a very warm person, he’s also sometimes reserved or standoffish. I think that was part of the change that happened in his personality because of the time he spent underground, always being on guard, always looking over his shoulder,” she says.

She also says she hesitated in asking him because she didn’t want to be the source of more trauma as Bingham relived his past. But realizing time heals and older age often prompts reflection, now ended up being just the right time for the project – for both of them.

Masud is back in the United States, rebuilding a life here after her husband was killed in 2011 in Bangladesh along with most of her film crew. “A Double Life” is her first feature-length project in the U.S.

“I was in Bangladesh for most of my adult life with almost a different identity. It wasn’t a secret identity, it wasn’t underground, but it was a bifurcated existence because when I came back here, I felt like a foreigner,” she says. “I could identify with what it must have been like for Steve. He was completely immersed in the culture of a different place. It was similar for me.”

She says Bingham doesn’t regret the years he spent living underground and would have regretted only not returning to the U.S. His father, Masud’s grandfather, paid his annual dues to the bar association, so Bingham wouldn’t lose his license and could go right back to practicing upon his return, should he return.

“If this film gives audiences some insight into what Steve went through, if it gives them some inspiration and teaches them the importance of sticking to your principles even through adversity, then I’d be happy,” she says. “I would be glad if it gives them a deeper understanding of not just a particular historical period but how that resonates in the present and what we have to learn from that.”

“A Double Life” will be screened Monday, April 1, at 4 p.m. in the Konover Auditorium in the Thomas J. Dodd Center for Human Rights. It was screened at the Pan African Film & Arts Festival in January and the Mill Valley Film Festival in October, where it won an Audience Favorite Award.

 

UConn Today Article: https://today.uconn.edu/2024/03/latest-project-from-uconn-filmmaker-a-personal-one-uncles-story-told-in-a-double-life/

March 13, 2024 | Kimberly Phillips

UConn Connections Aplenty in ‘Symphony of Colors’ Art Exhibition in Stamford

 

Briana Ford ’24 (CLAS) doesn’t generally talk about her art, even if she’s asked.

“Putting my work on a wall is extremely vulnerable,” she says. “If you ever see me at an art show, I usually walk away and if someone asks who painted a piece, I’ll point to the person next to me. I identify as a surrealism/realism painter. I want you to look at it, figure it out, and not have to think too much.”

It might also be the reason Ford paints under the name Brie Miyoko and leads a dual life as a human development and family sciences major, with plans after graduation to focus mostly on a career in child development.

But her painting, “I Don’t Bang or Slang on Gang,” which is on display as part of the “Symphony of Colors” exhibition at the Ferguson Library next to UConn Stamford, marries both her interests. The piece was inspired by a photograph a friend took during a visit to Ivory Coast and shows four boys wearing smiley-face stickers, making silly faces, and staring down into a camera lens.

“To me, it’s ‘Black boy joy’ of just being carefree on the beach,” Ford says, momentarily breaking from her credo of not talking about her work. “They’re just children, not something to be demonized or targeted for failure. They are just Black children who want to have fun.”

And as much as she doesn’t like the spotlight, “Don’t Bang or Slang” was featured in all the promotional materials for the show that features Fairfield County artists, many connected to UConn Stamford, through the curating skill of Isabella Montenegro ’19 (SFA).

Montenegro says her curating experience started during the pandemic on Instagram when she’d go to exhibitions, take pictures of works that moved her, and post them online – during a time when, for many, visiting an art gallery wasn’t enough reason to leave the house.

And while she didn’t consider that curating, others did and suggested she apply to The Norwalk Art Space as its first Korry Fellow in curating.

That successful application prompted a handful of curating opportunities in Fairfield County and a seat on the board of the Stamford Art Association, which approached her in late 2023 to ask if she’d be interested in putting on a show at the Ferguson Library for Black History Month in February and Women’s History Month in March.

She titled it “Symphony of Colors” because she says she wanted to tell a harmonious story of Black artists and their experiences.

“After the artists dropped off their works and I started figuring out what walls everything was going on, when I was done hanging everything, I sat down, looked around the room, and had the biggest smile,” she says. “This show felt so special because a lot of the artists are my friends or people who I’ve become close with the past year.”

Montenegro says she doesn’t consider herself an artist – she notes that if she drew a picture of a dog, it wouldn’t much look like one – but does call herself a “creative” and does see now that she has an artistic eye when figuring out how to group sometimes disparate works, whether in size and shape or subject matter.

The show, after all, is about the artists, she says, and in the case of “Symphony” 14 Black artists, some of them young and emerging and others who are more defined in their work.

Take, for instance, Brea Young ’19 (SFA) who has exhibited in four shows yet says this one is perhaps the most special – she used to visit the Ferguson as a young child, borrowing books and sitting for story time.

“I’ve always been an artsy person and enjoyed the artwork displayed at the library, but now coming here and saying, ‘That’s my piece,’ to be able to bring my niece here to see the show and my work, is extra special,” she says.

Her painting, “Power Puffs,” which shows the silhouette of a Black girl from the forehead up with Afro puffs on top of her head, is one that Young says was inspired by her inner child. It was her favorite hairstyle growing up, one she describes as a “superpower” in which she felt most confident.

“My niece looked at that piece and said, ‘I do my hair like that! It looks like me,’” she says, remarking she hopes the young girl also feels powerful in the hairdo.

Montenegro says that many of the pieces refer to the artists’ experiences or childhood – Young’s other work in the show, “Untitled,” is a round canvas depicting a pattern reminiscent of the loud prints on Coogi sweaters from the 1990s, with which she says she was fascinated as a child.

Tara Blackwell (Malone), who is associate director of UConn’s Center for Career Development for the regional campuses, has been a painter off and on most of her life, she says, working steadily over the last decade and drawing inspiration from one of her favorite television shows growing up: Sesame Street.

“Young, Gifted & Black – Roosevelt Franklin” depicts the Sesame Street character who was on the program from 1970-75. She says that as a young girl his song, “The Skin I’m In,” resonated most with her.

Kermit the Frog’s song, “It’s Not Easy Being Green,” also helped Blackwell work through feelings of acceptance, she says, and her piece by the same name pays tribute to that while tying in the struggle of the more contemporary Black Lives Matter movement.

“I was a very shy child and wish that I was able to use my voice more in certain situations. I think I still feel that way now as a woman,” she says. “Through art I use my voice. It’s interesting because I’m very soft spoken and quiet, but my artwork is very bold, bright, colorful, and kind of satirical as well.”

Montenegro has paired Blackwell’s third entry “Good Trouble” – one of a series of paintings that display fortune cookie-type sayings and in this case declares from civil right activist John Lewis, “Get in good trouble, necessary trouble” – with paintings of Malcolm X and Lewis, a former U.S. representative.

“I didn’t ask for any of the artists for specific works. I also didn’t ask them to send me a photograph ahead of time. I just gave them the theme, title, and what I was looking for, so when they dropped off their submissions that was the first time, in many cases, that I saw them,” Montenegro says.

In some instances, like with the John Lewis quote, the pairings came naturally. On the two curved walls of the gallery space, though, Montenegro needed to get a little more creative.

“I grew up taking art classes but there wasn’t anything that I felt confident enough about to keep pursuing. In high school I took a marketing elective, and at UConn was drawn to DMD with a concentration in digital media strategy for business,” Montenegro says, adding of her work as curator, “I’ve now come full circle.”

“Symphony of Colors” is on display through March 21 in the Third Floor Auditorium Gallery at the Ferguson Library’s main branch, 1 Public Library Plaza, Stamford. It’s two blocks from UConn Stamford in the city’s downtown.

 

 

UConn Today Article: https://today.uconn.edu/2024/03/uconn-connections-aplenty-in-symphony-of-colors-art-exhibition-in-stamford/

Resurgence:: 2024 UConn B.F.A. in Digital Media Design Senior Exhibition 

 

The UConn Digital Media & Design (DMD) Department is excited to announce the 2024 DMD BFA Senior Exhibition, Resurgence. The in-person exhibition is open from April 6 to April 24, 2024 in the Jorgensen Gallery at UConn’s Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts, with an opening reception on Friday, April 5 from 4:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. EDT.  Also featured on opening night are two programs of screenings of films and animations in the Jorgensen Auditorium at 3:00 p.m. and 6:30 p.m., culminating with awards. Regular gallery hours are Monday to Friday, 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., and prior to performances, and during most intermissions. All events are free and open to the public.

 

Limitless features the work of 45 senior UConn DMD Bachelor of Fine Arts students from the Storrs and Stamford campuses. Exhibited artworks range from 2D and 3D animations to narrative and documentary films, mobile apps, websites, and games. The title Resurgence reflects the expansive hopes of the exhibiting artists – to rise up against challenges and to overcome setbacks. To learn more about the exhibition, visit: http://dmd.uconn.edu/bfashow. 

 

Exhibiting artists:

Manuel Alvarez (East Hartford, Conn.), God Mode, narrative short film
Palmer Anderson (Madison, Conn.), To Be Changed, 3D animation
Hannah Bagley (Mystic, Conn.), Unwavering, video game
Paolo Bautista (Newington, Conn.), Nurtured by Nature, Perfected by Science, website
Evan Beaman (New Hartford, Conn.), RACE INSTINCT, narrative short film
Robin Bologna (Greenwich, Conn.), Bothersome, 3D animation
Samantha Bresmon (Bethel, Conn.), Numi the Goblin Girl, 2D animation
Jason Chan (West Hartford, Conn.), Apple’s Law, 2D animation
Nick Cioffi (Trumbull, Conn.), The GM’s Grudge, 3D animation
Kasimir Comunale (New Haven, Conn.), Fishtopher, 2D animation
Pedro DeLima (Danbury, Conn.), The Princess and The Sword, 2D animation
Veronica Fahs (Wilton, Conn.), Ilaria, narrative short film
Megan Flynn (Chatham, N.J.), ClimbConnect, mobile app
Sydney Fournier (South Windsor, Conn.) Growing Pains, 3D animation
Matt Freeman (Amesbury, Mass.), Hockey Threads, website
DJ Furano (Greenwich, Conn.), Eyes in the Sky, documentary short film
Brooklyn Green (Vernon, Conn.), Marcy’s House, documentary short film
Alexander Gutting (Weston, Mass.), The Mysterious Box, 3D animation
John Hitchiner (Granby, Conn.), Dreamin’, 2D animation
Eun Sok Hong (Shelton, Conn.), Love Letter, 2D animation
Yuri Jimenez (Bridgeport, Conn.), UConn Outing, mobile app
Lexis Johnson (Paxton, Mass.), Prayer to God, narrative short film
Matthews Jordao (Trumbull, Conn.), It’s Gonna Be Okay, narrative short film
Kieran Kelly (Bernardsville, N.J.), Mouse House Maze, 3D animation
Haydn Kerr (Sydney, Australia), Cosmic Journey, website
Jonathan Kopeliovich (Los Angeles, Calif.), WHUS Radio: 100 Waves of Sound, website
Carlie Kubisek (Southington, Conn.), Cardinal North, 3D animation
Mary McGaffigan (Tyngsboro, Mass.), The Guided Path, 2D animation
Marisa Morneau (Ellington, Conn.), 80HD, mobile app
Gabriel Pontore (Newtown, Conn.), Labyrinth of Past Echoes, 3D animation
Dante Radcliffe (Groton, Conn.), Testing Me, 2D animation
Joy Rollins (Storrs, Conn.), Lune and the Light, 2D animation
Lauren Ruggiero (Andover, Conn.), Time Consuming, 2D animation
Sydney Salazar (Ansonia, Conn.), For Granted, 2D animation
Sydney Salomon (Long Island, N.Y.), Jack of All Trades, 2D animation
Evelyn Santana (Stratford, Conn.), Wisp’s Call, 2D animation
Gabriella Shorr (East Greenwich, R.I.), The Chocoholics’ Guide to College Baking, website
Daniel Suitum (Woodstock, Conn.), A Parent-ly Knot, video game
Tony Tran (Branford, Conn.), Baneland, video game
Jasper Treese (Cape Code, Mass.), Imposter, documentary short film
Allison Tuttle (Killingworth, Conn.), Reminiscing, documentary short film
Karli Vare (Fairfield, Conn.), Yarn Over, website
Annamaria Vdovenko (Simbury, Conn.), Rabbit Hole, 2D animation
Bianca Velez (Norwalk, Conn.), WorryBox, mobile app
Christopher Vivas-Nava (Bridgeport, Conn.), Reminiscent, 2D animation
Brandon Zheng (Willimantic, Conn.), Witch and Mushkin, 3D animation

 

The University of Connecticut’s Department of Digital Media & Design creates future leaders in entertainment, design, business, and communications. Students study animation, film/video production, game design, web/interactive media design, digital media business strategies, and digital culture. Our commitment to experiential learning prepares our students to respond to real-world challenges, and we encourage students to find and express their voice, building from their unique background and perspective. We acknowledge that a diversity of thought and expression is needed in today’s society and see great promise in our DMD students’ abilities to make a difference in the world as future digital media content creators, distributors, and analyzers.

 

The University of Connecticut’s School of Fine Arts balances artistic and cultural legacies with the innovative approaches and techniques of contemporary art. In doing so, the School of Fine Arts serves students at UConn in both their educational and their professional development. The outstanding faculty from the four academic departments (Art & Art History, Digital Media & Design, Dramatic Arts, and Music) are committed to providing rigorous professional education and all offer undergraduate and graduate degrees. The academic programs are supported by specialized and uniquely focused showcases, stages, exhibition spaces and forums which include the Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts, The Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry, The William Benton Museum of Art, Contemporary Art Galleries, Connecticut Repertory Theatre, and von der Mehden Recital Hall.

 

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If you would like more information about the 2023 UConn DMD BFA Senior Exhibition, email Meredith Friedman at digitalmedia@uconn.edu.

 

Download a .pdf of this press release.

February 23, 2024 | College of Agriculture, Health and Natural Resources

UConn Connections Aplenty in ‘Symphony of Colors’ Art Exhibition in Stamford

 

Connecticut’s shoreline is in trouble. According to projections, the state may lose up to 24,000 acres of land because of rising sea levels by 2080. A unique program connects Connecticut high schools with an interdisciplinary UConn team to not only tell this story, but also help identify potential solutions.

Fourteen West Haven High School digital media students were recently selected to participate in UConn’s Eco-Digital Storytellers program.

Through the Eco-Digital Storytellers program, which is backed by a $1.35 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF), UConn is providing funding and technical support to select Connecticut high school students so they can create community-focused digital-media environmental-action projects.

“This program supports school teams as they advocate for a possible solution or action to address a socio-environmental challenge or opportunity in their community, and uses interactive and multimedia storytelling to envision an environmental future and engage decision makers,” say Laura Cisneros, associate Extension professor and director of UConn’s Natural Resources Conservation Academy. She is also the principal investigator on the NSF grant that funds Eco-Digital Storytellers.

Eco-Digital Storytellers is a joint program including UConn’s College of Agriculture, Health and Natural Resources, the Neag School of Education, and the School of Fine Arts. Over the course of the three-year grant, the program aims to serve 270 high school students across 54 school pods. Each “pod” includes a small group of high school students and their teacher, as well as UConn undergrads who serve as near-peer mentors.

For their Eco-Digital Storytellers work, the West Haven students will focus their project on West Haven’s Shoreline Resilience and Eco-Restoration Project.

 

“This partnership is a win for my students on so many levels,” says West Haven High School digital media and journalism teacher Jennifer Cummings. “They are getting hands-on experience with UConn’s Departments of Natural Resources and the Environment, Digital Media and Design, and Extension while helping to publicize an important environmental project that is close to home.”

Working with UConn faculty with a variety of disciplines allows the students to translate complex scientific topics into engaging, creative stories. The UConn team is also hopeful this project with help diversify the voices of people telling environmental stories. Both STEM and digital media and design fields have historically been dominated by a white male perspective.

“We’re really thinking about narrative structures as a way for people to express their identities and their thoughts and actions about environmental issues and then using technology to support those narratives,” says Anna Lindemann, associate professor of motion design and animation and one of the lead faculty members associated with the project. “Empowering college students to be mentors who will then inspire high school students is one of the really exciting and novel parts of this project.”

The West Haven Shoreline Resilience and Eco-Restoration Project will restore 1.5 acres of public shoreline to native coastal plant and dune habitat and enhance public access to environmental education and passive recreation in a highly trafficked stretch of the shoreline across from Old Grove Park.

“We feel very fortunate that the students have chosen to focus their project on the Shoreline Restoration project because their work will help us to build awareness for it while helping to make a difference in their community,” said Shoreline Restoration co-leads Mark Paine, director of Parks and Recreation for the City of West Haven, and Marilyn Wilkes, vice president of the Land Trust of West Haven.

West Haven High School students are collaborating with the Shoreline Restoration Committee and a multidisciplinary UConn team of seven professors and two undergraduate students to create a series of videos about the project. They hope their videos will bring more attention, support, and funding to the Shoreline Restoration initiative.

“The first time I heard about the Shoreline Restoration project was in my digital media and journalism class,” says Agatha Lima-Freitas, a senior at West Haven High School. “I feel connected to the project because it’s so close to the school. I adore journalism, and I also participate in the gardening club at my school. Those three things come together for this project. I also joined because I have little brothers, and I would love to take a walk with them near the beach in a beautiful and clean environment. I want them to have a special place in our town.”

Over the course of the school year, the UConn team will teach the students how to engage in environmental storytelling, using geospatial technology and digital media tools as vessels to convey their messages. They will be taught how to use a mapping application, called ArcGIS StoryMaps, to create interactive online narratives using maps and digital media. Students will also learn basic digital media and design skills, such as video and animation, to share engaging stories about the project.

“With this project, we can help West Haven students with an environmental project that they’re passionate about and that will help to improve their community,” explain Emma Dutil and Avi Obie, both UConn students and eco-digital storyteller mentors for the program. “We are excited to be working with them and can’t wait to see their final product!”

The students will showcase their digital projects at a professional event hosted by the Connecticut Science Center in May 2024.

 

This work relates to CAHNR’s Strategic Vision area focused on Fostering Sustainable Landscapes at the Urban-Rural Interface.

Follow UConn CAHNR on social media

 

UConn Today Article: https://today.uconn.edu/2024/02/shoreline-restoration-project-comes-alive-through-uconns-eco-digital-storytellers-program/

January 22, 2024 | Kimberly Phillips

‘America’s Got Talent’ Alum, Soon-to-Be UConn Grad Marries Aerial Acrobatics, Animation

 

Abigail Baird ’24 MFA may have Radio City Music Hall on her resume, but an upcoming appearance at the Harriet S. Jorgensen Theatre might just be the performance of a lifetime.

It’s the place where the show she’s had in her head for a decade and performed in bits on “America’s Got Talent” and “The Incredible Talent of France” will come to fruition in its entirety – even if she says it’s still a work in progress.

Baird says she designed “Nothing Really Matters” as a portable production and, yes, her 20-foot-tall rig for aerial acrobatics travels with her. That’s right: Baird is an aerialist who’s mastered and taught the skill of mid-air acrobatics.

Over the last 24 years, the Texas native has gone from circus school in Vermont to puppet school in Connecticut and traveled the world in between.

“I am a physical storyteller. I really like to tell stories nonverbally because it creates a universal language that can be understood among different audiences,” Baird, who also once trained as a mime, says.

Whether through hand-to-hand acrobatics with a partner or with the help of an aerial fabric sling held up by a four-legged pyramid rig, Baird uses movement to convey experiences, thoughts, and moods.

In “Nothing Really Matters,” she adds a backdrop of animation and puppets to the mix to ride a horse, get chased by a bear, fall off a cliff, and get shot out of a cannon, all while staying suspended mid-air in a sling.

That’s what’s fun about the show, she says, staying in the same place in the center of the stage yet traveling so far.

“I call it a one-woman show, but not a one-woman production,” Baird says. “I have a whole team of graduate and undergraduate students working on the show with me – animators, puppet arts students, lighting design students. This show really wouldn’t have been possible without their creativity and insights. I wouldn’t have been able to do this completely on my own.”

With support from Alison Paul, an associate professor of illustration/animation in the art and art history department, and Anna Lindemann, an assistant professor of motion design and animation in digital media & design, Baird’s show marries the varied departments in the School of Fine Arts.

“Animation has the power to transform time and space,” she says. “You can be miniature or giant. You can go into outer space. You can be one thing that suddenly becomes something else. But puppets breathe and they have life, and that life essence that relates to human movement is what makes them incredible storytellers.”

The convergence of animation and puppetry has been the focus of her UConn studies the last three years under Bart Roccoberton Jr., professor and director of the dramatic arts department’s puppet arts program, and John Bell, associate professor and director of the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry.

‘I can still remember hearing the applause’

But before that, in 2008, Baird started the company Aerial Animation pairing her physical skills with animations from a cartoonist friend who together came into their own as artists, she says, starting with simple line drawings and basic aerial acrobatics skills and progressing to what audiences saw in 2014 on “America’s Got Talent” and in 2017 on “The Incredible Talent of France.”

She made it to the semifinals – the next-to-last round – in both programs. With each performance, she and a growing group of animators created a piece of the full “Nothing Really Matters,” building on what had been previously done and, in the end, giving her large sections of the full show.

“I can still remember hearing the applause and rush of what it sounds like to hear 6,000 people clapping all at the same time,” Baird says. “I am so grateful for those experiences. They propelled my career and solidified my artistic voice. That was the first real maturity of my work. I toured the world afterward with those organizations and performed in Dubai, London, and Las Vegas.”

But she wanted to refocus on her art instead of entertainment.

“I’ve always wanted to be able to create my own stories and my own drawings,” she explains. “But animation is very expensive, and in order to be able to tell all the stories I want to tell, I knew I needed to have some of those skillsets of my own. So, by coming back to school, studying puppetry, and dipping my toe in the DMD and art departments here at UConn, I was able to access the resources I needed.”

Her equipment has overtaken the Harriet S. Jorgensen Theatre – in the back of the main Jorgensen stage – since mid-August, while she’s worked on the animations and shadow box and toy theater puppets for the show, which will be performed Jan. 26 and 27.

Ironically, the physically demanding “Nothing Really Matters,” funded with a Puppeteers of America Margo and Rufus Rose Endowment Grant, centers on sleep and rest, the body’s reliance for it, and one woman’s self-shaming need for it, Baird says.

“In our society, most of us have an internal struggle with our need for rest. People will say, ‘what are you up to,’ ‘what are you doing next,’ ‘what’s happening for you,’ and no one ever admits, ‘Oh, I just watched Netflix all day and it was great. I feel so much better today.’

“It’s an internal conflict we all have,” she continues. “Admitting that rest is part of our hero journey is hard for us even though it’s part of our ability to thrive. Success comes with moments of pause and reflection, and in that stillness new information comes that wouldn’t otherwise.”

She says it’s a topic adults can relate to and a show that’s exhilarating for children, making it ideal for any mix of audience members. After all, who wouldn’t want to see a bed do double-duty as a monster?

Perhaps some of the most beautiful and serene parts of the show are Baird walking through a stop-motion animation forest. It’s created using a technique that gives one-dimensional paper trees and leaves the illusion of depth.

Laser cut in a variety of colors, the trees change from season to season as she walks along. It’s an example, she says, of the synthesis of puppets and animation – the inanimate paper being manipulated to give it life as it scrolls across a screen.

She also has included in the show live-cued animation, just like sound effects or light changes layered into a narrative. Another area downstage near the audience shows off a smaller, second set of projections, these seemingly two-dimensional, or what she calls 2.5-dimensional.

“I would really like to see moving images and animation become part of university theater experiences alongside lights and sounds. It’s happening more and more on Broadway, and I think UConn is ready for it,” Baird says.

She is too.

“I always knew this is what I was going to do, but it’s been an evolution and I really believe that theater is a collaborative art form,” she says. “Allowing myself to be influenced by the opportunities that have been presented to me over the last two decades is what got me to where I am.”

“Nothing Really Matters” will be performed Friday, Jan. 26, at 8 p.m. and Saturday, Jan. 27, at 2 p.m. at the Harriet S. Jorgensen Theatre. Tickets are free and can be obtained online. It’s one of eight shows in “RojoFest: The Jerry Rojo Festival of Original Student Work,” co-sponsored by the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry and Connecticut Repertory Theatre. The festival runs Jan. 25-28 in multiple locations around campus. A list of shows and free tickets to performances are available online.

 

 

UConn Today Article: https://today.uconn.edu/2024/01/americas-got-talent-alum-soon-to-be-uconn-grad-marries-aerial-acrobatics-animation/

January 2, 2024 | Jaclyn Severance

UConn DMD Professor Documents Story of Latino Mental Health through Humanities Institute Fellowship

 

How can a documentary show us the inside of a person’s mind?

Crafting a visual representation of mental health is a challenge that visual artists frequently grapple with – painters can rely on textures and colors, sculptors can work with wood or metal or stone, dancers can use movement to invoke emotion.

“But how do you illustrate mental health in a documentary?” asks UConn’s Oscar Guerra, an associate professor of film and video in the Digital Media and Design Department at UConn Stamford and Emmy award-winning documentary filmmaker.

“It’s really hard, because a lot of things happen in a person’s childhood, and a lot of things are happening in a person’s head, so you have to get creative to do it.”

For his latest project – supported by a fellowship from the UConn Humanities Institute – Guerra has taken on that creative challenge, aiming to present an exploration of mental health and the social, cultural, and political factors that can impact it – particularly for those who have been historically disproportionately affected, like members of the undocumented and working-class Latino communities who are frequently the subjects of Guerra’s films.

“In the same way that we all have physical health, we all have mental health. We also have different protections and vulnerabilities, or ‘risk factors,’ that will make us more or less likely to get some diseases and experience them more severely than others,” says Guerra. “COVID is a great example that we are all familiar with – for people of specific age groups, with certain health preconditions, or with socioeconomic disadvantages, COVID was more lethal than for the rest of the population.

“Mental health works similarly, not in terms of contagion – it’s not a virus that spreads – but in the sense of levels of risk. We all experience stress, anxiety, and sadness. That is part of the human experience. Still, some factors will make us more or less likely to develop mental health conditions such as depression, for example. These go from the individual level to the family, community, and broader social contexts. Some examples are childhood trauma, oppression, or systemic racism. Undocumented migrants are some of the most vulnerable sectors of the population, who are subjected to multiple levels of disadvantage, exploitation, and social rejection, making mental health a priority when we think about these communities.”

UConn Humanities Fellowships are opportunities for individuals to pursue advanced work in the humanities. For faculty like Guerra, fellowships offer a year-long opportunity to research, write, collaborate, and pursue work that extends and celebrates humanities scholarship.

Applications are accepted from all disciplines. Fellowship recipients are released from their teaching, departmental, and administrative duties, but are expected to produce scholarly articles, a monograph on a specialized subject, a book on a broad topic, an archaeological site report, a translation, an edition, or other scholarly tools.

For Guerra, the fellowship – which began in the fall semester and concludes this spring – offered the opportunity to build new connections as he dedicated his time to researching and producing a new documentary film.

“For this, I decided to reach out to certain people from prestigious universities,” he says. “When I was doing my literature review, I started getting a lot of big names from Johns Hopkins University, from the School of Epidemiology. I was lucky enough to get in touch with the doctors Carlos Castillo and Linda Bucay Harari, because I’ve read a lot of their articles.”

He also began working with Sarah Rendón García, a post-doctoral student at Harvard University and assistant professor in UConn’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Human Development and Family Sciences department whose research involves the intersection of immigration studies, developmental psychology, and social justice.

“Sarah was the one who put me in touch with our main participant of the film,” says Guerra. “Her name is Ruth, and Ruth has an extraordinary story.”

Originally raised in Honduras and now mother of four who lives in Connecticut, Ruth came to the United States to live with her mother when she was 15 years old and pregnant with her first child. She’d been primarily raised by her grandparents while her mother worked in the U.S. to provide financial support to the family, and Ruth struggled not only with relocating to a new and different place but also with connecting with her mother.

“It’s a story about a very difficult relationship with mom and daughter, because usually we think that they have a reunion and everything is happily ever after,” says Guerra. “That’s not the reality for many families. They’re with a complete stranger.”

Ruth came to the project with a surprising openness and willingness to share her very personal story, a critical component for the success of the project, says Guerra, who worked hand-and-hand with his subject in a way that has become a signature of his documentary style.

“I think that her story is typical, but it’s very atypical, and hopefully in that, people can find inspiration,” Guerra says. “As a character, she’s just so lovable. The few people that have seen the cut were like, man, you start rooting for her right away. She doesn’t present herself as a victim, or as a hero. She’s like, I’m an average person with a lot of flaws, and I’m trying to make this work.”

Ruth also shared a trove of personal and family recordings – offering Guerra an opportunity to create a visual story of a life, and it’s struggles, in a way that he didn’t originally anticipate.

“She has footage from 20 years ago, 15 years ago, 10 years ago – she has been documenting basically every year something, even starting with her mom, they were always buying camcorders,” he says. “In the documentary, you’re going to see footage from VHS-C, Super Hi8, MiniDV, early smartphones. You see her from when she’s really young. We start with pictures, but then you start seeing the changing technology, so I think that on its own is going to be interesting, and that’s what we needed to really illustrate certain parts of it.”

The mixed-media aspect of the project is something new for Guerra, who has made a name for himself with the personally crafted and close-up glimpses he offers into people’s lives through his films.

But what is similar, he says, is how inspired his work is by the stories of strong women and how relatable the stories he presents are, even while being extraordinary.

“I try to make sure that you as an audience are able to connect with the participant or the main character or one of the main characters, one way or another, because the reality is that we’re not that different,” he says. “We have very similar needs at the end of the day. As humans, as individuals, we have very similar needs – the need for affection, for understanding, of trying to do better for yourself and your family members.

“I try to go with the story and understand that we have complex realities, and I think that regardless if you’re Latino, if you’re undocumented or not, I think that you can still appreciate the value of the triumph of your own will and saying, ‘I have to do this and I have to get better at it, against all odds.’”

Guerra says he completed most of his production on the film during the first half of his fellowship. He hopes to have the film completed by the end of the spring.

 

For more information about faculty, graduate, undergraduate, and visiting fellowships through UConn’s Humanities Institute, visit humanities.uconn.edu.

 

 

UConn Today Article: https://today.uconn.edu/2024/01/uconn-dmd-professor-documents-story-of-latino-mental-health-through-humanities-institute-fellowship/