Streaming—Film & Video Makers at Cal: Works from the Eisner Competition 2020
Free Streaming Program
December 1–January 10, 2020
BAMPFA from Home
Watch this program on your TV, computer, or mobile device.
Free Playback
UC Berkeley Student Filmmakers
Recorded Sunday, December 6, 5 PM PST
Watch a recording of a live conversation with the student filmmakers discussing their films.
The Eisner Prize is the highest award for creativity given on the UC Berkeley campus. This online edition of the annual Eisner competition screening, presented at BAMPFA since 1991, features this year’s prizewinner and honorable mentions in the film and video category. It offers an opportunity to see a wide range of work made by UC Berkeley students, from narratives and documentaries to experimental and essay films. The winner of the 2020 prize, Yijian Shan, describes her film Room 3225 as “a film shot in the very small space of a room with the two main characters improvising in front of the camera. . . The film digs deeply into the notion of ‘room’ . . . for an exploration of the state of existence during the pandemic.”
Films in This Screening
Descriptions below are by the artists.
Honorable Mentions:
Crossing
Ian T. Fang (2020)
A Freudian parapraxis led to an unexpected encounter.
(2 mins, B&W)
Summer Fumes
HoYin Mo (2020)
By combining firsthand and found footage, Summer Fumes documents my own thoughts and experiences in Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement through an avant-garde, personal approach.
(12.5 mins, In English and Cantonese with English subtitles, Color)
48
Erik Nuding (2020)
An alienated foreigner living in America buries himself in the memories of his mother, but the increasingly dire environmental realities around him force him to confront himself.
(9.5 mins, In English and German with English subtitles, Color)
except in the ring with my demons
Leena Joshi (2019)
I wanted to demonstrate how I could attend to the intimate, deeply felt, and experienced facets of my marginalized identity without using a highly consumable, recognizable, or legible remediation of my subjecthood.
(4.5 mins, Color)
Phobias 001
Elizabeth Scarlett Levinson (2020)
A video that captures a real phobia from the perspective of a physically disabled artist. Made in a medically safe manner. Trigger warning: Blood, needles.
(4 mins, Color)
Karaoke
Monica Wu, Yijian Shan (2020)
A political allegory disguised as a story of ill-fated romance takes place on one night in a karaoke bar.
(20 mins, Color)
Lupe
Stephanie Agustin (2020)
A film based upon the shared experience of Latina women in Hollywood as demonstrated by the life of actress Lupe Velez.
(5 mins, In English and Spanish, B&W/Color)
Georgia in Twelve Acts (Act One)
Simona Schneider (2020)
Georgia Occhi Pinti (Georgia Tinted Eyes) conspires with the Italian-German actress Georgia Moll to reflect on her life, family history, and career in 1950s and ’60s Italian and Hollywood cinema.
(10.5 mins, In English, Italian, German, and French with English subtitles, Color)
Place
Peter Shin (2020)
Place is a film about moving forward and discovering a place that is better than where we are today with the help of those around us.
(4.5 mins, Color)
Eisner Prize Winner:
Room 3225
Yijian Shan (2020)
Shot in a single space during the pandemic, Room 3225 digs gradually into the notion of “room” and its entanglement with the human body and cinema itself.
(14.5 mins, In Chinese with English subtitles, B&W/Color)
Total running time: c. 90 mins
This year’s jury included UC Berkeley staff and faculty Andrea Bussmann, Kathy Geritz, Joshua Hyman, Mira Kopell, Nicolas Pereda, Jeffrey Skoller, and Keith Wilson. Special thanks to Catherine Guzman, Eisner prizes and honors coordinator, and to Jeffrey Skoller, UC Berkeley faculty coordinator of the film and video competition.
