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OUTFEST

University of California, Los Angeles, Department of Theater, Film & Television

STORIES

The Aids Monument

UCLA Legacy Project

In an interview with Maria Shriver about the industry he then dominated, Andy Kuehn boasted, “we can lie like nobody’s business.” He was describing trailers, a cinematic genre in which words and images are painstakingly arranged to lodge a story and an idea in the mind of the audience. A trailer is not an argument or a proof, an affidavit or a report, but an audio-visual virus, designed to enter and occupy the mind of a likely audience member. A car commercial is a trailer for cars; a campaign spot is a trailer for a would-be President.

2020 made undeniable what we have long suspected: the truth claims of audio-visual media have escaped their grounding in rational argument, demonstrable fact, and established knowledge, for the rhetorical realm where what is true is what can be claimed, represented as real and repeated. The earliest trailers, like the earliest moving pictures, were recognized as the ne plus ultra of persuasion and propaganda, deployed by states to mobilize citizens for national service and public pride, but also for militarism, war, and genocide, in nations both democratic and dictatorial. Somewhere along the way, with a great deal of help from technologies designed to enable global communication, we exited a verbal culture for a visual one and with it the capacity for ever more spectacular story-telling and the ability to engineer the most contagious lies.

“WE CAN LIE LIKE

NOBODY’S BUSINESS.”

THE ANDREW J. KUEHN JR.

Now, we find ourselves in a cold civil war, with people and parties asserting rival truth claims with no mutually recognized authority to adjudicate among them. Lying like nobody’s business is a profitable skill for movie marketers, but a terrible threat to civilization, humanity, our lived environment and our fellow creatures. While we reckon the danger, we are not powerless to respond and contain it. In the contest between representations of reality, our faith is in and our bet is on those with the most compelling accounts and the best evidence for the claims offered. While lies, fantasies, hoaxes and conspiratorial myths are appetizing, they will not nourish the soul nor replenish the spirit.

In the work of our beneficiaries, we recognize dynamic institutions that educate, create culture, build community and work for justice. They study and deploy visual media, storytelling, and perspective to integrate the world with image, show life as it is, can be, should be, might be, want it to be, and hope it will be in this time of crisis and opportunity. In 2020, we were reminded how much they matter.

At the AJK Jr. Foundation, we continue to support great institutions like those about which you will read below because they are the muscle, bone, and connective tissue of the body politic. When they are nourished, our nation and culture is healthy, resilient, inspired by ideals instead of being rattled by fears. We are hopeful as we enter 2021, not only for the departure of a malign actor from the White House but because those we fund are working so hard and so effectively to bring the expansionary, humane, compassion-spreading powers of narrative to everyone from everyone.

Over the past three decades, Outfest has showcased thousands of films from around the world, educated and mentored hundreds of emerging filmmakers, archived more than 38,000 LGBTQ films and videos, and painstakingly restored 25 seminal films. Key programs include the annual Los Angeles LGBTQ Film Festival, the largest such event in the world; Outfest Fusion, a yearly festival of films by and about LGBTQ People of Color; Outfest Forward, dedicated to educating and mentoring the next generation of film artists; and the UCLA Legacy Project, the only program on earth dedicated to preserving and providing access to LGBTQ films for future generations.

In 1982, UCLA Students founded Outfest as a driver of LGBTQ equality. Through the creation, distribution, and preservation of moving images, Outfest nourishes LGBTQ community by presenting filmed and videotaped stories from the lives of diverse populations. It preserves the past, celebrates the present, and nurtures the future by enabling artistic expression of gender, sexuality, LGBTQ culture and its transformative social impact on the world. While inspiring visual storytellers, Outfest uses the power of movies to promote acceptance and equality for all LGBTQ people.

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U C L A F I L M & T E L E V I S I O N

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The UCLA Film & Television Archive is the second largest moving image archive in the United States and the world’s largest university-owned repository of media materials. An unparalleled resource for UCLA’s Department of Theater, Film & TV, the Archive is a destination for visual storytellers, film historians, students of media and working professionals.

Combining gifts and acquisitions from all the major studios and television networks, leading producers, and legendary figures from the history of broadcasting, the Archive prioritizes preservation and restoration. As the collection grows, iconic materials are continually returned to public view and made available for scholarly research. Screenings of rare and important art-house and historical works at the Archive’s Billy Wilder Theater make this superb, Westwood venue a global destination for film lovers.

During this past year, UCLA Film & Television Archive in collaboration with Outfest exhibited LGBTQIA+ moving image media with screenings of high-profile, topical, and entertaining programs. Thanks to the vital support of the Andrew J. Kuehn Jr Foundation, the Outfest UCLA Legacy Project Screening Series continued, even though in-person screenings were suspended in March because of the pandemic. Pivoting nimbly, the Archive began showcasing its extraordinary content online by way of its Virtual Screening Room initiative.

The screening initiative debuted with INTERSECTIONS: RACE, GENDER, SEXUALITY, and the LGBTQ+ FAMILY, a program that combined short-form documentary, vérité docudrama, and newsmagazine segments. The Archive presents one Legacy Project screening per month.

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Program information can be found here:

cinema.ucla.edu/events/2020/06/26/intersections-race-gender-sexuality-and-lgbtq-family

Outfest and the UCLA Film & Television Archive partnered in 2005 to create the Outfest UCLA Legacy Project, the only program in the world exclusively dedicated to preserving lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender moving images at risk of becoming lost due to deterioration and neglect. Together, these two institutions have established the largest publicly accessible collection of LGBTQ moving images anywhere in the world.

In this last grant year, AJK resources supported a guest curator initiative with a screening of SOMETHING SPECIAL (WILLY/MILLY) presented by trans filmmaker Rhys Ernst and introduced by LGBTQAI+ film historian Jenni Olson. View the Q&A

Other films presented in the 2019 and 2020 funding year include a British Film Institute print of Isaac Julien’s YOUNG SOUL REBELS (1991) and the Archive’s 35mm print of Ang Lee’s THE WEDDING BANQUET (1993).

Director Rhys Ernst in conversation with film historian Jenni Olson

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Watch the trailer for Isaac Julien’s Young Soul Rebels (1991)

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With the yearly Transmedia/Transformations conference on hiatus, the AJK Foundation redirected its grant toward Marketing Fellowships in Andy’s name. We’re delighted to honor the following recipients

Anandita Cole

Born in Jakarta, Indonesia, to an Indonesian mother and an American father, Anandita obtained her Bachelor of Arts from UCLA, majoring in Classical Civilizations, with minors in Digital Humanities and Film, TV, and Digital Media. She worked at Paramount Pictures in their International Marketing Partnerships program while an undergraduate. She then attended the UCLA Producers Program in 2020, while interning for 3 Arts Entertainment and Swisher Productions.

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Jazmyn Wright

A graduate of the UCLA Producers Program (with a 3.8 GPA), Jazmyn hails from the San Francisco Bay Area. With her major in African American and African Studies and a minor in Film, she long dreamed of becoming a screenwriter. As a woman of color with multiple intersecting identities, Jazmyn knows marginalized groups deserve to see their lives on screen. She aspires to be a creator and showrunner in order to make her vision a reality.

The world-renowned UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television is an interdisciplinary professional school that develops outstanding storytellers, industry leaders and scholars whose voices enlighten, engage and inspire the world. For its diverse mix of undergraduate and graduate students, TFT offers courses in acting, directing, writing, producing, animation, cinematography, digital arts, lighting design, set design, costume design, sound design and Moving Image Archive Studies.

The school confers BA, MA and PhD degrees in Theater and Performance Studies as well as in Cinema & Media Studies, educating gifted, creative and ambitious students in their pursuit of careers in theater, motion picture arts and digital media.

U N I V E R S I T Y O F C A L I F O R N I A , L O S A N G E L E S ,

D E P A R T M E N T O F T H E A T E R , F I L M &

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The Andrew J. Kuehn, Jr. Fund for Producing and Media Marketing also made grants to industry veterans Glenn Williamson and Tom Nunan, members of the faculty at UCLA’s renowned Producers Program:

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A producer and studio executive, Glenn Williamson is co-head of the Producers Program at UCLA TFT, overseeing the two-year M.F.A. program and teaching a variety of courses, including The Art and Business of Producing, an overview of the American independent film world and a seminar on Film and Television Development. He also conducts workshops for graduate students looking to develop their thesis projects. With more than 25 years of leadership experience in the entertainment industry, Williamson is best known as the executive producer of Michelle Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Oscar winner for best original screenplay in 2005.

Tom Nunan

A founder and partner of Bull’s Eye Entertainment, an independent film and television production company in Los Angeles, Nunan is responsible for over 50 film and TV projects, including a strategic alliance with Sony Pictures TV. Nunan and partners produced the Academy Award-winning Crash, Best Picture of 2006, along with other beloved titles including The Illusionist, Thumbsucker and Employee of the Month. A graduate of the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television himself, Nunan is a member of the School's steering committee and teaches in its Producers Program. A former president of the Hollywood Radio & TV Society, he is now chairman of the Joyful Heart Foundation.

In 2020, with continuing support from the Andrew J. Kuehn Jr Foundation, the Friends of the Aids Monument (FAM) finalized its capital campaign to build the Monument in West Hollywood Park. Reaching an agreement with the City of West Hollywood, FAM donated nearly 2 million in cash and assigned $450,000 in State and County grants, with West Hollywood agreeing to fund the remainder required for fabrication and installation

Fresh from that achievement, FAM launched FAM 2.0 which involves programming in support of the mission.

We are delighted to report the following progress:

In stories and sculpture, the AIDS Monument seeks to memorialize the AIDS/HIV Crisis and honor the courage of activists, caregivers and community leaders. Nearly 1,000,000 Americans have died since 1981 and while the losses have slowed, the epidemic continues.

In recalling and retelling the stories of those who fought, those who died, and those who endured, the Aids Monument advances the work of raising awareness and money for research and treatment of persons living with AIDS/HIV.

ONLINE

Loyal Design is building FAM’s next-generation website, a resource for AIDS history, including video interviews, short films and audio recordings, plus information about the physical monument and FAM’s mission, partners and social media resources.

EDUCATION

FAM is creating a comprehensive and interactive timeline of AIDS history to engage visitors and provide resources for those interested in exploring the history of AIDS locally and nationally.

NETWORKING

The Collaborative of AIDS Memorial Sites (“CAMS”) is evolving. Comprising members such as FAM, the New York City AIDS Memorial, the San Francisco AIDS Memorial Grove, The Wall Las Memorias Project of Los Angeles, and the Seattle AIDS Memorial Pathway, CAMS offers organizational support, idea sharing, program collaboration, and curriculum development for teaching about HIV/AIDS history.

CULTURAL SERIES

Early in 2020, FAM partnered with the Grammy Museum for a program about the impact of HIV/AIDS on the music industry. In February 2020, FAM collaborated with ONE Archive Foundation for a screening and panel conversation about the web series, POZ ROZ, in which an African American woman learns she has HIV. More such programs dealing with historical and contemporary issues around AIDS and culture are slated for 2021.

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FOUNDED IN 1987, THE ORANGE COUNTY SCHOOL OF THE ARTS (OCSA) PROVIDES A CREATIVE, CHALLENGING AND NURTURING ENVIRONMENT FOR BRIGHT AND TALENTED STUDENTS AS WELL AS AN UNPARALLELED PREPARATION FOR HIGHER

EDUCATION AND PROFESSIONAL ATTAINMENT IN THE ARTS. OCSA RANKS AMONG THE TOP SCHOOLS IN THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA.

The only specialized arts program of its kind in the region, OCSA offers tuition-free academic and arts instruction to students from Orange, Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino and San Diego counties. A non-profit, OCSA relies on private and corporate donations to finance its many arts conservatories.

Serving 2,000 students in grades 7-12 from over 100 cities across Southern California, OCSA places personal growth and educational achievement first. Excellence, innovation, professionalism and integrity are expected of every student.

At OCSA, as with other schools, the abrupt end to class instruction and opportunities for in-person collaboration was an existential shock. But it also proved an inspiration, posing creative challenges to Film & Television Conservatory students as they prepare for careers in an industry where flexibility and resilience are critical. When most Spring projects were canceled, instruction moved online and students, faculty and staff leaned in to adapt, learn, create and grow together while apart. Video Conferencing made workshops with (suddenly available) industry leaders a regular occurrence and virtual film festivals delivered a wider audience pool than ever. Students learned to learn and create in new and unanticipated ways.

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This year the Spring Cineplex was hosted live online by Directors Cut Productions, a production house owned by FTV alum Josh Kaufman. This festival screened works made before and after the shutdown with many projects produced exclusively under quarantine. Adding a grace note, acclaimed directors Joe Russo (Avengers: Endgame) and Sam Hargrave (Extraction) recorded shout-outs to our students and graduates.

In the first film on the program, Friday the 13th, 2020, a student’s Quarantine experience gets an amusing animated treatment.

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S P E A K E R S

THE FILM & TV CONSERVATORY WAS THRILLED TO HAVE THESE GUEST INSTRUCTORS WORKING WITH STUDENTS.

• Cinematographer Tom Sigel (X-Men, Bohemian Rhapsody, Extraction) • TV writer Tim Meltreger (Psych, Swedish Dicks)

• Producers Jeff Waxman Jennifer Madeloff (John Wick movies) • Producer Patrick Newall (Extraction, The Old Man and the Gun)

• HBO VP of Programming Kathleen McCaffrey

• Costume Designer Ruth E Carter (Black Panther, Selma, Malcolm X) • Script Supervisor/Director Paula Hunziker (24, Pretty Little Liars)

• TV writer, producer Kenneth Johnson (The Bionic Woman, The Incredible Hulk) • Sound Designer Jon Vogl (12 Years a Slave, Logan, In the Heights)

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Though the post-production facilities built with AJK grants could not be used, students participated in zoom-enabled workshops on After Effects (special effects software), Da Vinci Resolve (editing and coloring software) and ProTools (sound mixing and editing software

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In July 2020, the Film & TV Conservatory uploaded , rather than presented, its Season Finale Showcase, including the Senior Class Reel

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F A L L “ B A C K T O S C H O O L ”

V I R T U A L S H O W C A S E

Every Fall OCSA presents a Back-to-School festival where students screen work they’ve done outside class and over the Summer. This year’s showcase featured narratives, documentaries and animation.

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Ordinarily, in the Fall, OCSA presents a Senior Film Showcase and a Meet and Greet for film school reps as part of its College Fair. In 2020, the fair was virtual, so students showcased their work and themselves digitally.

N a rr a ti ve f il m s, d o cu m e n ta ri e s a n d p h o to g ra p h y fr o m O C S A ’s C la ss o f ‘2 1

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As in previous years, FTV students and alumni screened their work at festivals nationwide where they distinguished themselves yet again.

Sky Lu won Best Editing for Cookies for Mom at the Yorba Linda Public Library

Teen Film Fest

Maggie Ding won Best Documentary

award for Left Behind at the TVT SoCal Film Festival

Ethan Chu won a $1,000 award from the

Grand Foundation Student Film Festival for his doc Life at a Japanese High

School

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I N C L U D E

Cinema at the Edge Film Festival, Official

Selection, Santa Monica

Poly Film Festival, Official Selection, Pasadena San Luis Obispo International Film Festival,

Official Selection

WESTFLIX, Official Selection, of the Arclight in

Hollywood

WorldFest-Houston International Film & Video Festival - Silver Remi Award in the Student Film

Productions – High School.

Phantoscope - Best Film (plus $1,000 prize money)

and Best Cinematography

Westflix - Lizzie Award for Best Overall, Lizzie

Award for Direction, and Lizzie Award for Originality (Live Action)

The IndieFEST Film Awards - Award of Excellence

Special Mention (Winner of Young Filmmaker category)

The film also became an official selection of the

Chicago Southland International Film Festival

and the Breckenridge Film Festival.

Congrats to Nolan Trifunovic, whose film Diamond Game made a splash at these festivals

Diamond Game also won the Teen CATE (i.e. best teen film) award at the Cinema at

the Edge Film Festival

At the All American High School Film Festival, nearly a dozen FTV student and alumni films were selected for competition, with nominations and awards obtained by these:

Who are you Talking to? – Ava Encinas, Ellie Weber (nominated for Best PSA) Diamond Game – Nolan Trifunovic (nominated for Best Directing, Best Screenplay) From the New World – Youning Jiang (nominated for Best International Film)

Youning Jiang – winner of the “Female Rising Star Award”

The following students and alums won awards from the Casa Romantica Film Festival: Best Acting: A Pursuit to Happiness – Antone Axten

Best Editing: Friday the 13th of March, 2020 – Clo Lambaren

Best Screenplay: Please Leave a Message – Daniel Jikal, Mason Harleman, Nicholas Sasano

Best Cinematography: Back to Back – Youning Jiang, Justin Shin

Best Directing, Best Overall Film: Life of an Odometer – Max Rogoff, Conrad Holzman

Last but not least, Jacob Ace Aguilar (’20) was selected out of more than a thousand applicants to write and film a story for I-D Magazine.

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C O N S E R V A T O R Y S E N I O R S

matriculated to the following schools:

Harvard, Emerson, Chapman, UC Berkeley, NYU, OTIS and York University, Toronto

LALA culture is defined by real and enduring relationships among students, teachers and staff. Attention to individual needs, abilities and interests supports a community of capable, self-directed learners. Integrated curriculum and performance-based assessment promote critical thinking and intellectual depth, breadth and agility. Opportunities to work with community leaders on the issues affecting student lives provide practical applications of classroom lessons and skills training.

At LALA, every student is asked to embrace the principles of Community, Empowerment, Well-Being, Creation, Love, Integrity, Scholarship, Activism and Courage. Creating a just and humane world is an integral part of the educational mission.

L O S A N G E L E S L E A D E R S H I P A C A D E M Y

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Located in downtown Los Angeles between Montecito & Lincoln Heights, the Los Angeles Leadership Academy prepares over 900 economically disadvantaged young people in grades K-12 for success as students and citizens.

A Charter School that serves some of the poorest students in Los Angeles, LALA returned to our list of grantees in 2020. Given the pandemic and subsequent economic crisis, both of which disproportionately affect LALA families, AJK resources were especially welcome. When instruction moved from classrooms on the Lincoln Heights campus to student homes and apartments, securing laptops for hundreds of students who needed them was essential. We applaud the faculty’s dedication to making this a reality.

Crisis and constraint are familiar territories for LALA and so, too, are creativity, resilience and determination to solve problems and succeed. For Kiri Clayton, LALA’s instructor for Art 1 and Art 2, AP Drawing/2D Design and Ceramics Lab, a normal lesson plan was impossible. Instead, to teach art during Covid19, she reorganized the semester around a back-to-basics approach, as practical as it was inspired.

Asking students to consider how people made art before paint, brushes and pencils were invented, she showed them the cave paintings at Lascaux, France. For representing, storytelling, ritual and remembrance, early humans used charcoal, berries, plants—even blood— applied with fingers, sticks or rocks. What did students have at home and to hand? Tea, chili powder, jelly, nail polish, make-up, etc., along with basic tools like fingers, q-tips, toothbrushes and utensils were put to creative uses.

The assignment: create your own work of art using non-traditional materials. Have fun and experiment

Exemplifying the commitment to social justice and leadership so central to LALA’s mission, Peta Lindsay, Social Science Department Chair, was chosen to participate in the Out For Safe Schools program, where she is helping to develop lessons, in compliance with the 2011 FAIR ACT, that integrate age-appropriate, information about the roles and positive contributions of LGBT Americans and people with disabilities into social studies and history curricula. Go Peta!

Lastly, we mention a valuable and emblematic initiative undertaken in 2019 that would have been reprised in 2020, but for the Pandemic. For LALA families, a college tour is not a realistic budgetary possibility, other than as a day trip to one of the local institutions in Metro LA. So, ELA teacher Jon Juarez organized a Camping College Tour. Chartering a bus, collecting camping gear and raising $7500, he along with Physics/Chicano Studies Teacher Martin Barrera and AP English/Film teacher

Brittany Estrada, chaperoned 25 students as they toured the great universities and

state and private colleges of California, staying for the night at public campsites and cooking outdoors over open fires. Clearly, LALA is not only a place for dreamers, but for doers.

LALA Seniors Take the Bus to College & University: the Campus tour re-imagined and brought within reach.