For years, documentary filmmakers have been blazing the trail when it comes to finding and developing climate stories for the screen. There is an abundance of character-driven climate narrative docs that intersect with nearly every issue: climate solutions, racial justice, health, housing security, financial justice, immigration, gender equity, food sovereignty, accessibility, and more. These stories help us understand, in intimate detail, the climate emergency’s impact on real people, their families and communities, and our beloved natural places. They present real-life conflicts around justice, science, and mental and physical health that can help inspire your climate stories and characters.

Young Entertainment Activists (better known as YEA!) has set its leadership board and laid out its 2021 priorities. The activist group, a community of over 2,000 young Hollywood professionals has selected 51 members ages 22-38 to its founding junior executive board.

Together, they'll be putting together a year of high profile events and initiatives, such as the Hollywood Digital Climate Summit, Climate Ambassadors Network and Pipeline Access Initiative. Their aim is to outline the change they hope to create in the industry by giving young professionals the tools, education, and community they need in order to use their positions and platforms to make an impact.

Hauser & Wirth is proud to partner with Cal State LA, who today announced a grant of USD 1,000,000 from Hauser & Wirth to support the undergraduate Television, Film and Media Studies program. The gift is a major part of an ongoing five-year partnership between the university and the gallery.

A screening of ‘Mark Bradford and Rio Terà dei Pensieri: Process Collettivo.’ This enlightening, 10 minute documentary follows Bradford as he prepares for the US pavilion, as well as his groundbreaking work with Rio Terà dei Pensieri, an Italian nonprofit that supports skill-based training and reintegration for inmates of Venice prisons.

On the back wall, Fleck comments on Roland Barthes and Foucault, sparking the thinking of an inner scholar. Providing a frame, moments feel like photo stills in a fantastic world. Structurally clear, there is enough time to be disgusted or fascinated. John enters the stage with makeshift wings, making a strong design statement. A brightly colored angelic sequence at the end of the show is a breathtaking departure.

I have to say, it looks like I do all of it and I absolutely don't. I have an amazing projection designer named Heather Fipps. It's a multimedia show, so I use these screen projections with video and audio and animations to let the audience know where we are in space and time, what country is it, what year is it. Heather Fipps designed the multimedia pieces.

“The Redford Center is pleased to collaborate once more with GoPro in supporting the fourth cycle of our Redford Center Grants program. Environmental storytelling is an important solution to the global crises we face–because it is essential to education, shifting culture, building empathy, and influencing policy. Our goal is to support environmental filmmakers and frontline storytellers to move forward needed change for people and the planet,” explains Heather Fipps, Program Manager with The Redford Center. “Funding is just one ingredient for bringing a film project to life, which is why we are so thrilled to continue our collaboration with GoPro as part of providing additional resources, training, and insights to the filmmakers we support.”

The diversity of students in the program reflects the cultural diversity across the CSU system, a key strength of the program, Fipps said. Students vary by age, race and gender and include first-generation, low-income and transfer students, she said, adding that 70 percent are first-generation and the majority are women.

"The piece is enhanced by a panoply of striking video effects (credited to Heather Fipps). One character confronts another on screen — or a scene from a character’s childhood will play out, replete with sequences of debauched behavior."

During the Fall Semester, Cal State LA Television, Film and Media Department’s Student Production Unit partnered with international art gallery Hauser & Wirth, Los Angeles to develop short documentaries that draw attention to issues faced by vulnerable communities in Los Angeles and to identify initiatives that exist to support their needs.

This Southern California-based doom-psych quintet has been garnering major raves from the metal blogosphere thanks to their newly released self-titled debut. The primal punch and serpentine swirl of the band's guitar-bass-organ-drum attack mesh beautifully with the commanding clean vocals of vocalist Feathers, whose jazz- and blues-influenced stylings soar above the crunch. 

To bring her “Pan” world to life, Heather and her brother James, who is an English major at Cal State LA, set the story against a surreal steampunk backdrop. Steampunk is an alternate history of the Victorian era, fueled by what people from that time may have imagined the mechanical inventions of the 20th century to be like. The aesthetic has a post-apocalyptic, futuristic feel while remaining steadfastly antiquated.

Reclaim Power is a 12-month mentorship program designed for storytellers, visionaries and change makers. For us, it’s not just about “getting work,” but about cultivating a way of showing up in the world that invites not only abundance, but joy, honesty, bravery, truth, love, and inner wisdom. That takes hard work, and for that, I am incredibly proud of each person featured in this exhibition. Moment to moment, we are all invited to transform and step into our power.

“One of the important things is how meaningful this is to Cal State LA students in particular,” explained Fipps, “We already serve the community, it’s in our mission, serving the public good. The opportunity to get this level of support and see students engage is so transformative and motivating. It validates students and their voices, giving them visibility and strengthening their resolve to believe in themselves.”

The partnership between Cal State LAand Hauser & Wirth began in fall 2017 with the first iteration of Community Impact Media. The project was co-developed to establish an ongoing program that brings together media making and storytelling mentorship to support a new generation of diverse filmmakers and to encourage students to reimagine film as a tool to catalyze social change.

With help from Heather Fipps' excellent video design, Christine's Papalexis' puppetry (and Fleck's dexterity in enacting her vision), and Christina Wright's costumes, Fleck and director Randee Trabitz invite the audience to find humor in horrors offstage and on. The program quotes Stephen King, for whom the "artistic value of horror films" was the connection between "fantasy fears and real fears."

Circle Squared Collective is proud to present The Last Resort’s Los Angeles Debut. Developed in collaboration with Circle Squared Collective, writer and director Heather Fipps uses multimedia and theatrical elements to create an interactive space age experience. ALL AGES are welcome.