Events

2026 Right Livelihood International Conference
2026-04-13 08:00 - 2026-05-15 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
The Right Livelihood International Conference is a five-week global conference exploring how education can strengthen democracy, collective intelligence, and just futures. Bringing together Right Livelihood Laureates, students, faculty, and community partners across continents, the conference combines asynchronous learning with participatory dialogue and collaborative action. Rather than advocating specific outcomes, the conference positions education as a democratic practice and the Right Livelihood College as a steward of dialogue, student voice, and long-term institutional learning.
Registration is free and open to the public. Sign up to receive conference updates, session links, and participation opportunities.

The Tallest Dwarf—film screening and talk with Julie Wyman
2026-04-20 19:00 - 21:30 | Communications Building, 7487 Red Hill Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
UC Santa Cruz affiliates are invited to a screening and discussion with filmmaker Julie Forrest Wyman. The Tallest Dwarf charts the filmmaker’s quest to find her place within the little people (LP) community at a moment when dwarf identity is poised to radically change. Wyman’s work engages issues of embodiment, body image, and the possibilities and problematics of media spectatorship—all informed by her experience of living with hypochondroplasia dwarfism. Julie Wyman will be in conversation after the screening with Pooja Rangan (Professor of English and Film and Media Studies at Amherst College and Visiting Scholar of Visualizing Abolition) and Cynthia Ling Lee (Associate Professor of Performance, Play & Design, UC Santa Cruz).
Co-organized/co-sponsored by the Arts Division’s Film & Digital Media Department, “Abolition Medicine and Disability Justice“—a collaborative initiative of five UC campuses, including Riverside, Irvine, Los Angeles, Santa Cruz, and San Francisco, to addresses health disparities in institutions and policy—and The Humanities Institute at UC Santa Cruz.
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ADMISSION
– Free and open to UC Santa Cruz affiliates only
– Attend in person at Communications Studio C
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PARKING
– Parking via UCSC permit or ParkMobile
– Core West is the lot closest to the event
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ABOUT THE FILM
As Wyman unpacks the rumors of “partial dwarfism” in her family, she finds that hers is the last of a body type she has inherited. She joins forces with a group of dwarf artists to confront the legacy of being fetishized and put on display. Together they create films that reclaim a complicated history and speak back to the echoes of eugenics in the newly emerging pharmaceutical interventions that make little people taller. Through its personal and expanding perspective, the film invites audiences to a new way of seeing.
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ABOUT THE FILMMAKER
Julie Forrest Wyman’s 2012 documentary STRONG! premiered at AFI Silverdocs and was broadcast nationally on PBS’s Emmy award-winning series, Independent Lens, where it won the series’ Audience Award. Wyman’s work has been awarded support from Sundance, Sandbox, IDA, SF Film Society, Points North, ITVS, the Creative Capital Foundation, The Princess Grace Foundation, California Humanities, and NEH. She has been a fellow at the UC Davis Feminist Research Institute and a resident of SF Film Society’s Filmhouse, Siena Art Institute, Logan Nonfiction and Points North. Her films, including FatMob (2016), Buoyant (2005), and A Boy Named Sue (2000), have aired on Showtime, MTV’s LOGO-TV, and have been exhibited on five continents. She serves as Associate Professor of Cinema and Digital Media at UC Davis.
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Download and share the event flyer here.
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photographer credit: Gabriella Garcia-Pardo; image description: A group of six LP (little people) performers regard their paper body cut outs on the wall.

A Sacred Place: Film Screening and Conversation with Dr. Dolly Kikon
2026-04-21 17:30 - 19:30 | Communications Building, 7487 Red Hill Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Please join us for the American premiere of A Sacred Place (2026), by Professor Dolly Kikon (Anthropology). The film tells the story of stones, spirits, and salt springs in Makhel. The film focuses on intergenerational storytellers and their relationship with the land. It integrates visual ethnography, oral tradition, and geological features of Makhel to center Indigenous pedagogy, community history, and ecology. After the screening, Professor Clementine Bordeaux (HAVC) will provide comments and facilitate a conversation with Kikon and audience member participants.
Makhel in Mao Naga language means a sacred place. Can sacredness exist amid ecocide in our times? Seeking an answer, the film follows life as it unfolds in the mountains of Makhel, a Naga village in northern Manipur. These mountains are composed of sandstones, shales, and siltstones. The sandstone monoliths across the landscape are symbols of ancient alliance and kinship between spirits and humans. The story of the land is also stored in the salt springs, ancient seawater retained in shale soil, a geological feature of these mountains. Geographically part of the Eastern Himalayas, the salt springs of Makhel were formed through sedimentation under an ancient equatorial ocean around 50 million years ago. Naga ancestors regarded these geological features as abodes for spirit custodians and cared for them. A Sacred Place is the story of land narrated by Naga storytellers, as humans prioritize relentless development forgetting their relationship with human and other beings.
Learn more about A Sacred Place.

This screening is a hybrid event. Remote participants will receive a link to the film before the event to watch on their own. They may join the conversation via Zoom.
Please RSVP to register for this event. Register here. Any questions can be directed to seacoast@ucsc.edu
This event is graciously co-sponsored by UCSC’s Center for Southeast Asian Coastal Interactions, Center for South Asian Studies, Indigenous Faculty Network, The Humanities Institute and the Film and Digital Media Department.

Arts & Ecology Festival: Creative Resistance
2026-04-22 10:00 - 22:00 | Digital Arts Research Center, 407 McHenry Rd, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
On Earth Day, UC Santa Cruz launches the inaugural Arts & Ecology Festival: Creative Resistance, a campus-wide gathering that refuses to treat climate change as a problem of carbon alone. Instead, it brings together artists, scientists, students, and community partners to engage the deeper conditions of the crisis, and to open space for cultural, political, and imaginative transformations grounded in repair, reciprocity, and collective futures.
Taking place at the Digital Arts Research Center (DARC), the festival unfolds as a full day of exhibitions, film screenings, performances, workshops, talks, and public engagement. Developed through an open call that drew an overwhelming response across disciplines, the program reflects a growing field of practitioners working across environmental research, land-based knowledge, climate resistance, and practices of repair that move beyond dominant institutional and economic frameworks. Tacos Los Reyes food truck will be on site during the festival.
The UC Santa Cruz Arts & Ecology Festival is sponsored by UCSC Art Department, OpenLab Collaborative Research Center, and UC Climate Action Arts Network, with support from the University of California, Office of the President’s Multicampus Research Programs and Initiatives grant program.
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ADMISSION
– Free and open to the public
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FULL SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
Earth Day Festival
Wed., April 22, 10:00 a.m.–10:00 p.m.
various locations throughout the Digital Arts Research Center (DARC)
Earth Week Film Screenings
Mon.. April 20–Fri., April 24, 10:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m.
Light Lab Gallery at the Digital Arts Research Center (DARC)
More information here at the festival website.
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PARKING
– Parking by UCSC permit or ParkMobile.
– Arts Lot #126 is the closest parking lot to the event.
– Visitors with DMV placards or plates may park for free in DMV spaces, Medical spaces, or ParkMobile spaces without additional payment, or in timed zones for longer than the posted time.
– More information provided by UCSC Transportation & Parking Services (TAPS).
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This program is open to all members of the public consistent with state and federal law.

Artist Talk with Federico Cuatlacuatl
2026-04-23 18:00 - 19:30 | Institute of the Arts and Sciences, 100 Panetta Ave, Santa Cruz, United States
We invite you to join us for a film screeening and discussion with artist Federico Cuatlacuatl. This will be the west coast premiere of QUEMAR LAS PATAS DEL IMPERIO (to burn the feet of the empire), Cuatlacuatl’s newest work.
Federico Cuatlacuatl (b. San Francisco Coapan, Cholula, Puebla -México) is Horace W. Goldsmith Distinguished Teaching Associate Professor in the Humanities in the Department of Art at the University of Virginia and currently a research Fellow at the University of Heidelberg in Germany. Cuatlacuatl’s aesthetic oeuvre addresses Nahua Indigenous immigration, social art practice, and cultural sustainability. Building on his own experience as formerly undocumented immigrant and DACA holder, his creative practice collides Indigeneity, immigration, and temporalities. At the core of his most recent research and artistic production is the intersection of transborder Indigeneity, Nahua diasporic resilience, and Nahua futurisms. His work has been featured in international film festivals and exhibitions globally including: the Max Ernst Museum, the Kode Museum of Art in Norway, the KINDL Centre for Contemporary Art in Berlin, the BFI London Film Festival, the Larnaca Biennale in Cyprus, the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City, the Museum of Art Såo Paulo in Brazil, Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art, the Sculpture Center in Ohio, the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans, and the Tucson Museum of Art. Cuatlacuatl is a co-founder of the UNDOC+Collective and the founder of the Rasquache Artist Residency in Puebla, México.

Slug48—Student Film Competition, Screening, and Awards Ceremony
2026-04-24 01:00 - 2026-04-30 00:59 | CA
The third annual Slug48 returns with a 48-hour film competition—open to all UC Santa Cruz students. A 48-hour film is one that is written, shot, edited, and all music composed within a 48-hour time period. Teams and strategies for filming may be formed ahead of time, but nothing can be written, and no footage can be shot, until the clock is ticking. Slug48 was founded in 2024 thanks to the support and enthusiasm of UC Santa Cruz alumnus Kevin Nolting, former editor at Pixar Animation Studios, where he edited the Academy Award-winning films Up!; Inside Out; and Soul.
ABOUT THE EVENT
Competition Opens
Fri., April 24, 5:00 p.m. | UCSC Communications 139
– parameters assigned (a theme, a prop, a line of dialogue that must be in the film to ensure nothing was shot ahead of time)
– filming begins
– open to all UCSC students
– advanced registration recommended here; however students can sign up at the Competition Opens event
Competition Closes
Sun. April 26, 5:00 p.m.
– filming concludes
– submit the finished film
Film Screening & Awards Ceremony
Wed., April 29, event time to be announced | Kresge 3105
– films judged by a panel of celebrity judges, chaired by Kevin Nolting
– open admission for friends/family of the filmmakers and UCSC affiliates
Download and share the event flyer here.

Making an Exoneree Showcase
2026-05-29 18:00 - 21:30 | Digital Arts Research Center, 407 McHenry Rd, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Audiences are invited to Making an Exoneree, a reception and film screening featuring the premiere of five student-made short documentaries that reveal the facts—and falsehoods—of wrongful conviction cases from around the country. Over the Winter and Spring quarters, 15 UCSC undergraduate students in the Making an Exoneree course dedicated themselves to uncovering the truth about these cases. The final short films unravel the unjust convictions of Aaron Addison, Dennis Littleton, Ken Middleton, Frank Perkins, and Taunee Smith, who have spent a combined 126 years in prison.The students hope that by sharing these stories, they can help correct this injustice and bring innocent people home.
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ADVISORIES
– Mature themes or content, No intermission, Strong language.
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ADMISSION
– FREE and open to the public
– Attend in person or online (link to be announced).
– Reception at 6:00 p.m.
– Screenings at 7:00 p.m.
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PARKING
– Parking by permit or ParkMobile
– Arts Lot #126 is the closest parking lot to the event
– Visitors with DMV placards or plates may park for free in DMV spaces, Medical spaces, or ParkMobile spaces without additional payment, or in timed zones for longer than the posted time.
– More information provided by UCSC Transportation & Parking Services (TAPS)
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This program is open to all members of the public consistent with state and federal law.

SocDoc MFA Thesis Screening
2026-06-10 19:00 - 21:00 | Landmark’s Del Mar Theatre
The Social Documentation MFA Thesis Screening is a yearly event held by the Film and Digital Media Department. This event is part of the Social Documentation MFA program, and involves second-year students presenting a 20-minute documentary film they have produced while in the program. Films are screened sequentially at the Del Mar Theater, with a Q&A with the student filmmakers at the end.
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ADMISSION
– FREE and open to the public
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PARKING
Nearby Parking Lots
– Lot No. 3: The Cedar/Church Garage 800 Cedar St (270 feet W)
– Soquel Front Garage 601 Front St (444 feet SE)
– Lot No. 8: The Pearl Alley Parking Lot 710 Cedar St (525 feet SW)
– Lot No. 16: The Sentinel Parking Lot 204 Church St (575 feet W)
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This program is open to all members of the public consistent with state and federal law.

The Dickens Universe featuring 'Bleak House'
2026-07-26 01:00 - 2026-07-27 00:59, 2026-07-27 01:00 - 2026-07-28 00:59, 2026-07-28 01:00 - 2026-07-29 00:59, 2026-07-29 01:00 - 2026-07-30 00:59, 2026-07-30 01:00 - 2026-07-31 00:59, 2026-07-31 01:00 - 2026-08-01 00:59, 2026-08-01 01:00 - 2026-08-02 00:59 | Humanities and Social Sciences Facility, 2 Hagar Drive, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
The Dickens Universe is a unique cultural event that brings together scholars, teachers, students, and members of the general public for a week of stimulating discussion and festive social activity on the beautiful Santa Cruz campus of the University of California—all focused on one or two Victorian novels, usually (but not always) one by Charles Dickens. In 2026, the Dickens Universe will feature Bleak House by Charles Dickens.
Dickens’s ninth novel, published between 1852-1853, shines a light on social injustice and the devastating effects of a corrupt legal system, following the entangled lives of those caught in the never-ending Jarndyce and Jarndyce case. Told in alternating narrative voices, this rich literary experiment plays with a variety of genres from detective fiction and social realism to melodrama and satire. As characters move from city to suburb, from mansions to slums, we discover unexpected connections among classes, plots, and characters.
Now in its 46th year of operation, the Dickens Universe combines features of a scholarly conference, a festival, a book club, and a summer camp. Participants include people of all ages and walks of life—distinguished scholars, graduate students, undergraduates, retirees, young professionals, high school teachers, and anyone who loves reading and enjoys long Victorian novels.
Here are some things that make the Universe such a special experience.

The college lifestyle: participants live on campus, eat together in the student dining hall, and have time to meet and come to know each other in different ways.
Everyone is reading the same book. We all have this one important thing in common.
The activities include formal lectures, small discussion groups, films, daily Victorian teas, performances, and Victorian dancing.

The Universe offers a week of total immersion in the world of Victorian fiction with friendly, like-minded colleagues in a beautiful setting. Whether we’re returning to a Dickens novel that everyone knows and loves, or branching out into a Victorian novel by another author who might be less familiar, during the Universe we build a community out of our passion for reading, talking with one another, and bringing Victorian culture to life.

View the complete schedule
Registration options
Plenary Lecturers and Guest Scholars
