The Mellon Sawyer Seminar will be co-directed by University of Iowa College of Liberal Arts and Sciences faculty members Corey Creekmur (Cinematic Arts, English, and Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies), Ana Merino (Spanish and Portuguese), and Rachel Williams (Art & Art History, Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies). Among their other professional interests and accomplishments, Creekmur edits the award-winning book series Comics Culture for Rutgers University Press and is First Vice President and a founding member of the Comics Studies Society.

Associate Professor Chris Harris will screen his film Dreams Under Confinement, at the New York Film Festival in their Currents Shorts program. University of Iowa MFA alumnus (2018) Carl Elsaesser's 2021 film Home When You Return will have its world premiere in the same section of the festival.

Hao Zhou’s forthcoming feature film has been awarded a Greenlight Grant. Zhou will direct and act in the film, which he also cowrote. The project’s producer and cowriter, Tyler Hill, won the $50,000 grant to help fund the film’s production in 2022.

Congratulations to Film and Video Production MFA student Auden Lincoln-Vogel on the acceptance of his short film Bill and Joe Go Duck Hunting into Cannes Film Festival's Cinéfondation Selection.

In recognition of his outstanding work and his global reputation as a leading figure of experimental film and African American cinema, Associate Professor Christopher Harris has been awarded an F. Wendell Miller Professorship, one of the highest honors bestowed by the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

Julia Anna Morrison, lecturer in the Department of Cinematic Arts, recently had three poems published in Brink, a literary magazine: https://www.brinkliterary.com/

MFA student Stephen Wardell's film Lillian Finds the Zombies will premiere at Visions du Réel international film festival in Nyon, Switzerland, April 15-25.

Congratulations to Cinematic Arts PhD Candidate Chris Wei, for receiving the Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award from the Council on Teaching!

Film and Video Production MFA student Stephen Wardell's film Psychic Meat will be showing at Ann Arbor Film Festival in program 2 on March 23rd at 6:30pm central. 

This spring semester, the Department of Cinematic Arts is hosting an online screening series, Black Lives on Screen, featuring the work of a diverse range of acclaimed African American and Black filmmakers, artists, and scholars. Intended to promote and celebrate the rich history and future of Black cinematic expression, the events will give UI classes, as well as individual students, staff, and faculty the opportunity to experience films ranging from the birth of cinema to the most recent documentaries, experimental shorts to mainstream blockbusters, and classic to marginalized or lost films.