UCLA School of Film and Television

Director Melvonna Ballenger’s Rain (Nyesha) shows how awareness can lead to a more fulfilling life. In the film, a female typist goes from apathetic to empowered through the help of a man giving out political fliers on the street. Using John Coltrane’s song “After the Rain,” Ballenger’s narration of the film meditates on rainy days and their impact. The rain in this short film doesn’t signify defeat, but offers renewal and “a chance to recollect, a cool out.”

Emmy-winning documentary by a UCLA student concerning undocumented Mexican workers' struggle on a flower farm in Northern California. The documentary traces the worker's struggle at Año Nuevo flower farm, who were denied proper housing, denied pay, and extorted by the flower farm owner, and their attempt to bring a civil lawsuit against him. Footage includes interviews with dozens of Año Nuevo workers and main organizers, lawyers representing the group, local and state employees, and the owner of Año Nuevo farm. The documentary weaves in a history of Mexican immigration to the U.S., the struggles associated with crossing the border, the economic history of Mexico, and the crisis of transnational production in Mexico, displacing access to food staples. Following the bureaucratic state involvement with Año Nuevo Housing department and wage violations, workers organized from 1977-1979 to bring civil suit against their employer.

A woman remembers an unwanted teenage pregnancy.

In common with many L.A. Rebellion films, Snake touches on such themes as institutionalized racism, colonialism and the plight of women of color. Narrated in the first person by the filmmaker as an epistle to her son, The Snake in My Bed tells Diegu's story as a Nigerian woman in Lagos who is romantically pursed by a German national who has “gone native.” Despite his secretive and duplicitous actions, she eventually agrees to marry him and has his child, only to learn that he is a bigamist with a German wife and child.

When Cassandra witnesses a drunken encounter between her friend and her roommate, she is compelled to investigate if it was consensual.

Daydream Therapy is set to Nina Simone’s haunting rendition of “Pirate Jenny” and concludes with Archie Shepp’s “Things Have Got to Change.” Filmed in Burton Chace Park in Marina del Rey by activist-turned-filmmaker Bernard Nicolas as his first project at UCLA, this short film poetically envisions the fantasy life of a hotel worker whose daydreams provide an escape from workplace indignities. —Allyson Nadia Field

When an aged man feels the need to confess to the new catholic priest, his gay lover of many years is hurt and upset.

Ray Manzarek's 2nd U.C.L.A. student film from the spring semester of 1965. A sync-sound project, it is a tale of lovers lost and lovers found, with Dorothy Fujikawa, Kathy Zeller and Ray. Jim Morrison can actually be seen - albeit briefly - in the party sequence.

A night watchman at a shuttered, dimly lit factory runs into a bum who used to be a preacher that is trying to sleep away from the thunderstorm, but when the watchman kicks him out, the watchman gets cursed.

A man is trying to decide if he should go to Vietnam with the US army.

An early student work directed at UCLA by Alile Sharon Larkin and submitted as her "Project One." Larkin visualizes a mental ward as a possible equivalent to prison incarceration for women of color. –UCLA Film & Television Archive

Ben Caldwell’s Medea, a collage piece made on an animation stand and edited entirely in the camera, combines live action and rapidly edited still images of Africans and African Americans which function like flashes of history that the unborn child will inherit. Caldwell invokes Amiri Baraka’s poem “Part of the Doctrine” in this experimental meditation on art history, Black imagery, identity and heritage.

Harvey Milk was an outspoken human rights activist and one of the first openly gay U.S. politicians elected to public office; even after his assassination in 1978, he continues to inspire disenfranchised people around the world.

Francesco takes an unsparing look at the most pressing challenges of the 21st-century, asking deep questions about the human condition. The film is guided by Pope Francis who, with tremendous humility, wisdom, and generosity, offers moving lessons from his life that illuminate what it will take to build a better future. In doing so, he addresses issues such as climate change, immigration, peace and religious tolerance, LGBTQ support, gender and identity justice, and economic equality.

Depicts one woman's struggle with the responsibility of juggling two jobs at one time as both a garage mechanic and God's chosen messiah. She faces a rather difficult career decision as her true passion is in the first job while her effectiveness in the second job grows more questionable.

A former cop works in purgatory and processes people going to heaven and hell. One day, his 20 year old son appears.

A lucid view on an extraordinary character, recognized and loved or reviled by the crowd of wrestling fans. Cassandro, the exotic gay lucha libre fighter.

A woman from Nigeria seeks work in the United States while her daughter struggles with premonitions and homesickness.

Amanda has been dreaming of having her own real-life book romance. When one day, she stumbles upon a penny, her wish starts to become reality as it leads her to Felicity. Brought together by one very lucky penny, their paths cross, and sparks fly between the two.

Lana Wilson has trouble in school because of racist discrimination, but at first, her parents don't believe her.