When he came to speak at UCLA several months ago, performance artist Guillermo Gómez-Peña probably never realized his words would fuel an elaborate film festival. World arts and cultures students listening to his lecture were struck by a single, much-debated question Gómez-Peña posed to them: “Is the classroom an activist space?” JoAnn Staten, a culture and performance graduate student, used Gómez-Peña’s question as inspiration for the theme of this year’s Vitas Film Festival. Read more...

When visiting a modern-art exhibit, one inevitably hears remarks such as, “I just don’t get it,” or “They paid millions for that? I could have done that with Crayolas!” Indeed, 20th-century modern art is grossly misunderstood and thus greatly underappreciated. Read more...

For decades, foreign filmmakers like Sergio Leone have adopted the uniquely American genre of the western and transformed it into a concept that reaches beyond a game of cowboys and Indians. Read more...

At first glance, “Art School Confidential” appears to be the conventional teen romantic comedy: nerd meets girl, girl likes buff blond, girl realizes she likes nerd and they get together in the end. Read more...

May is a month of potential and doubt. Named after Maia, the Roman goddess of growth, the month can suggest the coming of new and better things just as plants that sprout in April usually flower about now. Read more...

I went to Coachella last weekend expecting a music festival. But what I got was a cultural one ““ no “counter-“ involved. In many ways, Coachella is a celebration of our generation. Read more...

In Powell 228, the man responsible for the death of Captain Marvel sat among UCLA students, laughing. He is Mark Waid, comic author and now UCLA lecturer, at least for the hour, for English 88S, “Comic Books As Literature.” On Tuesday, Waid, a veteran of over 20 years in the comic book industry and one of its premier writers, had a lot to say about the industry, the medium and the act of writing itself. Read more...