Celine Parreñas Shimizu Named New Dean Of UCLA School Of Theater, Film And Television

Award-winning filmmaker, scholar and higher education leader Celine Parreñas Shimizu has been named the new dean of the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television.

An alumna of the school, Shimizu is currently dean of the division of arts at UC Santa Cruz, where she also serves as a distinguished professor in the department of film and digital media. She will begin her role at UCLA on July 1.

As dean since 2021, Shimizu oversaw the launch of the UC system's first online undergraduate bachelor's degree program and the construction of several state-of-the-art facilities, including a new academic building, a media lab, graduate student art studios, an Arts and AI Lab and the university's first climate-controlled collecting gallery. Among her honors and recognitions, Shimizu was elected to the board of the International Council for Arts Deans, and in 2022, she was honored with the Mentorship Award from the Association for Asian American Studies. In 2023, she was inducted into the Stanford University Multicultural Alumni Hall of Fame.

"As the new dean of the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, I bring a deep love for my alma mater and a commitment to ensuring that every encounter with our institution is transformative - that is what happened to me here," said Shimizu, who earned her M.F.A. in film directing and production at UCLA in 1996. "I remember learning to give value to my ideas and to read the work of those who came before so I could truly know how film and theater provide us the language to understand ourselves and change how we treat each other. UCLA TFT shaped me, and I possess a passionate desire to help the institution achieve even greater eminence under my leadership."

Shimizu premiered her latest short fiction film "So to Speak," at the 27th San Francisco's Independent Film Festival in February, which has since won awards at the Anatolia International Film Festival, the Cine Paris Film Festival, the Chauri Chaura International Film Festival and the WRPN Women's International Film Festival. Written, directed and produced by Shimizu, the film follows a Filipina American college student who revisits the past through her heritage, her family, and her own sexual herstory to assess her present realities and create new futures for herself and other Asian American women.

A penetrating look at the experience and questions facing a young woman of color coming of age within the setting of a university, Shimizu's most recent film strives to represent the struggles many women face on their sexual and educational journeys en route to claiming autonomy and sovereignty. Her perspective and approach to the craft are deeply informed by her relationship to UCLA and its longstanding reputation.

"The impact of UCLA in independent filmmaking is singular," she said. "The L.A. Rebellion brought together the Civil Rights movement with cinema and theater in unprecedented ways. The roadmap we seek now, for artistically impactful and socially significant cinema and theater, is so clearly to be found in our own archives. The groundbreaking work of the faculty, staff, students and alumni mesmerize and inspire me for they bring new and needed narratives that show how representations on stage and screen make better realities in the everyday scenes of our lives."

As a filmmaker, Shimizu has worked on both documentary and narrative films, including "The Celine Archive" (2020) and "80 Years Later: On Japanese American Racial Inheritance" (2022), both of which garnered multiple festival awards. Along with her filmmaking, Shimizu is internationally recognized for her groundbreaking scholarship on race, sexuality and representations in transnational popular culture and is the author of the books "The Movies of Racial Childhoods" (2024), "The Proximity of Other Skins" (2020), "Straitjacket Sexualities" (2012) and "The Hypersexuality of Race" (2007), winner of the Cultural Studies Book Award from Association for Asian American Studies. Her peer-reviewed articles have appeared in top journals centered on cinema, performance, and ethnic, feminist and sexuality studies.

The UCLA School of Theater Film and Television is a premier, interdisciplinary global professional school that offers a comprehensive arts curriculum, giving motivated students the means to challenge the constructs around them as multifaceted artists and scholars, filled with the knowledge, insight and point of view to create meaningful experiences pointing toward a better world. The school's unique approach to the art of storytelling - there are no silos or boundaries between theater, film, television, digital media, animation and leading-edge research - makes it the only institution in the world to integrate these disciplines within a single professional school.

"Dean Shimizu's significant academic, professional and administrative experience and achievements, coupled with her TFT roots, position her well to lead the school at this pivotal moment," UCLA Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Darnell Hunt wrote in a message to campus. "Chancellor Frenk and I are confident that TFT will reach new heights under Dean Shimizu's inclusive, creative and visionary leadership."

Prior to her tenure at Santa Cruz, Shimizu was director of the school of cinema at San Francisco State University, from 2015 to 2021, and a professor of Asian American studies, feminist studies and film studies at UC Santa Barbara, from 2001 to 2015. In addition to her M.F.A., she holds a doctorate in modern thought and literature from Stanford University and a bachelor's degree in ethnic studies from UC Berkeley.