CAP UCLA Announces Future Visions, A Celebration Of Emerging YoungArts Filmmakers

UCLA's Center for the Art of Performance (CAP UCLA) in partnership with YoungArts, the national foundation for the advancement of artists, presents Future Visions, a celebration of YoungArts award winners' burgeoning artistry in filmmaking and storytelling at the UCLA Nimoy Theater on Saturday, March 22.

The evening will be hosted by Academy Award-winning screenwriter Tarell Alvin McCraney, who co-wrote the Oscar winning 2016 film Moonlight, adapted from his own play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue.

Future Visions will feature five short screenings by YoungArts award-winning filmmakers Paulis Cofresi, Tangier Dortch, Nathan Ginter, Thomas Kim, and Teddy Nissen. Cofresi, a Puerto Rican filmmaker, is known for her captivating storytelling and has received multiple accolades, including Best Director at the European Film Festival "Cortaditos." Dortch, a Belizean-American filmmaker, reimagines the Black experience through speculative lenses and recently won the drama category of Warner Bros. Discovery's Intern Pitch Wars. Ginter, a Michigan-born director, incorporates genre and absurdist elements to express the strangeness of the human experience, with films that have screened at festivals such as Fantastic Fest and the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival. Kim, an award-winning filmmaker from California, has worked in both stop-motion and live-action formats. His short Busan qualified for the 2023 Oscars, and he is currently in post-production on his debut feature, Isle Child. Nissen, a filmmaker with a passion for narrative-driven projects, has had his work showcased at festivals worldwide.

As a body of work, Future Visions examines how cinema can expand and challenge our understanding of humanity in everyday life. Cofresi's Nos Persiguen follows a 16-year-old in 1950s Puerto Rico as she struggles to make sense of a world her family refuses to acknowledge, while Kim's Busan centers on a pregnant Korean-American woman as she returns to Korea and her mother, where they bathe and scrub each other in an intimate attempt to heal past wounds. Taking a surreal turn, Dortch's Epigenetics tells the story of a perpetually exhausted teenager, shaken by the death of his parents, who is relentlessly tormented by a ghost and Ginter's The Third Ear follows nude drawing model Sammy who, after seeing a botched depiction of himself, sprouts an ear from the back of his head, sending his sense of self-image and life spiraling out of control. Nissen's Lovebugs offers a unique perspective as a snail invites you to read his autobiography. A conversation between the filmmakers will follow the screenings. Future Visions is curated by Gabriel Gomez.

Established in 1981 by Lin and Ted Arison, YoungArts – the national foundation for the advancement of artists – identifies exceptional young artists, amplifies their potential, and invests in their lifelong creative freedom. YoungArts provides space, funding, mentorship, professional development and community throughout artists' careers. Entrance into this prestigious organization starts with a highly competitive application for talented artists ages 15–18, or grades 10–12, in the United States that is judged by esteemed discipline-specific panels of artists through a rigorous blind adjudication process.

Tarell Alvin McCraney is an acclaimed writer. His script In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue is the basis for the Oscar-winning film Moonlight directed by Barry Jenkins, for which McCraney and Jenkins won an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. He wrote the film High Flying Bird which premiered on Netflix directed by Steven Soderbergh. McCraney's plays include MS. BLAKK FOR PRESIDENT (co-written with Tina Landau), The Brother/Sister Plays trilogy, Head of Passes, Wig Out!, and Choir Boy which was nominated for four Tony Awards. McCraney is the recipient of a MacArthur "Genius" Grant, the Whiting Award, Steinberg Playwright Award, the Evening Standard Award, the New York Times Outstanding Playwright Award, the Paula Vogel Playwriting Award, the Windham Campbell Award, and a USA Artist Award. He is currently Chair of Playwriting at Yale School of Drama; an ensemble member at Steppenwolf Theatre Chicago; and a member of Teo Castellanos/D-Projects. McCraney is currently working on an original scripted TV series, David Makes Man, for Oprah Winfrey's OWN Network, produced by Michael B Jordan and Page Fright Productions.

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