News and Events

press releases

Pepperdine Co-sponsors City of the Angels Film Festival

Pepperdine University will be well represented at the 15th annual City of the Angels Film Festival, taking place from Friday, Feb. 27 through Sunday, Mar. 1 at the Directors' Guild in Hollywood. In addition to being one of the sponsors of the festival, Pepperdine will have faculty member Thema Bryant-Davis, assistant professor of psychology, on hand to introduce one of the main films. Anthony Collatos, assistant professor of education, will also bring a group of students to the festival.

City of the Angels Film Festival celebrates some of the most acclaimed yet largely hidden movie gems of recent times. "Despite a slew of festival awards and rapturous critical reviews, these awe-inducing movies remain vastly under-seen," says Craig Detweiler, co-producer of the City of the Angels Film Festival and co-director of the Reel Spirituality Institute at Fuller Seminary. “We’re honored to host filmmakers who combine creativity with conviction.”

The festival opens Friday evening at 7 p.m. with Oscar-nominated film The Garden, a riveting documentary set in South L.A., with director Scott Hamilton Kennedy leading a post-screening discussion on ways we can replant and repair our city. Collatos and his students from the Graduate School of Education and Psychology at Pepperdine will be in attendance.

The garden featured in the film - an urban oasis developed by Latino farmers - arose in the aftermath of the Los Angeles civil unrest and riots of the early 1990s, as did the bridge-building City of the Angels Film Festival itself.

The following evening, Saturday, Feb. 28, Pepperdine's Bryant-Davis will be presenting the film, Munyurangabo. According to director Lee Isaac Chung, the film is the product of a movie-making course he taught in Rwanda. Rwanda is so often seen through the stain of the 1994 genocide, and the memory of that awful event is a core component of the narrative.

Pepperdine University is a co-sponsor of the festival is co-sponsored along with the Brehm Center at Fuller Seminary, Family Theater Productions, and Azusa Pacific University, in partnership with the Los Angeles Film Studies Center, Priddy Brothers, and the Windrider Forum.

All films will be screened and panel discussions held at the Directors Guild of America, at 7920 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles 90046. For more information on films, schedule and tickets, visit www.cityofangelsfilmfest.org.