Fil-Am educator Celine Parreñas Shimizu to head UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television

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One Filipino-American who is breaking barriers in the academe right now is Dean Celine Parreñas Shimizu, who will be heading the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television starting July 1.

A UCLA alum, an award-winning filmmaker, a scholar and a higher education leader, she is currently the dean of the arts at UC Santa Cruz.

Before her tenure at Santa Cruz, Shimizu was director of the school of cinema at San Francisco State University (2015-2021) and a professor of Asian American studies, feminist studies and film studies at UC Santa Barbara (2021-2015). 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.

We were able to interview the Dean virtually and she shared with us her short and long-term plans when she heads UCLA TFT, how she proposes to improve the AAPI representation, DEI in film and TV industries and increase women directors and creatives in film and TV. She also shared some advice to Filipino-American filmmakers and scholars, among others.

Congratulations on your appointment as the new dean of UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television. Being an alumna of the school, what is the significance of this for you?

UCLA TFT is where I became my bold self and established my name as a filmmaker and film scholar of bold courage and distinct fearlessness. When I was choosing graduate school in film and television, directing and production, the reputation of UCLA TFT as an auteur school compared to the other major film schools moved me to choose it. What I mean by the auteur school is that UCLA TFT celebrates the voice of independent cinema. There, you study all aspects of the language grammar, vocabulary and structure of film and theater so that you can bring expert collaborators together in a commanding fashion.

What also makes UCLA TFT distinct is that, from the very beginning, it integrated scholarship and practice together. So that it became a model for how other institutions taught film, television, and theater, because scholarship makes production stronger and vice versa. Our scholars produce, and our makers know history, theory, and criticism. I love this boundary-breaking approach because it reflects the way that I need to stand on the shoulders of the people who came before us to understand what we are making, whether a book, or a film.

Growing up in the Philippines, I grew up under martial law and the elder Marcos regime, which controlled the kinds of films that were made or the way that artists could speak. Even within those limiting, powerful pressures, the greatest cinema was made by Lupita Aquino Kashiwahara, Ishmael Bernal and Lino Brocka, they were making films that invited audiences to stand up and say, my life experiences are worth celluloid. Those experiences can be explored in this medium and in a way that taught people how to see themselves and society as subjugated people.

I knew I was going to go to UCLA, TFT, to become powerful and to learn how to use film, theater, and television. Not only to share stories, but to investigate my stories. How did I grow up? Who was my mother? Who was my father? Why did they say those things, and why did I respond in a certain way? It was going to be this very special place where my own story came to matter.

How is your transition now from Dean of UC Santa Cruz, where you were also a distinguished professor in the Department of Film and Digital Media, to your current position now at UCLA?

UCLA is very special because it is at the center of the entertainment industry here at UC Santa Cruz. It's the best-kept secret for making art, crafting scholarship in the arts. We're located in a much farther place. So, the spirit of experimentation is very, very strong. Similarly to UCLA, we have such a distinguished faculty and very ambitious aspirational students.

However, in Los Angeles, as the center of film, television, digital media, and theater, there's a certain kind of way that impacts global reach. You know, what happens at UCLA as the number one public school in the entire country? In higher ed, how we teach film, theater, and television is being watched and being emulated. It's such a storied institution in terms of creating a dazzling diversity of stories in Hollywood. The faculty there included Teshome Gabriel, who was the godfather of the third cinema. He studied Filipino films from Africa, Latin America, and the diaspora. He said that people are creating nomadic aesthetics and aesthetics that come from a diaspora, a scattered people. UCLA is well known for engaging global perspectives that, at the same time, were imbricated with cinema's power for social transformation, the transformation of a people, the transformation of nations.

There's a particular stage, a particular platform that UCLA theater, film, and television occupies. It's the flagship theater and film, and television school in the best public higher system in the world. With this kind of platform also comes a great sense of global responsibility.

I'm really coming here with the strengths of bringing together the community at Santa Cruz. As a scholar, as a filmmaker, and with the kind of atypical background that I bring that prioritizes a global perspective to represent diverse voices and stories. So I'm super excited about what this experience for my scholarship and my filmmaking can do to ensure that UCLA theater, film and television remains the leader in inclusive curricula and and cultivating filmmakers to have a global perspective and, and an innovative spirit that will strengthen what Hollywood looks like from all over the globe because our students come from all over the globe. Our faculty come from all over the globe.

With the current state of affairs in our country, how do you propose to improve the AAPI representation, DEI in film and TV industries, and increase women directors and creatives in film and TV?

UCLA, as a public institution, has been for decades the number one school for economic and social mobility. It has transformed not only the industry, but the very lives of the people who are making films and theaters and getting access to this very, very powerful language that can make sure that the dramatic, comedic stories from these underrepresented communities get their due.

So, UCLA, having been known for inclusive excellence for many decades, means exclusive excellence continues to be an important value that the institution holds. The students come from those perspectives, and the major study on diversity in Hollywood comes from UCLA.

It was led by our provost, actually the sociologist of representations and inequality, Darnell Hunt. When you read the Hollywood Diversity Report, it's stunning. You see that the population of California is almost half Latino, but less than 4% of speaking parts come from Latinos. That is just horrible because it's a perspective of the world that's so limited, and it doesn't reflect what we see on the streets. Not only the way we get along, but also the way we enrich each other's lives.

I look forward to bringing the body of work that I have produced, which has been on the genders, sexualities and family stories of AAPI communities, as a model for every single student in our school to say that my and their stories matter, and that we have not yet seen the true excellence of cinema unless all voices are included in in the authorship of this very, very popular genre.

I look forward to seeing that grow. The last thing I'll say about it is that what's so distinct, too, about the world-class education in film and theater that UCLA TFT provides is that it's affordable compared to other institutions. UCLA TFT provides this world-class education at a fraction of private institutional costs. It's important to maintain that accessibility of that financial accessibility. At the same time, we are serving a global student body, a diverse student body.

There's going to be great things ahead, not only in terms of building the communities of collaboration, but uplifting communities also that do not have access to film. I look forward to making sure that our students and everyone who comes into contact with UCLA TFT get an affirmation about the unfinished business of cinema, the unfinished business of inclusion that we face in our country today. It has to be both excellent and accessible.

As a filmmaker, you have done a number of documentaries and narrative films. So, what are you working on right now?

As you know, the greatest actress of Philippine cinema just passed away – Ate Guy, Nora Aunor. She was this petite, dark skinned woman who also had a mole on her face. She's the quintessential Filipina with this powerful singing voice. She sang Visayan songs that even my mother and grandmother sang to me as a child. Even before I became a toddler, Nora Aunor was this giant figure. I think I heard her voice in the womb. So, to see her portray characters not only of domestic workers, but also of miracle workers, of ambitious nurses, she embodied the way Filipinos are known all over the world. But beyond that, she possessed power, a real love for the people. She enabled films to happen at a time of great censorship. She used her star power. I'm deeply happy that her work is being recognized in the greatest film festivals all over the world.

She's an award-winning actress, and she gave us a sense of worth and value. That our emotions mattered. Our feelings mattered. When Filipinos in her movies were essentially treated like animals who had experienced brutal death in the hands of colonizers. She said that this is a story worth telling to awaken people about their lot in the global economy, so that we can have the language to understand our humanity. I'm really thinking about her a lot, and I'm very lucky that there are other scholars, like Jasmine Trice, who is a scholar of Philippine cinema, who's at UCLA. There's another great scholar of Philippine cinema named J.B. Capino, who's in Illinois.

We need to write a book on Nora. Apart from all of the work that you do in popular journalism for it, but to dig deep into her body of work.

I'm also thinking a lot about a memoir of leadership because AAPI women are the least represented in not only higher education leadership, but in many industries. What does it mean to lead with our backgrounds and with compassion and ambition, both in recognizing the value of all voices?

I know that I'm charting new terrain as a leader because I don't look like the typical leader. I'm writing it all down. I'm putting into history how I'm charting new terrain. The various things that people say to me can be quite shocking. That would never be said to other people. You can grieve it.

You can grieve the disparagement and the disregard that comes from an atypical background, a disparaged background. But I welcome the chance to educate about how we need a diversity of leaders to lead a diverse society. Because if you have perspectives that you acknowledge are different and you find ways to work together, then the community is stronger. The community of knowledge is stronger.

All of the research shows that diverse authorship, diverse voices in cinema, always generate a larger audience or a larger box office draw. Within this context, when diverse voices are being belittled, we need to invest in making sure that everyone can speak to find the solutions to our most pressing problems. I'm excited that I'll be making films and writing books in one of the greatest cities in the world.

Have you ever met Nora Aunor in person?

No, I've only met her in the dreams of cinema; every time I walk into a movie theater with her movies.

If the UCLA Film School is noted for its award-winning alumni, can you talk about exactly what it means to you to lead a film school that gave Hollywood many of its great directors and talents?

We're talking about alumni not only like Francis Ford Coppola, Alexander Payne, but also Julie Dash, Charles Burnett, and Billy Woodberry. So, we have alumni who have shaped classical Hollywood in a sense, the makers of The Godfather, or even recent films like The Holdovers. Films that are made with an independent spirit, so that when you're watching their films or even immersing or experiencing these films, you're in the presence of a film you've never seen before in establishing new standards for Hollywood.

At the same time, there's also a lesser-known legacy, which is the LA Rebellion. The LA Rebellion was a movement of filmmakers of color who entered UCLA right after the 1965 Watts uprising. Through this program, which was funded by the city and the state, called EthnoCommunications, it was designed to be responsive to communities of color, including African American, Asian, Chicano, Latino, and Native American communities in the LA region.

This program fundamentally changed representation in Hollywood. At the same time, and this is how they did it, they exemplified independent film excellence by bringing multiple communities together to investigate their stories, to dramatize their stories. So, if you can imagine filmmakers from different backgrounds supporting and collaborating, guess what? The results are some of the best films in the world that you'll ever see. Right now, the solution to our problems about representation can be found in the archive of UCLA TFT. I'm talking about films like Charles Burnett's Killer of Sheep. This was inducted into the National Film Registry recently, and Zeinabu Irene Davis' film Compensation.

Just thinking about these films makes me experience gigil - this overwhelming feeling of excitement and and joy that these films in the archive, coming into the hands of our young Bruins now at UCLA, means the new films that are going to come out, the new theaters that's going to come out are going to blow our minds. I'm so thrilled about that.

The New Yorker just published an article last week about the LA Rebellion. I was at UCLA in the early 90s, and I think that was also a resurgence of a golden age of UCLA as well. This is like at the tail end of the LA Rebellion. So, people like Justin Lin, who made not only the Fast and Furious, but other filmmakers like Marco Williams, the eminent experimental artist Cauleen Smith, who is a singular artist. She designs a T-shirt, it sells out, it costs $150. But beyond that, she makes music and music videos, films. Shonali Bose, who's a global, filmmaker from India, Rachel Raimist, who's one of the most successful television directors.

So, all of these people I went to school with and made groundbreaking films and television that advanced Hollywood and independent films. All of us built from this legacy of the LA Rebellion. UCLA TFT, I will argue, singularly transformed Hollywood. To diversify and to recognize not only diverse voices, but also the importance of bringing the community together to collaborate to make amazing films and theater.

If you are given a dream project, what would it be and why?

I'll answer it in two ways. The first is, I made this film called the Celine Archive, which is not about myself. It's about a woman named Celine Navarro who was buried alive by her community, supposedly for committing infidelity. But actually, it was more in line with ousting domestic abuse in the community. She ended up being punished for it, and in conducting the research for that film, I came to know so much about early Filipino immigration into the United States. Did they drive cars? Did they only ride a bus? I didn't know that they drove cars. I didn't know, for example, that the entire community gathered together so they can have baptisms, so they can have marriages in a world where they were excluded from all of that.

It's really stunning to think about the way that they had. They mobilized power and they mobilized community in a time where they were so dehumanized and so under resourced, just getting poorly paid, but at the same time, figured out that it was important to dance together, to eat together, to help each other move, from house to house when their houses were being burned. There's something about that early Filipino immigrant community in California.

I want to tell that story in a narrative form, because Celina Navarro and her sisters were these very elegant women who were well-spoken, had beautiful handwriting, and were also very ambitious. One of them became a Hollywood extra. They had this imagination to say, I matter. I'm an American, and I belong in the screens of America's memory, which is what cinema is. So that's a dream.

Then the second dream is really to mobilize the alumni of UCLA theater, film and television, so that the ambitions of the school in the nation and in the globe can be strengthened by the resources of the alumni as well as the knowledge that they have on the ground at the front lines of how a movie gets made. I'd love the dream for us not only to eat together, but to read together, to imagine.

What should cinema look like now? I think AI is going to be one of the biggest technological innovations of our lifetime, and it's a source of fear, but it's also a source of inspiration. So, what does it mean for TFT to be at the forefront of that industry evolution? I look forward to industry partnerships, community partnerships, government partnerships, and alumni partnerships with the school so that we can also communicate the importance of higher education in shaping industry. I look forward to doing that.

I have to tell you something else, Janet, I was at UCLA last week and I was walking in the main path and I saw this sign, and the sign just stopped me in my tracks because it was a sign that said "Ube Pastries, available at 12 different locations at UCLA TFT" at UCLA on campus.

I thought when I saw that sign, I thought dreams would come true. Because if you can find your food, where you work, and where you live, that is such a welcoming door to belonging. I think they put up the sign not just to tell Filipinos, oh, your food is here. It's because everybody loves ube. Like ube is a part of our ecosystem of what it means to be American. So, there's a part of the dream that it is a truly inclusive arts school, that says that the worlds that we make in cinema and theater should look like the worlds that we want. Where everyone matters and where our stories really shape the language of film.

It's so exciting. What's ahead and knowing that even in times of silencing and repression, creativity will beat all of that as long as you encourage it and you give it confidence. I look forward to our young people and the films and the theatre that they're going to make, because I am committed to helping them to become free and strong to do that.

Talk about ube, are you the first Filipina to lead the school?

I think so, I think I am the first woman of color to lead the school, and perhaps even the first person of color to lead the school in a permanent way. One of our distinguished faculty members, I love and respect him so much is Chon Noriega, who is considered the godfather of Chicano cinema. His work has not only impacted on scholarships, but he has enabled so many filmmakers to produce work. He's currently the interim dean who I'm going to succeed. So, yes.

I don't think that I was the first Filipina to be a student there. I'm not sure because I think Cecilia Manguerra Brainard was also there, but maybe at the extension school. So, research needs to be done. But when I was at UCLA film school, we started a group called SineGang – named after the staple soup of Filipino cuisine since cinema is part of national culture intrinsically and powerfully. It was composed of me and Ernesto Foronda, who's the creative producer for Justin Lin's company, Ken Angliongto, who was an animator, Pancho Gonzalez, who was a cinematographer at the time and Francis Tanglao Aguas who was in theater. What we did exemplifies what it means to be a Filipino-American filmmaker and theater maker. We not only brought artists and filmmakers to trigger a Filipino-American cinema, but we read together, and we brought scholars together so that we can say, this happened, this existed.

One of the filmmakers we brought was Michael Magnaye, who made this gorgeous film called White Christmas. And so, we also brought together John Castro and Gene Cajayon when they were first beginning to make The Debut. And so, we were helping to launch a movement, essentially at the time, at one of the major film schools in the world. We claimed our space there and we learned how to write grants to produce programming of Filipino cinema. As a scholar, I ended up teaching Philippine cinema. I didn't even know that I was doing it. But when I looked at my syllabus once, I said, oh my God, I'm teaching Filipino cinema. The entire class was based on that. But at the time, I had called it something like "Race, Sex, and Diaspora." But how can you not be obsessed with the best cinema in the world that's coming from the Philippines?

What are your short- and long-term plans as the incoming dean of the UCLA Film and Television School?

Currently, UCLA Theater, Film and Television is upgrading its facilities, including renovating our teaching stages and replenishing our production equipment. I am a joyful fundraiser. I want to bring alumni, parents, industry foundations, and friends who want to support film and theater higher education, because the state funding is more limited now. We want to make sure to address pressing issues and facilities, as well as upgrade all of the equipment. That's top of mind right now. The way that I'm going to do that is by bringing together alumni, giving annual gifts, working with the foundation, and the state to mobilize fundraising so that the school gets the resources that it needs. That is both a short-term and long-term goal.

Within five years, I need to stabilize the fundraising at a higher level. That fits the stature of UCLA TFT as the premier public higher ed institution for teaching film and theater to support the academic and creative work there. Any world-class education has to expand its relationships across the globe, to partner with not only entertainment and corporate leaders, but also with community organizations.

We need to make sure that UCLA TFT is known all over the world so that we can partner together to make stories. About 90% of the jobs in acting are not so much in theaters, but they're on television and they're in films. So, what does our training look like? Can we teach students how to act in K-drama? How can we teach students to act in telenovelas? As well as an American soap opera.

I look forward to partnering with established institutions in entertainment, but also grassroots theater. You can't deny queer women of color film organizations or theater companies that are committed to telling stories that are particular to their community, such as East West Players. There's much ground to be broken in terms of bringing together the community in the most broadly defined way. I look forward to doing that.

Another big goal right now is finding a house and moving to LA. I know the power of Los Angeles. I know the transformative experience of mourning and grief as a mother who has lost a child unexpectedly.

I know that I'm coming into LA at a time of great loss and great devastation in the fires of Altadena and also in the Pacific Palisades. There's a great deal of rebuilding, but we will never be made whole. People can be cruel unnecessarily and say, oh, at least you're alive, you know? But I'm a production designer, and I know what objects mean beyond their materiality. So, when people lose their things, they lose a sense of self. They lose the order of things. What does it mean to walk into a place of loss and devastation?

So, I'm going to lean into the power of cinema to recover, to recuperate and to patch the wounds. They won't go away. Too much was lost. Not only death, but the things that make us who we are. I look forward to connecting with communities within that historical moment of loss as a time where we can ignite our creativity.

My last question is what would you advise Filipino-American filmmakers since you're in the academe and you're also a filmmaker yourself?

What would I advise Filipino and Filipino-American filmmakers and scholars? There is nothing more beloved to me than the classroom as a site of self-discovery. It's quite unfortunate that higher education and the classroom are currently being questioned as a site of indoctrination, rather than what happens here, which is the opposite. It is a site for exploration. It is a site of mining. You know your own stories and the stories of others, expanding your knowledge so that you can learn how to care for other people and have a larger sensibility that can give you pleasure and happiness because the world is so rich. There are different ways of knowing; there are different ways of painting; there are different ways of telling a story. We can learn to express ourselves better when we know more languages of cinema, more languages of theatre.

So, I encourage Filipino and Filipino-Americans and anyone who wishes to improve their lives to invest in the classroom, to do your homework, to do the reading, because that's where the work of change and growth happens. When you're reading a book, it's not torture. It's actually figuring out something that you didn't know, not only about the world, but yourself. What I love about reading is that it compels you to write, and it compels you to create. So really invest in higher education and read, and when you watch movies, don't be overwhelmed by it, interrogate it, and say, why did it make me feel the way I felt? Why did I cry? Why did I cower? Why did I hide? Why did I walk around?

I'm a very physically responsive person when I'm watching movies at home. Then even when I'm watching a theater, I look around the room like, what's happening to us together in the presence of this performance? Let's figure this out and let's give it language. Let's try to see what makes film and theater so powerful. Let's find the language to articulate that. So rather than thinking of higher education or even homework as work, it's fuel, food, pleasure, satisfaction and growth. So do the work and enjoy it.

I look forward to what the next generation comes up with, the way they think and the way they live. It's their world, and we're just living in it. So don't relinquish the gifts of your ancestors and the gifts of the past, which are movies, theater, plays, and art. There are great treasures ahead if you do the work and you approach it with the humility of gobbling up with what others before you have figured out. —MGP, GMA Integrated News