Lights, Camera, Action: The MCC presents an evening of entertainment from creatives here at UCSB! This edition of Cup of Culture centers on our student filmmakers and their diverse stories. Bringing you a range of genres, perspectives, and subject matter, we present the short films of Keala Taylor, The Waiting Room, Salim Sabbagh, Full Ice, Veronica Becerra-Santiago, Rosie, and Becky Chen, Inside Isla Vista’s Housing Crisis. The screenings will be followed by a Director’s Q&A and a reception. Keala Taylor wrote, directed, and starred in The Waiting Room, a film about a girl named Damai who struggles with her mental & physical health while hiding her issues from those around her. An unfortunate situation leaves her no longer part of this physical world, and she enters an eerie waiting room, where she revisits her mistakes and ultimately decides whether to continue on with life. Salim Sabbagh, a Syrian filmmaker and Film & Media Studies graduate student, wrote and directed Full Ice in 2018–2019 during a period of conflict in Syria. It takes place in a bar where they worked for five years, covering a university student working as a bartender in Damascus who faces a moral dilemma. The bar has since closed, and the film now serves as an unintended documentation of that era and community. Veronica Becerra-Santiago, a third-year transfer student, directed a coming-of-age film titled Rosie, which explores the sentimental value of childhood we carry into adulthood. This film explores the uncertainty of growing up, and Rosie is the guiding light. Becky Chen wrote and directed a documentary, Inside Isla Vista’s Housing Crisis, on the state of housing at UCSB.
