MISC Hosts USC’s First Social Change Film Festival

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This past February, the Media Institute for Social Change (MISC) launched USC’s first ever Social Change Film Festival. Every semester, students across the School of Cinematic Arts create films driven by a commitment to social impact, and the festival was born out of a desire to give those visions a proper platform.

The call for submissions went out last fall, and the response was overwhelming. Over 70 films were submitted, and a team of student volunteer screeners divided into groups to review them all, each casting votes for their top ten. From that process, ten films were selected to screen at the festival:

  • Sunrise in Prison — Quincy Bowie, Daniel Chit, Katelyn Do, Andrew Hong, Eve Levy, Katie Luo, Johans Saldana Guadalupe, and Jiaxi Wu

  • Lady T — Nia Lambert

  • Resonance — Dani Orlando

  • Negro League Nights — Kyle Sykes

  • Life Models — Jean Paulo Lasmar

  • Black Seeds Continue to Grow — Laura Colbert

  • Model M!nority the Musical — Katja Custodio

  • The Day You Find Your Name — Dominique Draper

  • Echoes of the Sea — Zizheng "Boris" Liu

On the night of the festival, these ten films screened before a packed crowd of over 80 attendees. Three esteemed faculty judges evaluated each film on technical quality, storytelling, and social change messaging: Pablo Frasconi, an experimental and documentary filmmaker, and Director of SCA Graduate Production; Jeremy Kagan, a multi-award winning director, writer, and producer; and John Watson, writer, producer and holder of the Broccoli Endowed Chair for Producing. After deliberation, they selected three winners, each receiving a trophy and a cash prize to support their future work:

🥇 Gold: Life Models — Jean Paulo Lasmar
🥈 Silver: Echoes of the Sea — Zizheng "Boris" Liu
🥉 Bronze: The Day You Find Your Name — Dominique Draper

The screening was followed by a networking reception where filmmakers and audience members connected over their shared commitment to socially engaged storytelling. Given the tremendous response to the inaugural festival, we plan to make this an annual tradition. Keep an eye out for the call for submissions this fall, and stay tuned for more social change events we have in the works!