KUCI: Get the Funk Out!

On January 1, 2022, Dr. Frances Contreras officially began her tenure as dean of the University of California, Irvine School of Education. The third dean in school history, Contreras is the first Chicana/Latina dean to head a school of education in the University of California system.
A first-generation college student, Contreras joins the UCI School of Education from UC San Diego, where she was associate vice chancellor for equity, diversity and inclusion and a professor in the Department of Education Studies at UC San Diego. These roles, she explained, prepared her with a foundation in which she enlists diverse viewpoints and perspectives, critically examines change and growth, and oversees processes to improve efficiency and fairness.
Contreras is a UC alumna, earning a bachelor’s degree at UC Berkeley, a master’s degree from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in Education from Stanford University.
With this in mind, Contreras, a SoCal native, looks to expand the reach and impact of the UCI School of Education for its students, UCI, and surrounding K-12 community. Entering its 10th year and already ranked No. 7 in the nation among public schools of education, Contreras calls the UCI School of Education a “diverse, vibrant and influential school.”
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"Catch the Bus” a short film written, produced and directed by Chloe Owens, will screen at the 10th Annual Studio City Film Festival ion Monday November 7th at 7:30PM at the Laemmle Noho 7 in North Hollywood.
“Catch the Bus” tells the story of James (Peyce Byron), an older gentleman who is the last to audition to be a television sports anchor. Initially sized up to be a no by producer Marlene (Krista Unverferth). James, who took two buses to get to the audition, presses forward to get the job of his dreams. Will he win over the irritable Marlene? The film lightly touches upon ageism and the instant judging we use on others.
Byron, a graduate of Northeastern University, celebrates his 15th year as the Lead Singer of The Platters Live. He is not only a singer and songwriter of Gospel and R&B music, but also a two-time award-winning actor which includes an NAACP Image Award for Best Actor in a lead role and the ADA Award for Best Actor performing as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Most recently Byron won for Best Actor in the International Independent Film Awards for his role in “Catch the Bus”. His latest single “You Can Give Love” and CD “Whosoever” are available on iTunes, Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Music, CD Baby, Google Play Music and all online and streaming music stores.
Owens studied Film a year abroad at Reading University in England, and later graduated from Rutgers University. She moved to NYC where she ran a cable TV show on MNN and wrote, directed, and produced a popular webseries. She won BEST SHORT SCREENPLAY in the WESCREENPLAY DIVERSITY COMPETITION and BEST SCREENPLAY in the ROADMAP DIVERSITY WRITING COMPETITION. Chloe was also a finalist in the AT&T SHAPE contest which allowed her the experience of shooting on WB studio lot. Additionally, Owens placed in a number of other screenwriting competitions. Most recently, she won BEST NARRATIVE SHORT FILM for “Catch the Bus” at the International Independent Film Festival. Chloe is now in post-production on W.I.L.S.D.M - a short film she wrote & directed; that will enter the festival circuit in 2023. Owens is currently writing a feature screenplay, based on her award-winning short film: Catch the Bus. She's excited to meet producers interested to help bring the film to life.
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THE DAUGHTER OF AUSCHWITZ
My Story of Resilience, Survival and Hope
by Tova Friedman and
Malcolm Brabant
A powerful memoir by one of the youngest survivors of Auschwitz, Tova Friedman, following her childhood growing up during the Holocaust and surviving a string of near-death experiences in a Jewish ghetto, a Nazi labor camp, and Auschwitz.
"I am a survivor. That comes with a survivor's obligation to represent one and a half million Jewish children murdered by the Nazis. They cannot speak. So I must speak on their behalf."
Tova Friedman was one of the youngest people to emerge from Auschwitz. After surviving the liquidation of the Jewish ghetto in Central Poland where she lived as a toddler, Tova was four when she and her parents were sent to a Nazi labour camp, and almost six when she and her mother were forced into a packed cattle truck and sent to Auschwitz II, also known as the Birkenau extermination camp, while her father was transported to Dachau.
During six months of incarceration in Birkenau, Tova witnessed atrocities that she could never forget, and experienced numerous escapes from death. She is one of a handful of Jews to have entered a gas chamber and lived to tell the tale.
As Nazi killing squads roamed Birkenau before abandoning the camp in January 1945, Tova and her mother hid among corpses. After being liberated by the Russians they made their way back to their hometown in Poland. Eventually Tova's father tracked them down and the family was reunited.
In The Daughter of Auschwitz, Tova immortalizes what she saw, to keep the story of the Holocaust alive, at a time when it's in danger of fading from memory. She has used those memories that have shaped her life to honor the victims. Written with award-winning former war reporter Malcolm Brabant, this is an extremely important book. Brabant's meticulous research has helped Tova recall her experiences in searing detail. Together they have painstakingly recreated Tova's extraordinary story about the world's worst ever crime.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS:
Tova Friedman is eighty-four years old and lives in New Jersey, USA. She is one of the youngest survivors of Auschwitz and uses her vivid memories to write and speak against anti-Semitism and prejudice. She was the director of a nonprofit social service agency for twenty-five years and continues to work as a therapist.
Malcolm Brabant is a veteran, award-winning veteran foreign correspondent. Brabant has reported from over 80 countries.
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A new collection of pieces on literature and life by the author of Am I Alone Here?, a finalist for the NBCC Award for Criticism. Stationed in the South Pacific during World War II, Seymour Orner wrote a letter every day to his wife, Lorraine. She seldom responded, leading him to plead in 1945, “Another day and still no word from you.” Seventy years later, Peter Orner writes in response to his grandfather’s plea: “Maybe we read because we seek that word from someone, from anyone.”
From the acclaimed fiction writer about whom Dwight Garner of The New York Times wrote, “You know from the second you pick him up that he’s the real deal,” comes Still No Word from You, a unique chain of essays and intimate stories that meld the lived life and the reading life. For Orner, there is no separation. Covering such well-known writers as Lorraine Hansberry, Primo Levi, and Marilynne Robinson, as well as other greats like Maeve Brennan and James Alan McPherson, Orner’s highly personal take on literature alternates with his own true stories of loss and love, hope and despair. In his mother’s copy of A Coney Island of the Mind, he’s stopped short by a single word in the margin, “YES!”—which leads him to conjure his mother at twenty-three. He stops reading Penelope Fitzgerald’s The Beginning of Spring three quarters of the way through because he knows that finishing the novel will leave him bereft. Orner’s solution is to start again from the beginning to slow the inevitable heartache.
Still No Word from You is a book for anyone for whom reading is as essential as breathing.
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Kelley Lê has been in the educational field for over a decade as a high school science educator, instructional coach, and educational leader. She is currently the executive director of the Environmental and Climate Change Literacy Projects (ECCLPs), director of the University of California Irvine Science Project, Friends of the Planet NCSE Award winner (2022), and author of, Teaching Climate Change for Grades 6-12: Empowering Science Teachers to Take on the Climate Crisis Through NGSS (2021). She also serves as a board member for Ten Strands, CAELI Professional Learning Hub member, CLEAN Accelerating Climate Capacity, Engagement, and Leadership Summit (ACCELS) Forum planning committee member, and a Climate Reality Corps Mentor.

Sacrifices must be made to make it to the top of the music world. No one knows this better than Dixon James, who promised his wife they would get there. In this haunting message of hope and despair, mother and daughter singers have been separated for over twenty years by race, wealth, fame, and a heroin addiction. They long to find one another…. Before it’s too late. In the tradition of a Greek tragedy, the journey is never straightforward.
Susannah B is an accomplished singer-songwriter, screenwriter and actor. A Los Angeles resident for most of her adult life, Susannah (aka Susannah Blinkoff) grew up in Manhattan as the daughter of well-known Broadway composer/lyricist Carol Hall. From an early age, Susannah was acting off-Broadway and singing professionally in NYC clubs. At Brown University, she met her longtime friend, director Drew Ann Rosenberg. As an actor, Susannah has appeared on Broadway and in film and TV. She co-wrote the film BELLYFRUIT and collaborated on the title song with composer/producer Stephen Bray (Madonna, THE COLOR PURPLE).
She is currently writing a comedic musical TV series with author Annabelle Gurwitch. As a singer, Susannah B has performed at many clubs in L.A. including Hotel Café and Catalina Jazz Club. She has released six albums of her own pop songs as well as an album of retro jazz standards. Most recently, Susannah B released an EP of techno house remixes with DJ/producer j. wells and the duo have a new electronic single “Moon & Sand” dropping later this summer.
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INVICTA, the newest short film from multi-hyphenated creator Breton Tyner-Bryan, will screen at two upcoming festivals in July. The world premiere will be at the Berlin Commercial Raw Festival on July 27 in Berlin, Germany and will make its local premiere at the La Jolla International Fashion Film Festival in La Jolla, California on July 30, 2022.
It is currently running at the Lift Off Global Sessions hosted by Pinewood Studios UK on demand from July 4-28, and was also part of the Tokyo Shorts Best Experimental competition in June 2022.
INVICTA shows the lives and expectations that come with it, is set in New York City where a group of seven Mafia wives come together, driven by passion and drama. They are seemingly locked out of a Riverside Drive mansion and are searching for a way in. Who has summoned them and why are they now denied? As the women struggle to change and/or accept the situation, their dancing suggests alliances; perhaps they were once strong, now weakened. Betrayal -- or is it? -- from one woman brings up lost dreams, dashed expectations and longing for love, despite everything.
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The Esselstyn family is three generations plant-based strong. Ann Esselstyn’s husband Caldwell Esselstyn ran one of the studies on a plant-based diet to fight heart disease and wrote a bestselling book on the subject. Her son Rip Esselstyn wrote a several bestselling books/cookbooks, has a food line in Whole Foods, and a popular podcast on the subject. Ann and her daughter Jane Esselstyn have been the women behind the curtains the whole time, developing the recipes and food plans. BE A PLANT-BASED WOMAN WARROIR: Live Fierce, Stay Bold, Eat Delicious, is Ann and Jane’s own book specifically for women, filled with amazing recipes, notes on women's health, celebrates of the power of a plant-based lifestyle.

Fernando Andrés and Tyler Rugh are a filmmaking duo working in Austin, Texas. They are both 24 years old and have been making films together since they met in middle school. Their debut feature film THREE HEADED BEAST made its world premiere at the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival in the prestigious U.S. Narrrative Competition.
THREE HEADED BEAST is one of the films in the US and Canadian Narrative competition at this year’s Outfest. We recently participated in the Tribeca Film Festival and their programmers have hailed it “one of the boldest and most assertive American independent debuts in recent memory” and it has been called “erotically charged and arresting” by Chris Feil at Frameline and “hypnotically beautiful and undeniable” by acclaimed filmmaker Jim Cummings (Thunder Road, The Beta Test).
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Originally trained in pediatrics and public health, Sayantani DasGupta teaches in the Graduate Program in Narrative Medicine, the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society and the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race, all at Columbia University. She writes and speaks on issues of race, gender, health and social justice.
New York Times bestselling author and physician, Sayantani DasGupta, brilliantly re-imagines the beloved classic, Pride and Prejudice, to reflect the complex, diverse world of American high school culture. The book is already receiving rave reviews, and you need not be an Austen-head, to love it and the conversations around the many issues Sayantani weaves in and addresses.
“Studded with references to U.S. and South Asian pop culture as well as Jane Austen–related Easter eggs, DasGupta’s astute, buoyant comedy of manners employs witty, rat-a-tat dialogue alongside social commentary about subjects including classism, colorism, and sexism.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review
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