DETAILS
ARTIST: Rebecca Webb
POSITION: Film curator, ArtPower!, UCSD
WEB SITE: artpower.ucsd.edu
KEY QUOTE: “I'm really interested in raising the profile of San Diego in the film world. I'm excited to bring educational, entertaining experiences to San Diegans, and then, hopefully, raise our profile internationally.”
By Adam Loberstein
STAFF WRITER
July 6, 2008
Understanding Rebecca Webb starts with the answer to a simple question:
Rebecca Webb, founding film curator of UCSD's ArtPower!, looks to bring an interactive film experience to San Diego; here, she sits in the new film and performance venue, "The Loft."
“What is a film curator? That's a good question,” said Webb, the founding film curator for UCSD's presenting organization ArtPower! “A lot of people – when I'm here, anyway – say, 'Oh, do you work in a library or something?' ”
For most film curators, that something could be a museum. But that would be a role of a more inside-the-box film curator – a box that Webb has every intention of breaking out of. She's the brand new curator of a brand new program, and plans on using her creative reign to the fullest.
“As a film curator here, I get to design a program,” Webb said, seated on a couch on the second floor of the new Price Center East expansion. “It's not only film. It's really film experience. I'm designing interactive film experiences for the community here and the community at large.”
Webb, 41, came to UCSD by way of Harvard University, where she worked for five years, her activities ranging from serving as the managing editor of a political science journal to exhibiting her photography. She moved to San Diego a year ago this month – thanks largely to a professor she met at Harvard.
“He was teaching (at Harvard), but he's actually tenured here at UCSD,” Webb said. “I moved here because of him. We're getting married – he's my fiance.”
The “he” is UCSD political scientist Lawrence Broz. The couple was in a long-distance relationship for two years before Webb and her 7-year-old son, Jack Henry, moved to San Diego.
The transition from Harvard to UCSD hasn't been perfect for her, but it's been close.
“The only thing I don't like is having to drive everywhere,” Webb joked. “I used to ride my bike all the time.”
Webb studied painting and printmaking at Tufts University/The Museum School just outside Boston. After brief stints displaying her paintings in Haiti and Miami, she made her way to New York City. She lived there for 11 years, working on such well-known films such as “Pi” and other documentaries.
With experience in all walks of art – she's been a film editor and producer, a post-production supervisor and a new media producer – Webb officially made the transition to her post as ArtPower!'s film curator in January.
Webb calls the premise of her program a desire to create an interactive experience for her viewers.
“I'm really focusing on how the audience engages with the process itself,” she said. “We're having a program called 'Night at the Foovies,' where I'm going to be showing a film called 'The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover.' And we're going to be eating the food that's in the film. So, really, it's the full experience.”
The “Night at the Foovies” program will take place Feb. 20 in the new – and not quite finished – Loft. The Loft, Webb said, will be a lower-key, causal kind of an environment where people can have a drink and get something to eat as they watch a film (or see a performance).
Webb has a variety of themes she plans on focusing on, ranging from how cinema and architecture relate to each other to a furthering development of the student film festival – she hosted the university's first one in May.
Her “Iraq Inside Out” series, which will debut Jan. 22, will offer a look at the Iraq War through differing lenses.
“I'm bringing director Deborah Scranton out for 'Bad Voodoo War,' ” Webb said. “In her work ... the soldiers there in Iraq film their experiences, and then she takes their footage and incorporates it into her film here.
“Then, I'll be showing a film by an Iraqi documentarian, and an Iranian feature film director. So, we get to look at the different contrast.”
Starting Oct. 5, Webb's “The Press Rewind” series will present student films made by such well-known filmmakers as Robert Zemeckis and George Lucas.
“We want to show the students where they came from, to give them hope,” she added.
That's her focus. With all of her experiences, Webb says the thing that excites her most is getting to bring the work of her students to life.
“As an artist myself, I know the struggles that you encounter,” she said. “To give students an opportunity to show their work, and to help them with their careers – I just think that's really exciting.
“I've worked in galleries before and shown my own work, so I felt looking forward that this was a culmination of my film passion and desire to help other artists.”
