Above: The late Dr. Teshome H. Gabriel, a long-time Professor
at UCLA and an authority on third world & post-colonial cinema.
Tadias Magazine
By Tadias Staff
Published: Friday, September 10, 2010
New York (Tadias) – Haile Gerima’s critically acclaimed movie Teza, to be premiered in Los Angeles on Monday, September 13th, will also honor the late Teshome H. Gabriel, a long serving Professor at UCLA and a leading international figure on third world and post-colonial cinema. Dr. Teshome died suddenly from cardiac arrest on June 15, 2010. He was 70 years old.
Dr. Teshome was born in Ethiopia in 1939 and moved to the States in 1962. He began his academic career at UCLA in the early seventies. According to the university’s Newsroom: “A pioneering scholar and activist, Gabriel had taught cinema and media studies at TFT since 1974 and was closely associated with UCLA’s African Studies Center.”
“He was a brilliant, gracious, elegant and generous man,” said Teri Schwartz, Dean of UCLA’s School of Theater, Film and Television. “Teshome was a consummate professional and a truly beloved faculty member at TFT…he will be greatly missed by all of us.”
Dr. Teshome earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Utah and a Master’s and a Ph.D. from UCLA, where he would eventually became a tenured professor at the world-famous School of Theater, Film and Television.
He also served as the Founder and Editorial Board Member of the Amharic publication Tuwaf (Light), an Ethiopian Fine Arts Journal, from 1987 to 1991. Dr. Teshome is also the co-editor of the 1993 book Otherness and the Media: The Ethnography of the Imagined and the Imaged and most recently the author the book Third Cinema: Exploration of Nomadic Aesthetics & Narrative Communities. He is quoted as describing his work as that of an activist scholar: “What I am seeking to do, I would say, is validate the notion of the academic citizen, by which I mean an academic who has some relationship to the wider communities that surround us and which overlap with other arts and disciplines.”
Nicholas K. Browne, Vice Chair for Cinema and Media Studies was quoted by UCLA Newsroom as stating that: “Teshome’s work had three main themes. He focused on the unique styles of films made in the non-aligned nations of Latin America and Africa (the “Third World”), the issues of relating and representing ‘the other’ (that is, people not like us), and the unique situation of filmmakers and scholars who have left the countries of their birth and occupy and reflect on their marginal, in-between place in the world, a more and more common situation in a global world of the 20th and 21st centuries.”
The event – slated to be held at the Billy Wilder Theater in Westwood Village – is sponsored by UCLA Film & Television Archive and features a discussion with Director Haile Gerima following the screening. The evening’s co-hosts include filmmakers Billy Woodberry, Charles Burnett, Michie Gleason, as well as Ellias Negash – a long-time personal friend of Professor Teshome- among others.
If You Go:
The Los Angeles Premiere Screening of TEZA
in honor of the late UCLA Professor Teshome Gabriel
Discussion with Haile Gerima following the screening
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2010 7:30 pm
Billy Wilder Theater in Westwood Village
courtyard level of the Hammer Museum
10899 Wilshire Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90024
Tickets $10 at www.cinema.ucla.edu
Box office opens one hour before showtime
All proceeds from this screening will benefit
the Teshome Gabriel Memorial Scholarship Fund at
the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television
Cover Image: Dr. Teshome H. Gabriel. Photo credit – UCLA Newsroom.
Related past videos:
Watch: Haile Gerima discusses independent film making at Teza’s opening in New York City
Video: Watch the Trailer