Cam Audras

The Resilience Project unites USC composers, musicians, dancers, and storytellers to demystify and engage audiences not only with the scope of sustainability challenges but also tangible solutions. In pondering critical facets of sustainability, the project breaks down the overwhelming climate crisis in a digestible and engaging way through spoken word poetry that informs choreographic interpretations, accompanied by a world premiere from composer Quenton Blache, performed by Cam Audras and Elise Haukenes. Audiences will be encouraged to craft their own climate action pledges to take tangible steps towards climate resilience, with the potential to engage students across USC and beyond.

Jaime Lopez

Jaime’s current documentary follows two individuals: one in Paramount, CA and the other in Commerce, CA. The story focuses on their involvement with environmental injustices in their respective communities and how their awareness factored into their motivations to run for local office. The documentary captures these individuals executing their local political campaigns, interacting with community members, friends and family, and sharing their personal stories.

Jordy Coutin

Jordy’s two-part podcast will explore the relationship between climate change, air pollution and homelessness in Los Angeles. Unhoused residents face the direct impacts of climate change—extreme heat, extreme weather events, and inhospitable air quality from wildfires—in addition to the direct impacts of urban air pollution. The podcast will explore this intersection by interweaving the perspectives of individuals with lived experiences of homelessness who are adapting to and enduring environmental degradation, the efforts of organizations that support unhoused residents, and the views of climate and air pollution experts.

Arabella Delgado & Cassandra Montano

Arabella and Cassandra’s project is a historical and contemporary study of environmental racism and the climate crisis in Boyle Heights, focusing on how environmental change in Los Angeles affects the daily lives of Boyle Heights residents. Partnering with Las Fotos Project and the Boyle Heights Museum, the pair will combine archival research and youth photography submissions to explore the historical roots of the neighborhood’s environmental activism alongside its current day manifestations.

Sue Dexter

The USC Solar Car Team is currently building a solar race-car to compete in the Formula Sun Grand Prix this summer. Sue’s short film will document the last stages of the building and testing of this vehicle to showcase the talents of these USC students and their engineering skills, as well as their unbridled passion for sustainability. The Futures in Transportation (FIT) program, which encourages under-represented high school students to pursue transportation STEM-related fields, will include the film in its Clean Fuels segment. The film features directed interviews with team members as well as technology explanations geared towards inspiring high school students.

William Higbie

The act of divesting from fossil fuel is bold. For decades, activists have called on schools, unions, and local governments to actively remove their investments in dirty energy and reinvest in clean energy. This used to be a political act. But now it also makes financial sense. William’s short documentary tells the story of DivestSC, a group of students and faculty at USC who've spent the past year and a half encouraging USC to divest from fossil fuels. This documentary opens a window into the hurdles DivestSC and its members had to overcome to achieve their goals.

Imani Johnson

Eco Alarm is a student-run podcast whose mission is to share the stories of environmental change-makers and their success in the USC and greater Los Angeles community. Eco Alarm was created to combat a sense of hopelessness with regards to climate crisis by connecting those who want to make a difference to the companies and organizations that are already taking action. Launching in fall 2021, Eco Alarm will provide its audience with weekly podcast episodes on a diverse range of environmental topics.

Jelina Liu

Three pipelines, three different communities, one fight. Jelina’s short documentary film will follow community members of the indigenous community in Minnesota as they battle the Line 3 pipeline, the Black community in South Memphis, Tennessee as they battle the Byhalia pipeline, and the white Appalachian community in the mountains of West Virginia as they battle the Mountain Valley Pipeline. All three of these contrasting communities are on a deadline as their respective oil companies plan to complete construction within the next year. The film follows their activism while also showing how these communities have all built solidarity and are united by their hope for a clean future.

Natasha Nutkiewicz

Natasha’s short film “Our Garden” explores the trauma and hardships that cause eco-paralysis in young activists through the eyes of a couple, Melody and Teo. Their personalities and socio-economic differences lead them to deal with the same crisis in different ways, introducing conflict into their relationship. The film seeks to show the paramount importance of compassion and unity in the service of saving the places and people that we love.

Catelin Shane

At the onset of the pandemic, Catelin had to return to Houston, TX to continue her studies virtually. While there she stumbled upon a documentary subject whom she felt embodied a sincere investment in the nutritional and environmental health of one of the most systematically forsaken communities in the Southwest. Ivy is an overworked and overwhelmed infection control preventionist who quits her job to promote health and wellness in one of Houston’s most food insecure areas, starting with what she has on hand - her family’s uncultivated farmland. An escalating food swamp, one unprecedented winter, and a grant from Beyoncé later, “Ivy” unearths the storied history of her family and the land as her first spring harvest depends on it.

Gwenan Walker

Gwenan’s The Voyager is an animated short film set one hundred years into the future, revolving around climate change and its increasingly troubling effects on marine ecosystems, from melting glaciers and rising sea levels to ocean acidification and the effects of rising greenhouse gases. All of this is experienced through Arwilda, a 10-year-old girl living on one of the fringe settlements within a flooded zone, as she navigates daily life caring for her ill mother on the island while trying to learn more about the ocean and where its many mystical creatures went. Through Arwilda, the film will be a message of hope that one person’s dreams and passions can create a domino effect of change.

Irene Franco Rubio

If You’re Feeling Civic (IYFC) is a podcast and digital movement designed to educate, empower, and engage BIPOC communities in the movement for social, racial, and environmental justice. If You’re Feeling Civic seeks to create a world where young people of color deriving from historically oppressed communities recognize the power of their voice and lived experience while learning to advocate for issues that matter most to us and empower our communities to become civically and socially engaged.