Hella Cinematic | SMALL THINGS TO A GIANT ft. Daveed Diggs

​Hella Cinematic: The Radical Impact of the Bay Area on Film
with Institute for Diversity in the Arts' Visiting Artist, Chinaka Hodge

​An open class ft. guest: Daveed Diggs
Theme: SMALL THINGS TO A GIANT

The incredibly likely story of how The East Bay’s Daveed Diggs became a superstar with a finger on animated features, classic sitcom, art house, indy, blockbusters, musicals, summer tentpoles and experimental electronic gangster rap.

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Chinaka Hodge is a poet, playwright, and screenwriter. She attended USC's School of Cinematic Arts MFA in the Writing Division with a focus in Augmented Reality/ARG. She has appeared on two seasons of HBO’s Def Poetry and is a Kennedy Center Next50 recipient. Chinaka's screenwriting credits include RISE, SNOWPIERCER (HBO/MAX) , AMAZING STORIES (APPLE+), and THE MIDNIGHT CLUB (NETFLIX). Chinaka is Head Writer/Executive Producer of Disney+ / MARVEL’s series IRONHEART, which focuses on the adventures of black girl tech genius, Riri Williams. Chinaka is also a mom to a brilliant 4 year old.

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Hella Cinematic: The Radical Impact of the Bay Area on Film is presented by IDA, the Institute for Diversity in the Arts.

​This winter, join celebrated poet, screenwriter, and show-runner Chinaka Hodge (Marvel’s Ironheart, Snowpiercer, and The Midnight Club) for a generative writing course rooted in community. In this course, we will examine The Bay Area’s radical influence on Modern American Cinema from the standpoint of both creator and critic. Students can expect to learn the fundamentals of traditional three act structure, gain a comprehensive knowledge of industry workings, and investigate a wide swath of genre and approach. Work from directors and composers from Northern California or with films set in the area will be the core of our syllabus, with special attention given to Ryan Coogler, Nijla Mumin, Boots Riley, Eli Jacobs-Fantauzzi, Joslyn Rose Lyons, and Barry Jenkins. We will look at forms in feature film, musical variety, hour long and half hour TV, original soundtracks and scores.