Carsey-Wolf Center at UC Santa Barbara 
Connectivity: The Last Picture Shows (preview screening)
- Thursday, December 4, 2025 / 7:00 PM - 9:15 PM (PST)
- Pollock Theater
- Screening Format: 4K digital projection (78 minutes)
- With Rustin Thompson (filmmaker) and Ross Melnick (documentary participant)
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Executive Producer: Rachel Price
Ten states. 10,825 miles. 123 theaters. In his latest feature The Last Picture Shows, filmmaker Rustin Thompson journeys into the American West on a search for traces of what was once a center of small-town life: the movie theater. On the trip, he finds long abandoned and forgotten cinemas; movie houses that have fallen into disrepair; theaters recently closed, theaters struggling to hold on, and theaters that—thanks to their thoughtful caretakers—are not only surviving but thriving. Between the stops along the way, Rustin poetically intersperses excerpts from Peter Bogdanovich’s 1971 classic film The Last Picture Show, as well as reflections on past and present hardships facing the film exhibition industry. The Last Picture Shows reminds viewers that even in vast cinema deserts, there are oases of community and gathering that remain, where the movie house continues to be a place of wonder, contemplation, and connection.
The Carsey-Wolf Center is pleased to present a special preview screening of The Last Picture Shows. Filmmaker Rustin Thompson and documentary participant Ross Melnick (interim director of the Carsey-Wolf Center, UCSB) will join moderator Rich Farrell (Film and Media Studies, UCSB) for a post-screening discussion.
This event is free but a reservation is recommended in order to guarantee a seat.
Biographies
Rustin Thompson (filmmaker)
Rustin Thompson is a writer, filmmaker, and DJ based in Seattle. His essay film Slow Revolution screened at several international festivals, and My Mother Was Here won Best Documentary at the Tacoma Film Festival. His debut documentary, 30 Frames a Second, earned multiple Best Documentary awards, was named one of the year’s Top Ten Films by the American Library Association, and was chosen as one of the Best Undistributed Films of 2001 by The Village Voice. In 1997, he won a National Emmy as producer and cameraman on CBS News’ Famine in North Korea. Rustin is the author of Get Close: Lean Team Documentary Filmmaking (Oxford University Press, 2019) and the novel Hard Times in Babylon (2024). He hosts Road Songs and Night Train on Seattle’s KBCS 91.3FM. Alongside writer-filmmaker Ann Hedreen, he received multiple regional Emmys and co-founded White Noise Productions, which has created over 200 short films for non-profits since 2000.
Ross Melnick (documentary participant, interim director of the Carsey-Wolf Center)
Ross Melnick is Professor of Film and Media Studies at UC Santa Barbara and Interim Director of the Carsey-Wolf Center. He was named an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Film Scholar and a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow for his book Hollywood’s Embassies: How Movie Theaters Projected American Power Around the World (Columbia University Press, 2022). He is the author of American Showman: Samuel ‘Roxy’ Rothafel and the Birth of the Entertainment Industry (CUP, 2012), co-editor of Rediscovering U.S. Newsfilm: Cinema, Television, and the Archive (AFI/Routledge, 2018), and co-author of Cinema Treasures (MBI, 2004). His research has appeared in Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, Film History, The Moving Image, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, and in numerous other journals and edited collections.
Moderator Rich Farrell (Film and Media Studies, UCSB)
Rich Farrell is a PhD candidate in Film and Media Studies and Graduate Student Researcher with the Carsey-Wolf Center at UC Santa Barbara. His research interests include documentary media studies, US environmental history and the environmental humanities, and film history. His dissertation examines the New Deal motion picture cultures of the National Park Service, Forest Service, and Civilian Conservation Corps. He is a member of the Media Fields Journal research collective and co-editor of the journal’s latest issue, “Media Inside Out.” With the Department of Film and Media Studies at UCSB, he has taught the following courses: Media Criticism, Advanced Film Analysis, The Wire: TV in Focus, New Deal Media, and History of Sound Film.
This event is sponsored by the Carsey-Wolf Center.
CWC Presents: Connectivity
The Carsey-Wolf Center’s 2025-26 feature series Connectivity examines the evolving meaning of connection in our contemporary moment. While the term “connectivity” often invokes our ever-increasing entanglement with digital infrastructure and social media networks, this series reimagines the term not only as a technical feature of media, but as a humanistic value and a condition of social and public life. This series embraces connectivity as a framework for thinking critically about the ways in which people use media to connect with ideas and with one another, from the shared experience of moviegoing to the collective bonds forged through storytelling and public dialogue.
CWC Docs
The Carsey-Wolf Center is committed to screening documentaries from across the world that engage with contemporary and historical issues, especially regarding social justice and environmental concerns. Documentaries allow filmmakers to address pressing issues and frame the critical debates of our time.