Daniel Rudin

About Daniel

(Updated 9/2020) Daniel C. Rudin is a Ph.D. student at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he studies and practices documentary, multimedia journalism, and video art. He grew up in a blue-collar community, studied Industrial Design, and fell in love with video in the course of his BFA at the University of Illinois. In 2007 he collaborated on a documentary video dealing with issues of education, gentrification, and youth incarceration stemming from The Chicago Plan for Transformation. The video was shown at the Landlocked Film Festival and became multimedia for an online peer-to-peer mentoring group called Project M.A.R.R.O.N.S. In 2008 Daniel’s video, “El Fortín,” documenting waste picking in Central America, was shown at the Peace Studies Film Festival and became the basis for fundraising to give transportation, roofing, and business financing to subjects of the video. While studying for his MFA in Studio Arts at the University of Texas, he worked with the homeless community in Austin to produce videos, TV reports, and panel discussions. He also produced web-based documentary video with the migrant rights organization “Workers Defense Project” and was selected to show work at the Rising Eyes of Texas exhibition.
In 2012 Daniel was selected as a Luce Scholars. This allowed him to work in the Philippines with the social media company “Rapper.” He has published written reports and documentary video on a variety of social issues, including “informal settlers” living in danger zones and labor abuses. After noting a scarcity in journalism on labor, Daniel began a multi-media project with Rappler, which allowed Filipino workers to contribute and map their own stories of workplace abuse. After his Luce year, Daniel co-founded the social news project Center for People’s Media, which garnered support from the University of California Institute for Research in the Arts (UCIRA), the UCSC Blum Center, BigIdeas@Berkley, the Union for Canada (UNIFOR), and the Everett Program, among others. His investigations presently focus on the role of civil society, the left, and state in different historical phases of the public sphere, including twentieth-century documentary film, video, and “democratization” in the Philippines. He spent another year in the Philippines in 2018 on a Fulbright Fellowship.