Dawn Fratini

Dawn Frantini worked in digital media design for many years before shifting her focus to education. She taught Film History and many other cinema-related courses at Humboldt State University and the College of the Redwoods. In 2005, she returned to UCLA to obtain her PhD in cinema studies.

Since then, teaching has grown into a passion for Frantini. “It is marvelous to train students in the basics of analysis, and then watch them grow in their skills and, ultimately, in their enjoyment of film,” she says. One of her favorite moments in her teaching career was screening Dreyer’s Passion de Jean d’Arc with live musical accompaniment—“there was not a dry eye in the house,” Frantini insists. “Even the football team members in the balcony were sniffling.”