Andréas-Benjamin Seyfert

Education

Since 2017, Ben has served as the UCLA Department of Germanic Languages’ graduate student representative. Ben Seyfert completed the Digital Humanities Graduate Certificate Program and the Gender Studies Concentration at UCLA. In 2020, he participated in the EPIC Seminar in Teaching Excellence. In the Summer of 2021, he will be conducting archival research in Germany funded by the Center for European and Russian Studies.

He has received support from both the Graduate Summer Research Mentorship Program (GSRM) and the Digital Start-Up Partnership (DResSUP) which led to the digitization of over 400 film reviews from the Weimar era (see personal website for more information). During the 2020-21 academic year, Ben will teach two undergraduate classes of his own design for the LGBTQS minor and the Collegium of University Teaching Fellows at UCLA. He is a recent recipient of the Jack H. Skirball in Modern Jewish Culture, Mellon Foundation and Ross Pre-dissertation Fellowships.

He previously received his B.A. in English and German Literatures from the University of Geneva, Switzerland. Since 2011, Ben has worked as a certified language teacher both in adult education and in an academic setting. In 2015, he was hired as a teaching and research assistant for the Chair of Medieval German Studies. Ben received the Best TA award for the 2019-20 AY from his home department at UCLA.

Conferences and Publications

Ben has presented academic papers at conferences organized by the Goethe Society Switzerland (Basel), the German Studies Association (Atlanta and Portland), The Graduate Center, CUNY (New York City) and Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (Los Angeles). His academic publications include chapters in the books Goethe als Literatur-Figur (Wallstein Verlag, 2016) and Rethinking Jewishness in Weimar Cinema (Berghahn Books, November 2020).

Community

Since 2020, Ben has been the Co-Director of the bi-weekly screening series GSA Melnitz Movies with his long-term friend Alex Moore. He also served as the head programmer for a bi-weekly screening series, GSA Melnitz between 2017 and 2019. During his time as a programmer, he extended the student organization’s pool of contacts from the independent film distribution circuit to collaborations with major studios such as Warner Bros, Paramount and Sony Pictures to name a few.

In Geneva, Ben co-founded and directed the Kinoklub (still active and now known as k!no), as well as organized a conference and workshop on the topic of literary adaptations.

After moving to the United States, he co-organized a weeklong festival entitled “Shadows of the 20^th Century,” prominently featured as a Critic’s Choice in the LA Times. The event involved collaborations with numerous local and international institutions, including the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the American Cinematheque, and the French and German government representatives in Los Angeles.

Arts and Entertainment

Apart from his studies and community activities, he was involved in independent side-projects, work including collaborations with Academy-Award-winner Marcel Ophuls on both a documentary (Ain’t Misbehavin, Cannes Festival 2013) and written memoirs published in France (Mémoires d’un fils à papa, Calmann-Lévy, 2014) and Germany (Meines Vaters Sohn, Propyläen Verlag, 2015). He has also interned at the Los Angeles based film production company, Phoenix Pictures, and directed an animated short film for a fashion brand crowd funding campaign.