International
University of Southern California introduces three more chairs endowed by George Lucas
MUMBAI: On Thursday, 13 March, Lucas continued his philanthropy by endowing faculty chairs named for Sergei Eisenstein, George Méli?s and Williams Cameron Menzies. Eisenstein, Méli?s and Menzies are considered filmmaking pioneers. Their theories and practices are taught in film programs around the world.
At a dedication event at the School of Cinematic Arts (SCA), professors Bruce A. Block, Michael L. Fink and Alex B. McDowell were installed as the first holders of the new endowed chairs. Block was named the Sergei Eisenstein Endowed Chair in Cinematic Design; Fink as the George Méli?s Endowed Chair in Visual Effects; and McDowell as the William Cameron Menzies Endowed Chair in Production Design. The total number of endowed positions at SCA is currently at twenty-four, more than any other cinematic arts program in the country.
SCA Dean Elizabeth Daley said the chairs celebrate the importance of continued innovation. “In the mold of the filmmakers they are named after, these new chairs represent innovation in the cinematic arts,” she said in a press statement. Bruce Block, Michael Fink and Alex McDowell have each made singular contributions to their fields and are doing important work in the industry, while simultaneously preparing the next generation of innovative storytellers.
At the dedication event Lucas said he was naming the chairs as a way to say “don’t forget the basics. Don’t get enamored with new technology…it doesn’t change anything. The art of what we do is exactly the same. The goal that we have is exactly the same as George Méli?s, Williams Cameron Menzies and Sergei Eisenstein. It’s beyond technology. It’s the art of movies.”
Bruce Block has been teaching Filmic Expression, a course that Eisenstein originated for more than 35 years. Block’s producing and consulting credits include What Women Want, Something’s Gotta Give, The Holiday, As Good As It Gets, Stuart Little and Father of the Bride I and II. Block directs documentaries and animated films for museums, commercials, the IMAX format, and NASA simulations. Additionally, he conducts seminars in visual structure for studios including Blizzard, Blue Sky, Disney, Dreamworks, ILM, Lucasfilm, and Pixar. His book, “The Visual Story” has been published in six languages and is used as a reference text by filmmakers around the world.
“Eisenstein’s ideas influenced all of Hollywood’s filmmakers from the montages of Frank Capra’s films to the MGM dance extravaganzas of Busby Berkeley to Disney’s animation,” Block said during a speech at the dedication, noting that Eisenstein lectured at USC. “His teachings became part of our curriculum and were taught here by Slavko Vorkapich, Les Novros, Woody Omens and then by me.”
Michael Fink, who has been pioneering visual effects for more than thirty-five years, began his career on The China Syndrome in 1977. His other credits include Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Blade Runner, Batman Returns, The Golden Compass, Avatar and Life of Pi. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Achievement in Visual Effects for Batman Returns in 1993 and won the Oscar in that category in 2008 for The Golden Compass. Fink is on the Executive Committee of the Visual Effects Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and is a founding member, board member and current Vice-Chair of the Visual Effects Society.
“I believe this Chair is the first endowed chair in Visual Effects at any university,” he told the crowd gathered in the Ray Stark Theatre. “Naming it after George Méli?s, truly the father of all that we do in visual effects today, is not only appropriate, but the least we can do to carry his name forward in our teaching.”
Alex McDowell has more than thirty years’ experience as a narrative designer and is creative director of USC’s World Building Media Lab and the thought leadership network, USC 5D Institute. His credits as a production designer include Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Fight Club, Minority Report, Watchmen and Man of Steel. McDowell was a visiting scholar to MIT’s Media Lab from 2006 to 2011. He is a Getty Research Institute scholar and on the executive board of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences Designers Branch. In 2006, he was awarded Royal Designer for Industry by the UK’s Royal Society of Arts, and in 2013 the Designers & Art Directors President’s Award. He remains a practicing designer, working in multiple media with the company he leads, 5D Global Studio.
LOS ANGELES: Acting has never been an easy profession, but in recent years, it has acquired a new existential anxiety. Artificial intelligence can now mimic faces, clone voices and, in theory at least, speak any language it is fed. The fear that actors may soon be replaced by algorithms no longer belongs exclusively to science fiction. And yet, despite the rise of digital inauthenticity, some performers remain stubbornly resistant to replacement. The reason is not celebrity, nor even talent. It is language.
On paper, this should not be a problem. AI can translate. It can imitate accents. It can string together grammatically correct sentences in dozens of languages. But acting, inconveniently, is not about grammatical correctness. It is about meaning, and meaning is where AI still falters.
Machine translation offers a cautionary tale. Google Translate, now powered by neural AI, has improved markedly since its debut in 2006. It can manage menus, emails and airport signage with impressive efficiency. What it struggles with, however, are the moments that matter most: idioms, metaphors, irony, and cultural shorthand. Ask it to translate a joke, a threat disguised as politeness, or a line heavy with emotional subtext, and it begins to unravel. Acting lives precisely in those gaps.
This matters because film language is rarely literal. Scripts, particularly in independent cinema, rely on figurative speech and symbolism to convey what characters cannot say outright. Pedro Almodóvar’s Volver is a useful example. The film’s recurring use of red operates on multiple levels: grief, desire, repression, liberation, and memory. These meanings are inseparable from the Spanish cultural context and emotional cadence. A translation may convey the words, but not the weight they carry. An AI-generated performance might replicate the sound, but not the sense.
This is where multilingual actors gain their edge. Performers such as Penélope Cruz and Sofía Vergara do not simply switch between languages; they move between cultural logics. Their fluency allows them to inhabit characters without flattening them for international consumption. Language, for them, is not an accessory but a structuring force.
Beyond European cinema, this becomes even more pronounced. Languages such as Hindi, Arabic and Mandarin are spoken by hundreds of millions of people and underpin vast cinematic traditions. As global audiences grow more interconnected, the demand for authenticity increases rather than diminishes. Viewers can tell when a performance has been filtered through approximation. Subtle errors, misplaced emphasis, and an unnatural rhythm break the illusion.
There is also a practical dimension. Multilingualism expands opportunity. Sofía Vergara has spoken openly about how learning English enabled her to work beyond Colombia and access Hollywood roles. But this movement is not a one-way export of talent into English-speaking cinema. Multilingual actors carry stories, styles and sensibilities back with them, enriching multiple industries at once.
Cinema has always thrived on such hybridity. Denzel Washington’s performances, for instance, draw on the cultural realities of growing up African American in the United States, while also reflecting stylistic influences from classic Hollywood and Westerns. His work demonstrates how identity and influence intersect on screen. Multilingual actors extend this intersection further, embodying multiple cultural frameworks simultaneously.
At times, linguistic authenticity is not merely artistic but ethical. Films that confront historical trauma, such as Schindler’s List, rely on language to anchor their moral seriousness. When Jewish actors perform in German, the choice is not incidental. Language becomes a site of memory and confrontation. It is difficult to imagine an automated voice carrying that responsibility without hollowing it out.
This is why claims that AI heralds the death of language miss the point. Language is not just a delivery system for information. It is a repository of history, humour, power and pain. Fluency is not only about knowing what to say, but when to hesitate, when to understate, and when to let silence do the work. These are not technical problems waiting to be solved; they are human instincts shaped by lived experience.
AI may one day improve its grasp of metaphor and nuance. It may even learn to sound convincing. But acting is not about sounding convincing; it is about being convincing. Until algorithms can acquire memory, cultural inheritance and emotional intuition, multilingual actors will remain irreplaceable. AI may learn to speak. But it cannot yet learn to mean.
In an industry increasingly tempted by shortcuts, language remains stubbornly resistant to automation. And for actors who can move between worlds, linguistic, cultural, and emotional, that resistance is not a weakness, but a quiet, enduring advantage.
