I usually find it difficult to express how exactly I found myself making films and art, as this creative output is something I’ve always needed in my life. The same way a professional athlete or ecologist might become dispirited when they’re unable to attend practice or work in the field, I feel incomplete when I’m not conceiving, producing, or editing a new project.
When it came time for college, nothing made more sense than the filmmaking program at Mason Gross, which has been complemented wonderfully by my second major in philosophy.
While I don’t know what being a professional in my field means for me yet, I do try to seize every opportunity I can inside and outside of the classroom. This summer [I had a] variety of inspirational experiences, starting with the Cannes Film Festival in May. Last summer, when I was a pre-production intern on my filmmaking professor Danielle Lessovitz’s feature film Port Authority, I never expected that I would be invited to attend its premiere at one of the most prestigious festivals in the world. Actually being at Cannes pulled back a bit of its mystique; perhaps it isn’t such an impossible goal for my own work. Danielle was incredibly generous with making sure that her students at Cannes were soaking in as much as possible, from screenings to how she was navigating the festival herself.
In June I headed to the 65th Robert Flaherty Film Seminar, hosted at Colgate University in upstate New York. Not quite a film festival and not quite a conference, it’s difficult to describe the cult-like magic of this event. The Flaherty only announces the year’s theme (“Action”) and programmer (Shai Heredia) in advance – you don’t even know the film(s) you’re watching as the lights go down in the theater each time – so I had to trust the excitement of professors and friends who had experienced it previously. It ended up being six life-changing days of rigorous screenings and discussions revolving around documentary and experimental southeast Asian cinema, which has already contributed to my thesis film research.
I just got back from the Telluride Film Festival Student Symposium in Colorado late August. Composed of 50 college students from around the world, it felt great to have been accepted alongside two other Rutgers film students. The Symposium was five days of screenings and private discussions with directors crafted just for us, but getting to know these other students was just as important to me.
Throughout the entire summer I had a film programming internship at UnionDocs, the center for documentary art in Brooklyn. Most of my tasks revolved around research and writing for their diverse nonfiction film screenings, learning about how they function as a nonprofit, digital archiving, and outreach. I really enjoyed the work I was doing, but it was also a joy getting to meet all of the artists coming through their space for screenings and workshops.
I’m going to be processing this incredible summer for a long time, though I can say for sure that Cannes, Flaherty, Telluride and UnionDocs have made invaluable contributions to my development as an artist and curator. With Cannes being an intense industry setting, Flaherty being the polar opposite experimental/academic crowd, Telluride being an intimate enclave of film geeks, and UnionDocs being a distinctly nonfiction through line, it feels like the wide variety of people I met at these places will continue to inform my personal and professional growth.
Of course, these opportunities were made tangible through various forms of support from the Honors College, Rutgers Filmmaking Center, Mason Gross Dean’s Office, and Mason Gross Student Government Association. It’s always an honor to represent Rutgers in the world, and I’m looking forward to continuing to do so in my senior year and beyond.