Summer internship offers film majors the reel deal
By: Samantha Silver
Issue date: 4/30/09 Section: Features
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In Cannes, students will work six hours a day at the American Pavilion waiting tables, bartending and doing other odd jobs. In Venice, the program focuses on independent filmmaking and interns work with a publicity company. Interns will be using whatever time not spent working attending film screenings and taking advantage of networking opportunities presented by being at such infamous film festivals.
"The chance to attend such a prestigious event in the film industry is very exciting… Hopefully this experience will help guide me to what I want to do in the future," said Mitchell.
While Cannes is the largest film festival in the world, and the more prestigious of the two, Venice is the oldest and is a renowned festival for international independent film-just last year the director of The Wrestler, Darren Arranofsky, became the first sole American to win the Leone d'Oro -the highest award at the festival. Directors John Cassavetes and Robert Altman have both won the award but were tied for it with international filmmakers.
Cannes has helped give acclaim to films like Pulp Fiction, Taxi Driver and Apocalypse Now before they went on to win Oscars in the U.S. However, only two films to date have won both the prestigious Palm d'Or Award (the highest award given at the festival) as well as the Academy Award for Best Picture - Billy Wilder's The Lost Weekend (1945) and Delbert Mann's Marty (1955). This year's selection will include new films by directors such as Quentin Tarantino, Ang Lee, Pedro Almodovar and Michel Gondry.
Mount Holyoke's connection to the program came through film studies department chair Robin Blaetz and American Pavilion program coordinator Walter Harris, who came to speak to students during the fall semester about the internship program. The internship is presented explicitly as a means for students looking for a job and looking for networking opportunities to meet business professionals.
Scarloss, who will be interning at Cannes this summer, is greatly anticipating the experience. "Just being at a festival where everyone has some sort of part in the film industry is an amazing opportunity. Without this internship, I would not be able to be there unless I was a professional in the business, which is pretty mind-blowing," she said.
Opportunities like these, however, do not come without their own price. On top of travel expenses, the program costs $2,995 and includes meals and housing, but it's a price students are willing to pay for such great networking opportunities. "I applied for funding through UAF, but don't know if I received any. I had to get additional loans to pay the initial program fees," said Hahn.