The narrative short category at this year’s Bushwick Film Festival is perhaps one of the most exciting. The films selected explore a diversity of experiences, defying genre and encompassing a full spectrum of emotions. One of my favorites is “Cracked”, an intimate coming of age story directed by Lin Que Ayoung. “Cracked” is Lin Que’s thesis project for NYU Graduate Film. Before her filmmaking career, Lin Que was a hip hop performer and lyricist. A musical sensibility clearly permeates her film w

The Trial of the Chicago 7, Photo Credit MovieStillsDB Netflix’s 2020 release, The Trial of the Chicago 7 (written and directed by Aaron Sorkin), attempts to make a straightforward story out of a complicated trial, in which eight defendants are accused of conspiracy to provoke the riots at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. In some ways, Sorkin had incredible success, while in other ways, the compromises he made may have been too hasty. The overall structure of Sorkin's screenplay for

Erin Brockovich (2000 dir. Stephen Soderbergh) is different from the typical legal movie. There is no climactic trial scene where the orchestral score swells to its peak as the lawyer or the witness gets their big moment to convince the jury of their case. The protagonist is neither the lawyer nor the plaintiff nor the defendant. Erin Brockovich is about the paralegal, the assistant. The action focuses on the research and the work behind the scenes, not the courtroom arguments. It’s a working-cl

On the island of Mallorca, the Spanish beach town Magaluf has an extravagant reputation in both Spain and the UK. As an American living in Spain, I had never heard of it, but my British friends immediately recognized Magaluf. They could speak to its infamy as a cheap, revelrous destination for young Brits. Magaluf has been the subject of British reality shows such as “Geordie Shore” (a variation on Jersey Shore) and sensationalized news stories that have created a self-fulfilling prophecy in the

“I think I am terrified of losing someone - so finding a way to visualize that space in between life and death is comforting to me,” says Bushwick Film Festival alumna Tess Harrison about her upcoming film, The Light Upstate, which explores grief and its myriad of complexities. Harrison is a filmmaker and actor whose momentum is on the rise. Her work in short narrative film and music videos shows her capacity to tell visually and narratively exciting stories in just a few short minutes. Soon we’

During my semester abroad in Madrid my sophomore spring, I tasked myself with finding an internship for the upcoming summer. My internship search took on a sense of urgency because I knew I couldn’t spend the summer in New York City without income. While I loved visiting my family and my hometown, I felt like I belonged in the city, and I yearned to be there. Sending cover letters into the void was discouraging when each unanswered application felt like a step away from the life I was building i

In October of my sophomore year, I applied for a semester abroad at NYU Madrid. At the same time, I submitted an application for the for-credit internship program there. In November, I had a Skype interview with the director of EUSA, a separate company NYU hires to run many of its abroad internship programs. During this meeting, we discussed the fields of work I was interested in, and she evaluated my level of Spanish fluency. When I arrived in Madrid, I received an email notifying me that I ha

As I entered my sophomore year at NYU, I was feeling pressure to get an internship. I had spent the summer working in a restaurant in my hometown, collecting tips and saving them all for my semester abroad. While this was a perfectly normal and productive way to spend my first summer at college, I still worried that I was inadequate compared to my NYU peers who interned for hedge funds or theater companies.

The college years are supposed to be the time when you figure out who you are and who you want to be—or at least that’s what I thought when I was 18 years old and headed to my first class at NYU in a blouse-pants combo that tried and failed to come off as business casual. I knew I wanted to apply to NYU’s International Relations Honors Program and that I would double major in Spanish.

I find it strange how after someone dies, we think, “How can they be gone? They were just here?” Even if they were here a month or a year ago, our brains feel as if they are just a step away. It’s like time isn’t linear in our memories, as if a moment lived years ago is happening simultaneously to the current moment, in which I am grieving alone and staring blankly at a ceiling wondering why. At my parents’ request, I returned to Nebraska at the beginning of the pandemic. It was mid-March, but