Newhouse School of Communications
Reel Life Experience
June 17, 2009
by Patricio Maya Solis
Go online, read a few reviews, check the showtimes, and choose. That's all a person has to do to decide what movie to see during a film festival. Much work, though, goes behind making movie reviews available to the public.
Goldring Arts Journalism student and former Syracuse International Film Festival intern Michael LoPresti knows all about it. This spring he wrote around 20 reviews for the festival's website.
"Owen Shapiro, the festival's artistic director, wanted the reviews to function as informational reviews, not just summaries, but critical reactions," said LoPresti, who started watching festival entry DVDs back in March.
The variety of the screened films was a high point for LoPresti. As in previous years, the 6th annual Syracuse International Film Festival honored its name by showcasing a great number of foreign movies.
In fact, two of LoPresti's favorite movies were foreign: "Gympl" ("The Can") a Czech coming of age story about two students who take up graffiti as a form of expression, and "Bench Warmers," a Japanese movie about two high school baseball players."[It] will pull at your heart strings from start to finish," wrote LoPresti in his "Bench Warmers" review.
The ability to expose people in Syracuse to films they might not otherwise get a chance to see is one of the festival's strengths, according to LoPresti. That said, he believes the six-year old festival has some improvements to make, namely in terms of promotion.
"A lot of people in town would appreciate the films. I think it's still working to find its audience," LoPresti said.
Real world experience and the ability to see how a film festival works from the inside is something LoPresti enjoyed on a personal level--not to mention the exposure his writing received.
"I can see myself working with a film festival in a community this size in the future," he said.
