Courtesy of Nic Sanfilippo ’27
This summer, Nic Sanfilippo ‘27, film studies and psychology major, will go across the country to San Francisco working with historical queer-film-festival Frameline to represent their major to the very fullest, working in film distribution and marketing.
Frameline is the longest running queer film festival in the country. This nonprofit media arts organization presents a film festival each year, uplifting queer art through film and community. They are also a nonprofit distributor, providing films for colleges, libraries, and theatrical screenings. Sanfillippo explained that film distribution is ‘the middleman’ between film production and theatrical release. They continued, “I’m specifically interested in the marketing part of it, so working with film companies to pitch their films to festivals or theaters to secure showings.”
For Sanfilippo, working in film and media has been a long time coming. Their first-year-seminar in film with professor Sonia Misra in Film Feminisms inspired their decision to major in film, but growing up watching their mother work in graphic design, they adopted an artistic outlook.
“I loved watching movies growing up, and when La La Land (2016) came out, I was really mesmerized by the cinematography and just the wide skill production of that,” they began. “But I never considered film to be something to study or pursue, given the view of film being like a low paying field. But with the Conn film studies program here, and how interdisciplinary and exploratory it is, how it pushes you beyond production — that’s where I was able to explore more about what the wider industry actually entails.”
On campus, Sanfilippo has been a prominent student in their major, supporting multiple student-led films, is the communications fellow for Gender and Sexuality Programming, and is the layout director and social media manager for our physical paper, and our online and print publications. Film, layout, write, design and more, Sanfilippo has curated and contributed a wide range of digital art and communications skills to a number of organizations.
“Everything I do is a connection to my identity as a queer person; it’s the part of me I most align with, and queer film has such a beautiful and powerful history of advocacy, art and community.”
