Year: Freshman
Major: Writing for Film, TV, and Emerging Media
Hometown: Rome, NY
Her Campus Ithaca College: What is your involvement in the Ithaca Pan Asian American Film Festival?
Jessica Acosta: I signed up for a class about it that meets once a week so we all pitch in and do different parts and we also have different committees. Being on the committee means you’re in charge of that particular aspect. I’m on the film selection and documentary committee, so we were in charge of watching all the submissions that people submitted to enter the festival. This week we’re gearing up to be filming a lot of the behind the scenes stuff. Then after that we’re going to edit it into a little documentary.
HCIC: What are you most excited for about the festival?
JA: I’m just excited because I know it’s going to be such a busy weekend, but at the same time it gonna be a really cool vibe because everyone’s gonna be excited. People whose films we accepted are going to come to the festival, so it’ll be cool to meet them. I’m just excited to take it all in and also I’m gonna have to be running around and organizing this documentary.
HCIC: What is the most important thing about having events like this?
JA: I just think it’s important because, coming in as a freshman and also as kind of a shy person and a person who was ambitious but didn’t really know what to do with their life, it was cool to actually be working on something with people who all cared about the same thing. Part of the class is looking at the history and all these stereotypes that have happened in the history of Hollywood film where Asians were super caricaturized and it was really racist basically, so just progress and representation. Even if it’s just a small festival in a small place, or a drip in the bucket compared to the whole film industry, the fact that it made a little difference in each one of our lives and hopefully having more information and exposure is a good thing.
HCIC: What is your favorite aspect of film production?
JA: I’m definitely more of a writer. That’s what I always wanted to do coming into Ithaca.
HCIC: Netflix or Hulu?
JA: Netflix
HCIC: What are you currently watching?
JA: I watch all those Marvel ones, House of Cards. I guess I watch a lot of political shows even though I don’t know that much about politics, but I watch House of Cards, Scandal and West Wing.
HCIC: If you could have one celebrity follow you around as a ghost (like the movie Ghost), who would you pick?
JA: If it’s a person who’s already dead I would say Leonard Nimoy. If it’s a living celebrity, maybe like Chris Pratt. I just followed him on Snapchat and he’s just fun.
HCIC: What would your sinature Ben and Jerry’s flavor consist of?
JA: This is intense because there’s different routes I could go with this. I want peanut butter in it. What if it’s, like, chunks of cookie dough but its sugar cookie dough, not chocoloate chip cookie dough, and chunks of peanut butter.