Trinity Film Review (TFR) has made a big splash this year, with a community of over 100 writers and contributors, and a thriving Instagram page. I had the pleasure of interviewing Emma Egan this February about her time as editor as well as the publication and its upcoming final issue. As Emma is currently studying abroad, we had to rely on good old fashioned Zoom, however, if you have spent any amount of time in the Trinity Film Review WhatsApp groupchat, you know she is extremely passionate, positive, and enthusiastic, which almost made it feel as though it was in-person.
When asked about her role at TFR and how she manages it being abroad, Emma says it is a very remote job already. She is able to easily manage the Instagram, copyedit articles and reviews, and manage her team all from California. Emma detailed to me her passion for film as a film major, as well as her love for writing. She joined TFR in her first year and has slowly made her way up the ranks, her love for what she does palpable. To Emma, TFR is the most approachable Trinity publication, seeing as it gives “The opportunity to anyone in Trinity who is passionate about film to go to screenings and write their own review and have that come out before the movie releases”. She also says that through her minimalistic copywriting style, she hopes to include “the most perspectives possible” and wants the publication to be “very accessible to anyone in Trinity”.
We then moved on to talking about the theme for the upcoming TFR issue, Class is in Session, which Emma seemed very excited about as she loves John Hughes movies and Monsters University. To her, “School has so many different educational environments and is so formative. You meet so many different people and learn so much about yourself”. She saw this passion reflected in the writers, as the launch party announcing the theme was a great success and she had already seen articles arriving at her desk a week or so before the deadline. She discussed with me the variety of prompts thought of and selected, including teachers in film and how they are formative in everyday life, to how the superhero genre and Spiderman connects to coming-of-age and school, and how the educational environment is depicted in Massachusetts-set media. When asked how the themes are selected for each release, Emma said it is always easy because of the camaraderie of her team, mentioning “There’s so many ideas… it’s a process you think would be quite difficult because of disagreements, but the theme always emerges within the first ten minutes of the meeting”. She connected the current theme to previous ones about nostalgia and international media, discussing how she sees patterns within what people write about and tries to find ideas from there. For example, for their Lost in Translation issue surrounding international film, TFR noticed a lot of their writers were not from Ireland and took that as an opportunity to give them the space to discuss films from their own countries, while simultaneously helping readers discover the wealth of global cinema. Emma stated, “It is a really interesting thing to look at your personal life and weave it into films… you are connecting with people by seeing their work”.
Throughout the interview, Emma talked glowingly about her team, often referring to everything done at TFR with “we” statements and shouting out specific people she works with. When asked what her highlights of this year were, Emma said “Highlights, I can say above everything every time is the people. It doesn’t matter if the work is too much or you’re doing something you don’t really want to do… I wouldn’t have met so many wonderful people without this job”. She mentioned how much she will miss TFR when she has to leave since it has been such a large part of her college experience and sees it as fitting that the final issue should be Class is in Session. She spoke about how she has seen such a huge growth in interest in and contribution to TFR, and hopes it can grow more next year. TFR will be introducing the new role of Social Media Manager so that they can use social platforms to make the publication more public and accessible. Interviews for the executive team will be happening soon, so people should get involved any way they want.
When asked why people should get involved in TFR, Emma said that it is an excellent place to make friends and meet people you wouldn’t have met before. It also is an excellent opportunity to have your work published and it looks great on a CV. In Emma’s words “If you have any interest at all in film, there is a place at this paper for you”. I would highly recommend attending their launch party for the Class is in Session issue on April 10th, joining the WhatsApp community, and getting to writing!
