The skateboarders at City Hall have gotten used to her by now. She shows up a few days a week, films them for a few hours and leaves. She’s become one of the guys.
College senior Kara Simmers came to Penn planning to be a geneticist, but somehow along the line she decided to stick with her real love — movies.
Now she’s one of a handful of students pursuing an individualized major. The title? Cultural filmmaking.
Students who design their own majors have decided to go outside the bounds of what an established major can offer, often working on the cutting edge of new disciplines.
Simmers’ major combines elements of Film and Folklore.
She got hooked on cinematic studies after taking Writing About Film her freshman year.
“It gave me a really great kick to learn about the concepts of filmmaking. It was just something really different that I’d never been exposed to,” Simmers said.
In addition to taking Film courses, Simmers enrolled in Folklore classes, and the subject soon became her second love. When the undergraduate Folklore major was dissolved, Simmers began brainstorming ideas to study both Film and Folklore.
The result was an individualized major in urban ethnographic filmmaking, but she soon expanded this topic to include broader themes.
“I decided to refocus more on cultural aspects, the general culture and not just urban culture,” Simmers recalled.
Since the Committee on Individualized Study approved Simmers’ major in cultural filmmaking, she has taken courses in Italian, Chinese and Japanese film, as well as various Anthropology and Urban Studies courses.
Currently, she is producing a film about the ways children and young adults interact with their parents and also with public art and public space here in Philadelphia.
She chose four locations around the city to film: Rittenhouse Square, the Button on Penn’s campus, City Hall and Love Park.
“I chose them because they’re three economically very different communities, and I was interested in whether that made a difference in the people that came and in the way people interacted when they were there,” Simmers said.
Once she sets up her equipment and decides what to film, Simmers must then get permission from her subjects.
Simmers acknowledged that informing people that they are being filmed “does compromise things in a lot of different ways.”
In filming these locations as many times as she has, Simmers has come to feel like she is a part of each community.
“I feel like I become a part of the scene, and I don’t really feel out of the loop,” Simmers said, adding that such a feeling of familiarity helps her detect when changes occur in these settings — often changes worth capturing on film.
Simmers’ project is certainly unique, but it may not be long before other Penn students pursue similar avenues.
Jacqui Sadashige, an assistant professor in the Classical Studies Department and one of Simmers’ advisors, said this will happen once the University establishes an undergraduate Film Studies major.
“The thing about Kara’s project and the nature of that project at Penn is that Film Studies is a relatively young field here,” Sadashige said. “The possibilities of doing a project like Kara’s have been far more limited in the past.”
