Sophia Bennett Holmes
“ON YOUR RADAR” IS A WEEKLY GRAD FILM NEWS SEGMENT THAT FEATURES A STUDENT PICKED AT RANDOM.
SOPHIA IS CURRENTLY A 3RD YEAR STUDENT AT GRAD FILM. WE ASKED HER A FEW QUESTIONS, AND HERE’S WHAT SHE HAD TO SAY:
Where do you consider home and what is it like there?
9th street in Park Slope, Brooklyn, where I grew up and where I still live. Since it’s one of the widest streets in Park Slope, it’s the route for ambulances, buses and firetrucks. It sometimes feels like the loudest street in Brooklyn. If you walk down far enough, you hit the Gowanus canal and if you walk up you hit Prospect Park. On the corner is Smiling Pizza which stays open till 3am, teenagers go there late at night after getting drunk in the park. Across the street from me is a big synagogue. On Jewish holidays the whole street is closed for celebrations, it used to keep me up as a kid. There’s a Library down the street and across from it is the café which closes right as the bar next door opens. And if you walk into the middle of the street at sunset, you get a perfect view.
What is currently inspiring you as a filmmaker?
Gen Z kids who look like they’ve stepped straight out of the 90s, rom coms, especially You’ve Got Mail and Moonstruck, Studio Ghibli movies, especially Kiki’s Delivery Service, Whisper of the Heart, Only Yesterday, craigslist missed connections, the two books I’m in the middle of: A Swim in A Pond in the Rain and Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont, the show How To with John Wilson, Chris Verene’s photo book Family, Alessandra Sanguinetti’s photo book The Adventures of Guille and Belinda, soviet movie posters, La Bohéme, my middle school diaries, Harry Potter books etc. etc. etc!
What has been your most rewarding experience at NYU Tisch Grad Film so far?
Shooting Spring Narrative which was both the most stressful and the most rewarding. We shot in February, 2021, right in the middle of Covid. We had been in lockdown for almost a year and suddenly we were on set with our friends, finally making movies. Our films were shot mainly in singles since our actors couldn’t be closer than 6 feet from each other, and I didn’t even meet my actors in person until the day of the shoot. The stress turned into exhilaration turned into stress turned into joy.
The day before the first shoot (mine), there was a huge snow storm, and many feet of snow stayed on the ground throughout all the shoots. I remember trudging through it to Deals and Discounts to buy a pajama costume for my lead actress, location scouting for gardens that we couldn’t even see because they were buried in snow. After the shoots were over, my friend/crew-mate Gabi and I drove back to Brooklyn after dropping off equipment, listening to loud music and getting weepy, saying how we’d be happy doing this the rest of our lives.
Check out her Vimeo and follow her on Instagram.