“Inspiring!”
That’s how Communication and Film Studies major Jean Hur described her 2025 summer internship.
This was no run-of-the-mill assignment. She interned as a photographer at the Cannes Film Festival.
That’s right. The Cannes Film Festival. The one on the French Riviera.
The Elaine E. Nord Fund supported Hur’s internship. “It lifted the financial burden,” Hur said. “And allowed me to have the most fun and to live the experience to the fullest without having to worry about financial factors.”
The funding was provided through the generosity of Elaine E. Nord, a UMass alumna who majored in Communication and graduated in 1981. It supports internships for communication students who use technology to produce media content, including video production and photography.
At Cannes, besides the excitement of seeing “the most celebrities ever in my life,” Hur walked away from the internship with a new career goal in the field of communication: to become a feature film director of photography and editor.
Well before the internship, Hur honed her skills at UMass by videotaping events for the Korean Student Association. That experience served her well at Cannes, where she photographed events hosted by The American Pavilion, including round table discussions and media panels featuring people from the film industry.
The round tables were held outside, just steps above the beach at the Bay of Cannes. Hur said the unbelievable view made it easier to take great photographs.
Like the other student interns, she arrived every morning dressed in a navy-blue polo shirt with khakis, first going through a security check point before beginning her workday. She photographed for about four hours but was also able to sit and listen to the events she was covering.
Outside of her work as an intern, she attended film screenings, paying close attention to how directors integrated sound and visuals into their storytelling.
“It was really uplifting to be in that environment,” she explained. “Just watching different types of films, whether I ended up liking them or not, gave me a lot of inspiration.”
Hur said she was particularly empowered to see the work of women filmmakers, like director Lynne Ramsay, who premiered her film “Die, My Love” this year at Cannes. “It’s really encouraging to see other women creating great things,” she said.
For Hur, perhaps the biggest impact of the internship was the close connections she made with other students who came from schools all over the U.S.
“I learned a lot from them,” she said. “Some people have actually made feature-length films or made high production shorts. Other people are still discovering what they want to do. It’s just really eye-opening.”
And encouraging. Those conversations with her peers helped Hur solidify a new passion for a career trajectory in feature filmmaking.