Georgetown College. Georgetown University.

Jennifer Manno's time at Georgetown, and her classes and work with Professor Wurtzler, influenced her future career in film with MoMA. (Photo: courtesy Jennifer Manno)

Jennifer Manno graduated from Georgetown in 2003. She designed her major in Film Studies through Georgetown’s interdisciplinary program. Professor Wurtzler was her adviser for her course of study.

Manno is the Assistant Coordinator of Exhibitions at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. Her job includes coordinating MoMA’s film programming. She has coordinated several exhibits at the museum relating to film, including Pixar: 20 Years of Animation, Rossellini on Paper, Doug Aitken: Sleepwalkers, Pipilotti Rist: Pour Your Body Out (7354 Cubic Meters), Aernout Mik and the upcoming career retrospective, Tim Burton.

Q. What classes did you take with Professor Wurtzler?
A. "Documentary Film" and "Avant Garde Film." I also did an independent study with Professor Wurtzler on the mockumentary genre, which culminated in my thesis on "This is Spinal Tap" and "Bob Roberts."

Q. Why did you decide to take a class with Professor Wurtzler?
A. I came to Georgetown with the intention of studying Government like so many others, but decided to take a film course (“Violence in American Cinema” with Professor Bernie Cook) during my freshman year, since I have been a lifelong TV and movie fan. I quickly realized that Government was not the right path for me, but instead was incredibly inspired by my film class. I sought out as many film classes at Georgetown as possible, and this led me to Professor Wurtzler’s "Documentary Film" class during the spring of my sophomore year.

Q. What did you find particularly interesting about Professor Wurtzler's classes?
A. Professor Wurtzler’s classes were unlike any others I took at Georgetown. He creates an environment for his students where they can feel totally comfortable discussing their ideas and putting forth their own views about film. Professor Wurtzler would introduce a film before screening it, and then guide the class into a discussion about the film, always encouraging us to form our own opinions and interpretations of what we had seen. Of course, we would read critical responses and published materials relating to the film, but he asked us to think beyond these texts. By inviting discourse, asking questions, and constantly challenging us to think about film in different ways, he created an atmosphere where students could express themselves freely and help each other to understand and appreciate film. There was a great spirit of camaraderie in his classroom and we enjoyed and looked forward to this exchange of ideas. He truly enlarged our minds and encouraged us to not only think creatively but to be creative, especially with the cameraless film project (see below).

Q. What was your favorite part of his classes?
A. My favorite experience with Professor Wurtzler was creating “cameraless films” in the “Avant Garde Film” class. We had studied the works of filmmakers, including Stan Brakhage and Man Ray, who manipulated the film strip itself in a variety of ways, rather than using a camera to create images. We were then given the chance to explore filmmaking without a camera ourselves when Professor Wurtzler gave each of us a section of a 16mm film and invited us to create our own films by scratching, painting, drawing, bleaching, etc. and working directly on the film strip. In creating our own cameraless films, we thought about what we had seen filmmakers do with celluloid over the course of the semester and then considered how we could follow along those same lines or what we could do to be different and further explore all of the possibilities for cameraless films. Professor Wurtzler then compiled our finished projects on a reel and screened it for the class. He called out our names as our own films began, so that we could finally see our creations brought to life. It was an exhilarating experience, and amazing to see how every student had a totally unique take on the cameraless film. I appreciated being able to follow in the footsteps of the filmmakers we had studied, and try our hand at filmmaking to get a real sense of how the process works.

Q. How did taking classes with Professor Wurtzler influence your Georgetown academic career?
A. Professor Wurtzler influenced my Georgetown academic career completely. I connected with film studies in a way that I hadn’t with any other subject, and Professor Wurtzler only deepened my interest in and commitment to the subject. While I was taking his “Documentary Film” class, I decided that I wanted to focus on film studies full-time during my career at Georgetown. I designed my own major in Film Studies through the interdisciplinary program, which he supported and oversaw from the beginning.

Q. Would you encourage other students to take a Film Studies class?
A. Of course! The film studies classes at Georgetown present a wonderful opportunity to explore a subject matter that is completely different from any other at Georgetown. The classes ask you to think critically about an art form that perhaps you had only previously enjoyed recreationally or know very little about. I found that students in Professor Wurtzler’s classes really cared about the subject matter he taught and happily embraced new ideas and forms of cinema.

Q. What else were you involved with during your time at Georgetown?
A. While at Georgetown, I interned at the Hirshhorn Musuem and Sculpture Gallery, and was one of the judges of GUTV’s Student Film Festival in the spring of 2003. And of course, I watched many, many movies.

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