College scholar Justin Lerner '02 moves in the direction of the big screen

By Franklin Crawford

If you want to keep pace with Justin Lerner, you'd better grab a large cup of coffee first. Lerner, a senior college scholar in theater arts with a concentration in film, is an articulate and passionate spokesman for his favorite medium -- movies -- specifically the creation and direction of authentic cinema.

Lerner is determined to become an auteur by any means necessary. He entered via Cornell's Department of Theatre, Film and Dance and threw himself into numerous film projects as well as stage productions in the Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts. This fall, while working on his honor's thesis on the films of Andrei Tarkowsky, Lerner served as assistant director for The Rez Sisters, the Native American play by Tomson Highway that had its regional premiere at Cornell, with guest director Randy Reinholz. Lerner also directed a staged reading of Highway's Ernestine Shuswap Gets Her Trout, performed for the visiting playwright by the student group new.living.voices. When he's not absorbed in directing and studying film, Lerner says he writes every day and is working on a collection of short stories.

Justin Lerner '02 poses in the Kiplinger Theatre of the Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts. Robert Barker/University Photography

"That's how I fell in love with film -- through writing, through storytelling. I wanted to penetrate the confusion and beauty of life, take on the big questions about who we are and why we're here and why we need art," says Lerner. "I decided I wanted filmmaking to tell stories and to answer my personal questions about the world, about myself, about other people. I know that sounds self-indulgent, and it is, but it's also true."

Eager to make his mark on celluloid, Lerner also has come to appreciate the more ephemeral dynamics of the stage, something he didn't think would happen.

"I've embraced the theater program since I've been here and that's been to my advantage," he says. "Film is my passion, but theater is a lot of fun and has taught me how to work with actors. The important thing, the enduring thing in either medium is a good story well told. Theater and film feed each other in terms of learning how best to tell a story that moves through time and space."

One of Lerner's most inspirational courses was a spring 2001 seminar devoted to film and spiritual questions (Theatre, Film and Dance 474) taught by Associate Professor Don Fredericksen. That seminar covered documentary and narrative cinema and centered on the films of Tarkowsky, one of the giants of 20th century cinema. This work lies at the core of Lerner's honor's thesis, says Fredericksen.

"Justin is particularly taken by the way Tarkowsky's film Stalker manifests spiritual dimensions: a journey into the 'interior,' the shamanic character of the 'stalker' himself, the encounter with one's deepest desires and the reluctance to face them as realities," says Fredericksen. "This kind of thesis work sits right at the center of what a humanistic education is supposed to do for both student and teacher: raise the fundamental questions of human purpose and meaning."

In addition to his studies, Lerner said he is constantly working on stories, on scripts and jotting down the day's events "whenever I've got 10 minutes to myself." Last spring he wrote and directed a short film called Dizzy Girl, screened at the Cornell Cinema in May 2001 and praised in the local press. The film is now making its way through the Ivy League Film Festival's short subject category.

Lerner says he enjoys jockeying between social extremes and strives to surround himself "with interesting people." A fraternity member with Sigma Alpha Mu, he also serves as president of the Independent Filmmakers at Cornell University, a student organization, and has cranked out deadline copy for the Cornell Daily Sun.

His immediate plans include completing his senior honor's thesis, co-directing another student theater production and shooting another original film in the winter and spring, as well as rewriting some scripts; oh -- and getting that collection of short stories completed and off to a publisher by graduation. He plans to take a year off after graduation, hopefully in Spain.

"I've done everything I've wanted to do at Cornell," Lerner says. "I'm really going to miss this place."