2023 Crimson Honors
The 2023 Crimson Honors college film and TV critics scholarship was expressly for LGBTQ+ women and nonbinary students who identify as Black, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian American, or Biracial. The student winners were awarded over $6,000 in financial support from Rotten Tomatoes. All three winners also received $100 Fandango and VUDU gift cards to watch movies in theaters or at home, along with a complimentary year-long GALECA membership, which included opportunities to meet editors and Advisory Board members.
Asha Pruitt
A staff writer for the University of California at Berkeley’s Daily Californian before graduating last May, submitted reviews of the British Catholic school girls comedy Derry Girls and humorist Nathan Fielder’s The Rehearsal, the unusual HBO docuseries that asks subjects to play out major possible future moments in their lives. GALECA’s judges praised Pruitt for their “strong voice” and how, in reviewing Rehearsal in particular, they “tackled a very dizzying and tangled show with relative ease.” Pruitt, heading into the world with a major in global studies and minors in journalism and French, also impressed with their brief think-piece on gay cowboy imagery in movies and pop music.
“The Crimson Honors award is an incredible honor, and I can’t thank (GALECA) enough,” said Pruitt, who in early June started working for Salt Lake City’s SLUG Magazine, a venerable free independent monthly founded in 1988. The job “aligns with my goals to amplify local art scenes and underrepresented communities. I’m not sure exactly what the future holds for me, but I know I’ll always be following my passion for arts and entertainment journalism.”
Grand Prize Winner, awarded $3000
Taila Lee
An incoming senior at the University of California Berkeley, impressed GALECA’s judges with her “well-expressed passion for the importance of a watchful eye on media,” the “wit and stylish sophistication” of her writing, and her “thoughtful” and “succinctly and fairly conveyed” criticism in several pieces as an arts and entertainment editor for campus outlet The Daily Californian. Surveying Lee’s reviews of movies such as Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, one panelist praised Lee for an “ability to dig into what makes a movie work and why, and how that relates to the culture it was released into.”
“I fell in love with storytelling back in high school, around the same time I was beginning to navigate my identity as queer,” said Lee, who is working toward a B.A. in media studies with a concentration on global culture. Critiquing movies and TV shows at Berkeley “has helped me better understand not only the art I consume, but also better understand myself and connect with others. Receiving this award from an organization that champions the arts and inclusivity means the world to me.”
Awarded $1500
A film major with a minor in women and gender studies at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, was singled out for “approaching daunting societal themes in film and TV with humor, flair and perspective” in videos on their own YouTube channel. Martinez’s review of Thor: Love and Thunder was deemed “edifying, entertaining and thought-provoking,” and their discussion of Natalie Portman’s pink-haired heroine in Closer was found to be “enjoyable and instructive.” Meanwhile, a story for UCF’s website NSM focused on several a cappella groups preparing for a Pitch Perfect-style competition, was “deceptively breezy, actually pointed.”
Said Martinez, an incoming senior: “Receiving this award is incredibly surreal, and I am deeply grateful to be reassured and reminded that words so personal and special to me are also considered articulate and impactful, especially by the communities I try to honor most.”
Ariana Martinez
Awarded $1500