Julia Liu ’02: Roll Camera One

As a little kid, I was always making art,” says director and cinematographer Julia Liu ’02. “I was obsessed with the scene in

 Cinderella where the animals make the dress for her. I must have drawn that 100 times. And I would take Calvin and Hobbes plotlines and rewrite and redraw them, putting in my childhood dog as the main character.”

Creative storytelling was an absorbing pastime in the Connecticut town of mostly white residents where Liu, who is Taiwanese, grew up and sometimes felt isolated. Arriving at Exeter was a “huge culture shock,” she says.

The diversity surprised and excited her — and so did the Academy’s emphasis on learning. “It was cool to be smart,” she says. “I had always loved school but had never experienced that. The Harkness method taught me how to think and express myself.” She dived into filmmaking classes taught by Instructor Rob Richards. “He set me on a path that I’m still on today,” Liu says. “In my senior year, I shot a movie in New York. … Having an adult tell you that you actually have potential is important.”

Despite her love of film, Liu studied human biology at Brown University. “Part of me said that being an artist was not practical,” she says. “But I still made movies on my own.”

After graduation, she promised that she would give herself a year to see if she could make a living in film. “I didn’t want to give up on the dream,” Liu says. “I hustled. I’d ride my bike around town and any time I’d see a film crew shooting, I’d ask, ‘How do I get a job on this set?’”

Her hustle led to a position as a camera production assistant for a television pilot that was shooting in Providence, Rhode Island. “I got my butt kicked, but I learned so much,” Liu says. She then moved to New York and landed a theatrical union job, working for several years on hit TV shows like Person of Interest, White Collar and Girls.

Now a contributing director for The New York Times’ Op-Doc series and an Emmy-nominated cinematographer for Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie in 2023, Liu is focusing her lens on promoting diversity in film. “To me, diversity is a matter of survival,” she says. “It’s making space for myself and people who look like me. It’s really important to be able to see some- one who looks like you in a role where you want to be.”

Looking back, Liu appreciates that Exeter laid the foundation for her success. “I made amazing friendships, and I think the education there is the best in the world,” she says. “I’m really grateful for the way Exeter nurtured me.”

This article was first published in the spring 2025 edition of The Exeter Bulletin.