Club Beat: Film Society

by Sarah Silbert '10

Thursday November 29, 2007

“It’s great to see a film in the city, but it is nice to have one on campus,” said SLC Film Society chair Luke Simon. “It is not often that you have a big screen to watch a good film for free.” Sarah Lawrence students can expect more than the occasional movie night; the Film Society plans to screen films on a weekly basis.
Since the Film Society’s creation in 2004, its members have maintained the same format, and no more than one film by any one director is screened each year. This, Simon explained, is part of an effort to “steer away from films people may have already seen and show lesser known gems.”

Despite its emphasis on more obscure titles, the club still plans to feature classic, renowned directors. “We all agreed on greats like Federico Fellini and Stanley Kubrick, so then it was a matter of deciding which film was most intriguing and most needed to be screened,” Simon says. In addition to featuring these two directors, the Film Society will continue its annual tradition of screening David Lynch’s big-screen debut, Eraserhead. Plans for screening Lynch’s famed TV-series Twin Peaks are also in the works.

So far, “Kill,” a 1968 film by Kihachi Okamato, and the Coen Brothers’ “Miller’s Crossing” have been chosen for future film screenings. These screenings will broaden even the club chair’s cinematic horizons; Simon admits that he has never heard of either movie.

Other films planned for year include 1983’s The Hunger, featuring a young David Bowie, Jim Jarmsusch’s Down by Law, and Une Femme Est Une Femme, a Godard film Simon referred to as a Technicolor New-Wave musical. The club also hopes to show The Burden of Dreams, a documentary about Werner Herzog’s Fitzgeraldo. Simon described the film with enthusiasm: “Everyone must see [this film]. It is hilarious and creepily real.”

In the past the Film Society has employed creative strategies to get around buying the rights to films, but Simon hopes that will change this year.“We are shooting to get funding from the Senate and buy the rights, so we can advertise with the actual title and pictures from the film,” Simon said. Though this constitutes a great expense, the group believes the freedom to properly and legally advertise is worth the cost.

Students looking for some on-campus entertainment should join the Sarah Lawrence Film Society each Friday at 8 p.m. for a high-quality, unique film. The club hopes to provide a forum for meeting other students as well as sharing reactions to the films.
“We are always open to suggestions,” Simon said, “and will hold another meeting [in early] spring to determine the series for the [second] semester.” The club chair concluded: “I hope everybody will enjoy the films and share their love for the talking pictures, as my Grandma called them.”

Kelsey Shaw was incorrectly listed as the Club Beat writer last issue. Sarah Silbert wrote the last column.