Once a month, room 127 in the Telecommunications building goes pitch black as Cal State Long Beach students pack in, fire up the projector, make some popcorn and watch a classic movie.
CSULB Film Club began its first semester of the Film Literacy Improvement Club in September with the goal of boosting student’s film literacy, or the amount of movies they have watched and can talk about.
[sidebar title=”Calendar for FLIC’s upcoming movies” align=”left” background=”on” border=”all” shadow=”on”]- Oct. 25
- “Cape Fear”
- Nov. 15
- “Apocalypse Now”
- Dec. 6
- “It’s a Wonderful Life”
- Jan.
- “Deul”
- Feb.
- “An Affair to Remember”
- March
- “All about Eve”
- April
- “Smokey and the Bandit”
- May
- “Castle in the Sky”
Andrew Haag, president of CSULB Film Club, had the idea for a film literacy club last semester when he served as secretary for the organization. Haag wanted to show movies that he felt would be helpful to film majors, but in a more relaxed environment.
“It’s a really laid-back situation,” Haag said. “We’re all just hanging out and we just talk about some cool things that happened during production or some cool trivia.”
The movies chosen for viewing were selected based on films that professors often bring up in class and expect students to know, as well as films that have a stylistic lesson to teach those who may be making movies themselves.
“People always expect [film majors] to know all the movies,” Haag said. “It gets really hard to actually watch all that stuff, especially when you’re in classes and you’re just analyzing all the time. You just go home and you rewatch ‘The Office’ for like the ninth time.”
The films for this year’s roster follow a different theme for each month, with a Christmas movie for December, a romance movie for February and an anime film for May. This schedule is meant to ensure that students get a taste of each genre, and help students see films in a new way.
For second year history major, Vanessa Bloom, the club offered her just that with their first movie screening “Blade Runner.”
“It was a lot of fun … not dull like in a class. It felt different because they’re your peers,” said Bloom. “It’s nice to look critically at movies. When you have an understanding of context and who makes the film, it makes the movie richer.”
While most of the movie choices are made with an educational goal in mind, the club is also trying to branch out to students and give them a chance to simply watch movies they’ve always heard about but have never gotten the chance to see.
First year pre-film major Nicole Evalle was among some of the students that got a new experience with FLIC’s first meeting.
“I didn’t even know what ‘Blade Runner’ was,” Evalle said. “It wasn’t a movie I would see by myself but I’m glad I watched it with film club. It’s a good environment and it was nice to talk about it with people in your major.”
Haag said in the future, he would like to start reaching people outside of the film department and introduce them to genres they haven’t explored, like foreign or black and white films.
“I’m trying to open different genres and areas for people to explore and think about things differently,” Haag said. “And it always makes for good dinner party talk.”
The next Film Literacy Improvement Club meeting will be on Oct. 25 at 7 p.m. in room 127 of the Telecommunications building. They will be showing Martin Scorsese’s “Cape Fear.”