STEFFENS: Welcome to Great Arts at Eastern. This is David Steffens. I’m Dean of the College of Fine Arts. Today we preview the ENMU Film Club and I’m joined today by two students who are members and leaders of the film club. Welcome, Santiago.
SANTIAGO: Great to be here.
STEFFENS: And Sydney,
SYDNEY: Thank you for having me.
STEFFENS: Hey, you’re welcome. So, tell us, SYDNEY, a little bit about who’s involved in the film club and when you meet and I assume a student could participate, but maybe even a faculty member or a staff member could participate as well. Just tell us a little bit about it.
SYDNEY: Sure, we meet on Wednesdays at the UTC room, 130 at 6:00 PM.
STEFFENS: 160?
SYDNEY: Yeah There’s only one classroom. You’ll find it, and then anyone who wants to participate who has an interest in cinema or our workshops or making films with friends.
STEFFENS: Great. So how many students are involved right now? Do you know?
SYDNEY: It depends on the day and how you know how busy that week is, but on a good day we have around 20. Some days we only have three, but those days are the most fun.
STEFFENS: So, 20 students and many of them I assume are majoring in film,
SYDNEY: Many,
STEFFENS: But not all.
SYDNEY: But we have some who are forensics majors. We have a few. Do you know what their majors are?
SANTIAGO: Umm. I think business majors
SYDNEY: Business.
STEFFENS: Great. So, the sense I get is that even though the film students are the most commonly involved, we’re welcoming all students and potentially even faculty and staff members if they’re interested in the film club,
SYDNEY: The more the merrier.
STEFFENS: And Santiago, what what’s your involvement been?
SANTIAGO: So, I’m the president of Film club, so I kind of oversee everything. And um, so there’s always projects that we’re working on. One of the most recent ones was The Room Shadow Show, where basically we had The Room, the notoriously bad movie projected on the big screen while people acted out, similar to Rocky Horror but with something different this year. And so that was led by Israel Stacy and just having projects like that that students can work on that well, hopefully bring them out and have them do something fun that involves film and film adjacent sort of things. We’re trying to get other things like a 48-hour film challenge, but I think the hard part is just how busy everyone gets. And I think just working around that and finding what else we can do, And I think whenever there’s not this big thing and it’s just a regular meeting, what we’re typically doing is watching a movie. And I like the idea of film curation and choosing movies that mean something to you, so. Um, finding whatever speaks to you. We opened the year with uh a film called Walkout, which is about the walkouts in East LA high schools in the 1960s. And I think that movie like that just spoke to me in that it’s a sense of fighting for what you believe in and standing up for justice no matter what, and showing just how scary of a thing it could be. So just movies like that that really say something about our society and hopefully give some sort of solution. But of course we also have movies that we just think are fun.
STEFFENS: Sure. And tell us a little bit more about a Shadow Show, what people might not be familiar.
SANTIAGO: Oh, so Shadow Show is basically just you have the movie projected on the big screen and where there’s also a stage that actors are performing at live at the same time. So, it’s sort of a mix of film and theater in a nice and fun way and Rocky Horror Picture Show was kind of like the idea that most people think of for a shadow show, where it’s just like you have the local people kind of doing it like on stage while the movie is shown. And one of the things we wanted to do this year is kind of like mix it up because really, Rocky Horror Picture Show like done a lot, and so we wanted to see like, what else could he do it with and so we chose the 2003 film The Room which if you’re not aware of, it’s basically just one of those movies that people consider to be the worst movie ever made. And it was really interesting just thinking about how it’s really challenging and how bad it is, but like in a way that you can have fun with it.
STEFFENS: Great and Sydney, tell us one more time where and when if we want to get involved in the film club.
SYDNEY: You can come to Film Club Wednesdays, 6:00 PM in the UTC Room 160.
STEFFENS: Very good, thanks for joining.
SYDNEY: Thank you.
SANTIAGO: Thank you for having us.