Dear Luke,
Your comments regarding the Film Series in Tuesday’s Wespeak are much appreciated. The Film Series relies on the feedback of the student body it seeks to entertain and we hope that your choice words will spark further communication. As the members of the Film Board share much of your fundamental outlook on the goals and aspirations of the Film Series, we want to touch on a couple of the issues that you raised.
Let us reassure you that showering the campus with fantastic yet difficult-to-see films remains a primary concern. Our struggles generally revolve more around reigning in our esoteric impulses than they do a cold-hearted, capitalistic impulse to make like Donald Trump on the backs of Leo and Beyoncé. As you have ascertained, we face real economic pressures, from the cost of renting film prints (usually about $800 a pop) to paying the folks who work hard to man our screenings. In order to break even, we must draw at least 155 audience members per paid show.
As all of our funding comes from students (either through fees disbursed by the WSA or through ticket sales), we try to program according to the interests of the student body. We gauge student interest through the recommendations suggested to us every spring, as well as through attendance records and informal conversations. Film programming is not a science—it’s an art. Sometimes we overestimate student interest in a film, sometimes we underestimate it. Two films we overestimated interest in: Pirates of the Caribbean 2 (which you denigrated) and Starship Troopers (which you championed). Both underperformed. You live and you learn.
Our financial responsibility has never compromised the variety or quality of the Film Series. When the Film Series was housed in the Science Center and the Center for the Arts we programmed four-five films a week, depending on the time of year. Now that the Series is in the Center for Film Studies there are only six fewer films shown per year—a minor difference. The primary difference is that the size of the Goldsmith Family Cinema is double that of previous venues, eliminating the need to offer multiple screenings of each film.
Luke, you are dead on when you emphasize that having films from a broad range of time periods is essential to a well-balanced film program. We take care to highlight international as well as domestic films, and our Saturday nights are devoted to classics of world cinema. We even show silent era films with live accompaniment. But we should also acknowledge the Film Series’ responsibility to highlight important trends in contemporary cinema. Many of the films from 2006 that you lumped into your broader misgivings represent vital currents in modern movies. When critics, film festivals and lucky bastards who live in New York and L.A. genuflected before the altar of Kelly Reichardt’s “Old Joy,” screened last night, we made a fiery blood oath to show what had been described as one of the most compelling American films in years. Wes Alum James Longley’s “Iraq in Fragments” is another contemporary film that engages with important political issues and stands at the cutting edge of contemporary movies. We hope this sentiment is shared by the 400 people who crammed in to see the film last week. The fact of the matter is, the four best-attended films in the series this year were all released in 2006. Clearly there is a demand for recent movies.
Why blockbusters like “Borat” and “The Departed”? Aside from financial considerations, these were among the most critically acclaimed films of the past year and perhaps the most hotly debated works of pop culture since “Brokeback Mountain.” There’s no shame in showing a recent, crowd-pleasing film in one of the finest screening facilities in the entire country, especially when it’s being shown for a third of the price that all us cash-strapped, loan-wielding collegiates would shoulder at your local multiplex. (You can even charge your tickets to your student account).
Luke, you raised some great points and the Film Board hopes that you and other students will continue to give us your feedback through emails, our website, or our always lively Facebook group. Given our common ground on many issues, we’d like to end by highlighting a couple upcoming films that embody our shared interest in seeking out exciting movies that might be hard to see on the big screen away from campus:
Feb. 14- Breathless: 1960 French New Wave Classic directed by the hippest director of the Sixties and starring the best-dressed man of all time.
Feb. 22- Salesman: Mindblowing, landmark documentary about Bible salesmen.
March 1- Dog Day Afternoon: Al Pacino robs a bank to pay for his lover’s sex-change operation. A cultural touchstone.
ENJOY!
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