From Generic Ferris to Funky Friday

After I finish my fourth class on Thursdays, there’s a certain relief in knowing that I can stumble about 50 feet and shell out just three bucks to see the latest blockbuster or quirky comedy at Ferris Reel. Yet, beneath the shadow of Columbia’s monolithic film society lurks a number of organizations, far less attended and advertised. If you’re particularly searching for films outside of the mainstream Hollywood fare, they present the perfect opportunity to do so.

Last semester, to mixed responses, Ferris Reel introduced indie hits like Guy Maddin’s quirky The Saddest Music in the World. It was one of the best movies I saw last year, but the attendance was markedly poor. Holly Snow, BC ’07, Ferris Reel’s vice president, doesn’t see this as reflective of a larger trend at all. “Honestly, there was no real decrease in attendance last semester,” she said. “We had some space problems last spring, but that’s about it. Attendance was solid at all of these, except for a few [films] like Fahrenheit 9/11. And, that was borderline in the voting. People voted, we showed the movies they wanted, and they came.”

Snow was referring to the democratic process that Ferris Reel employs, which allows students to vote at the beginning of the school year for the movies they most want to see; the process is new and came under fire for producing a crop of films last semester that some students found to be less than compelling.

Snow, however, disagreed. “We want to show a variety of movies. Our choices reflect what the viewers want,” she told me, “and that varies from year to year. Two years ago it was documentaries, so we showed things like Bowling for Columbine and Fog of War. Last year foreign stuff was big. This year it’s been silly comedies mostly. Anchorman was packed and it sold out in the late showing.”

I certainly can’t argue. Perhaps the real question is, how did Guy Maddin’s work even make it past this list’s sophistication cutoff? “It was Kate Jenkins’ choice, our president,” Snow said. “The president gets to choose a movie, and Kate picked Saddest Music.”

But perhaps the pressure put on Ferris to accommodate both populist and intellectual movies would lighten if students realized that, contrary to popular belief, Columbia is teeming with opportunities to watch gems of counter-cinema. One of the few well-advertised such opportunities is the Cinéma Thursdays series of French films at La Maison Française, which attracts an average of 60 viewers each week. Charles Girard, who directs Cinéma Thursdays and is a lecturer in the French and Romance Philology department, doesn’t see his program as Ferris Reel’s competitor. “If you want to see the two series, one after the other, you can,” he said, “with just enough time in between for a nice restaurant.”

And, like Ferris, Cinéma Thursdays strives for variety in its choices. “We offer a broad range of movies,” Girard said. “Half the movies are very recent... and the other half are classics.” La Maison offers more than just French film, though. With two-thirds of viewers having some experience with French, Cinéma Thursdays offers post-movie discussions in English or French, and offers a meeting place for the Francophone student and the French film enthusiast alike, a “ciné-club.” as Girard called it. “Many viewers are regulars,” he said, “and there’s a sense of community for people who love French cinema.”

A focus on the international student is pervasive in Columbia’s film atmosphere. The Society for International Undergraduates runs its own film series, which has featured popular hits like Y Tu Mama Tambien. SIU’s president Kat Cheng, CC ’07, sees the monthly screenings as a way to make the international community more visible on campus. The organization’s board chooses films from a variety of different geographic regions. The most interesting being, according to Kat, those “from the perspective of a director who addresses his country,” which have provided a fascinating “insider’s look.” Like La Maison, SIU not only provides free screenings of foreign films, but also serves regional food, provides contextual information, and sometimes brings in a speaker from the film’s region.

Columbia’s best kept movie secret, however, is the Carla Kuhn film and lecture series, which is held on Fridays in Dodge Hall, and has featured big time celebrities like Alexander Payne, Daniel Day Lewis, and Wim Wenders. “The advertising is so small because this is geared towards grad students and the room only seats ninety,” said School of the Arts student Scott Burkhardt, series organizer and this year’s Carla Kuhn film fellow. “But, I always let undergraduates in after the grads are seated. Even with the biggest turnouts, something like 10 undergraduates got to go in.”

Beneath the surface, Columbia does have an infrastructure that supports a wide array of movie tastes. “I think that students are pretty artsy and intellectual,” said Holly Snow, “but they also enjoy just seeing a fun movie.”