Wednesday, May 25, 2011

GSN Film Club Opening

I've been thinking for quite a while now to arrange some kind of a get together where me and my friends could watch selected movies and then chat and exchange impressions regarding different issues which don't necessarily have a scientific focus. Of course, the living room of one's apartment is most probably an obvious choice, but then again you need something bigger than a laptop screen; some decent speakers; sufficient seating possibilities for all those willing to join, and the list could go on. You can buy of course most of those things (but then again - the student status is somehow in the way) and if you have the room to store everything in the mean time while it's not being used then you've only solved half the problem - the really tough part is to synchronize the timetables of all of your friends and get them in your living room at that time and date. If you didn't try to arrange something like this (and I'm not talking about some random film-night at a gone-wrong birthday party) then believe me - it's a pain in the arse.

The solution?!...Well...here I propose a shy attempt to get things going in this direction. I spoke to Catherine, and she was very enthusiastic about the idea of forming a weekly film club within the GSN. The necessary gear is there anyway - including projectors, sound systems and loads of chairs - and the fact that most of us are orbiting around the bio-center makes is a very good choice in terms of synchronizing everybody. Having the film club as a public event linked to the uni has also other positive aspects - get to know people from different groups in a non-scientific framework and if none of this works, maybe a good film sometime in the evening after a hard and long day looking though the microscope will do it.

The films that will be show will be announced ever so often though this blog and there will be also a link from the GSN/GRK calender from each of the dates of the screening. The list of films is still an open thing, any suggestions are welcome. We might even end up voting for one or the other title - everything is still pretty much in the air - which is not a bad aspect. The major guideline which I'm hoping for this club is that the films shown should be artistic or philosophical or "hard" - the kind of movies which spark discussions and are much more enjoyable when watched as a group. I'm really sorry for Terminator, Sex and the City, Ghost Busters and Titanic.

_______________________


The first screening will be on the

6th of June, 19:15 in the GSN seminar room

, after the BCCN talk!

***Most probably there will be some free beers and snacks offered kindly by the GSN.

Les triplettes de Belleville (2003)




Genre: Animation, Comedy
Director: Sylvain Chomet
Production Countries: France | Belgium | Canada | UK

IMDB page: here


6 comments:

  1. Thanks for organizing this; it looks like it will be a lot of fun.

    I have a hard time judging which of the films I like would be considered sufficiently artistic, hard or discussion provoking, though. When I lived at home my family had film nights together every weekend, and we managed to have rather thought-provoking discussions sparked by the silliest films. I fondly remember spending a lot of time dissecting issues somehow raised by the Rocky Horror Picture Show, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Alien, The Lord of the Rings, Batman movies, some Harry Potter films and a weird (and not recommended) German horror film called "Anatomie".

    I like pretty much anything by Quentin Tarantino, the Coen Brothers, Terry Gilliam, or Tim Burton. I would also suggest Revolutionary Road, Lola Rennt, Das Boot, Goodbye Lenin, or Pan's Labyrinth. Films that I would really like to see again that might not be considered sufficiently "hard" are Coraline, Bend It Like Beckham, Waitress, Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-Long Blog, and The Princess Bride. Then again, Les Triplettes de Belleville is apparently hard enough, and I just thought of it as an enjoyable, funny, kind of weird movie involving music, bicycles and a dog, rather than being deep and difficult art.

    ReplyDelete
  2. :)
    Well...art doesn't have too bee difficult or serious to be deep and meaningful. In fact I think that this is one of the main characteristics of great pieces of art (no matter what form they take - be it music, film, painting, etc) - to be accessible to a broad public yet not to be trivial. I simply love Dali, and maybe you will also see the links between this two very distant moments in the surrealist scene.
    See you there!

    ReplyDelete
  3. I agree with much of what Erica wrote. If you were to pick anything by Terry Gilliam, "Brazil" would be my first recommendation. Since I'm just in the process of organizing a similar "film club", I do have a list of suggestions ready at hand. I omitted some of the usual suspects, but certainly not all of them (*cough* Fight Club *cough*). So, this list should be a mix of some obscure movies and some standards, but all of them come with my highest yet humble recommendation ;-)

    (Sorry for spamming - it IS a list!)

    · 2001 – A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange (Kubrick)
    · In The Mood For Love, 2046, Ashes of Time Redux (Wong Kar Wai)
    · Brazil (Gilliam)
    · Children Of Men (Cuaron)
    · Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Lee)
    · Dark City (Proyas)
    · Eraserhead, Lost Highway (Lynch)
    · Fight Club (Fincher)
    · Ghost In The Shell, Innocence (Oshii)
    · Grave Of The Fireflies (Takahata)
    · Anything by Jim Jarmusch
    · Hana Bi (Kitano)
    · Jin-Roh (Okiura)
    · The Machinist (B. Anderson)
    · Magnolia, There Will Be Blood (P. T. Anderson)
    · Memento (Nolan)
    · Moon (Jones)
    · Anything by the Coen Brothers
    · Pi, Requiem For A Dream (Aronofsky)
    · Porco Rosso, Mononoke Hime (Miyazaki)
    · Royal Space Force: Wings Of Honneamise (Yamaga)
    · Solaris (Tarkovsky)
    · Tokyo Godfathers (Kon)
    · V for Vendetta (McTeigue)
    · Wise Blood (Huston)
    · Anything by Woody Allen

    ~Joachim

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanks for the list! A very nice selection indeed...I have also in mind quite a few of the titles you mentioned! (Wai Kar Wong, Kubrick, LYNCH, TARKOVSKY, Jarmushm, etc) but I want to see what the reactions of the public are - so I thought starting this thing off with a rather unknown yet funny and appealing film.

    ReplyDelete
  5. P.S. Woody Allen's "Take the Money and Run" is next on the list!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Right - I should have mentioned that I really dig your selection so far :-) I like both movies a lot. I might not make it tomorrow, but I hope I can be there for "Take the Money and Run".

    ReplyDelete