Promotional Flyer for “My Beautiful Laundrette” screening.
VICTORIA SCHILLER / THE QUADRANGLE
Victoria Schiller, Senior Writer
Manhattan University’s Film Society has announced their next screening, “My Beautiful Laundrette”, which will take place in collaboration with the Rainbow Jaspers on Tuesday, April 15.
The club holds monthly screenings where students can come together to watch and discuss various films ranging in genre. The Quadrangle sat down with several members of the Film Society to discuss what goes into the planning of these screenings and what the student body can expect in the future.
Sage Clarke, a senior communication major involved with the club, explained how the Film Society recently began deciding which films to screen based on themes or current events.
“As of lately, we’ve been going along with certain themes,” Clarke said. “During Black History Month, we watched “Mississippi Burning” and we were supposed to have “Thelma and Louise”, which would have been during Women’s Month. We’re trying to go along with themes that go along with something currently happening, relevant, or something we feel like we need to talk about that could be brought up through a movie.”
Clarke also spoke about how the club correlates their choice of film with what date they hold the screening.
“Tuesday is National Laundry Day, just by coincidence,” Clarke said. “It’s called “My Beautiful Laundrette” and it follows a young man who is helping his uncle run a laundromat during the 1980s in England, so there were a lot of different kinds of social issues going on, specifically racial tensions. The young man in the film is Pakistani and that plays a role in the movie as well. I’m excited to see it.”
Nana Sam, a junior business management major and the de facto president of MU Film Society, explained that the society is trying to collaborate with more clubs in order to share similar insights and form more connections when it comes to the world of film.
“It starts off with an introduction,” Sam said. “For this one, Maria Castano [Rainbow Jaspers Member] is going to give an introduction about the movie since she’s watched it. She’ll say a bit about the movie, what’s it about, what to expect, and then after we watch it we’ll give our input of what we thought about it, how it made us feel, and what we found interesting.”
Aureliano Morales, a junior communication major with a concentration in media production, has been a part of the Film Society since the spring of his sophomore year. He explained why he joined the club and what he looks forward to most during these screenings.
“I recently switched majors and by then I wanted to join the Film Society for a while,” Morales said. “That’s when I took a class with Dr. Margaret Toth. She said we could get extra credit, but I didn’t just go for extra credit, I wanted to go there and experience it. I’ve been to most of the events and my favorite part would be the audience reaction, which you don’t really get unless you’re in a theater. If you’re not alone in experiencing the film for the first time you can feel the room and the vibe of it. The conversations as well, we talk about the certain themes and patterns we see throughout the film. It’s nice to have that conversation with other people after watching it.”
Morales also shared his favorite screening the club has hosted thus far.
“My favorite screening was in February,” Morales said. “It was “Mississippi Burning”, which I really liked a lot. It’s about segregation getting decriminalized in the 1960s and one of the last towns that was desegregated. It was very realistic in how they depicted it and it got to me too, I had a lot of emotions about it. I feel like everyone should watch it at some point.”
MU Film Society is hoping to host multiple screenings a month in the near future, as well as more collaborations with other MU clubs and organizations to grow and build the interest of cinema with the campus community.