The reel deal
Club talks movies, plans film fest at Tuesday meetings
Film club members discuss the Oscar nominations at their after-school meeting Feb. 21. The club is currently planning a student film festival to take place near the end of the spring semester.
You could call them “The Breakfast Club.”
They meet in the library. They share their opinions. They laugh and learn together.
They all have one thing in common, but unlike the students in the ‘80s hit, it’s not detention.
It’s a love of movies.
The students who make up Braswell’s Film Club meet in the Hub every Tuesday after school to watch and discuss movies. The idea arose at the Back-to-School Bash, where the club’s now-president Morgen Rhynes pitched the idea to Instructional Technology Specialist Barbara Kinast.
“I knew that Ryan [High School] had a film club, and I thought it would be cool because I like movies,” Rhynes said.
Junior Lauryn Jones is the vice president of the club. She said the club is more than just talking about films.
“We watch a lot of movies, we talk about them, we analyze them,” Jones said. “We talk about different directors and different styles. We’re also trying to learn how to make films.”
To start off each club meeting, the participants converse about the movies they watched over the weekend, as well as play the occasional round of movie trivia.
“It’s really fun; it’s probably one of the coolest clubs we have at this school,” junior Jose Moreno said. “One meeting, all we did was watch ‘Gremlins’ and eat pizza.”
The club is always looking for more students to join.
“The more, the merrier,” Kinast said. “We hope that we will get more members.”
And they’re always looking to spearhead more activities. Right now, the club is in the midst of planning a film festival for later this semester. Kinast recruited journalism adviser Erin Cristales and theatre director Michelle Greene to help.
“We thought we could collaborate and have these kids work together to host this event,” Kinast said.
She added that the parameters have not yet been set for the event, such as the length requirements for student films, the categories and the official date.
“The idea would be that we would have the videos available out there on ‘The Bengal Beat’ for the student body to vote on, and then we also would have a day where we invite the community in to watch the films,” Kinast said. “[Students] would have a ballot and then they could vote.”
Jones said she’s looking forward to the film festival, even though the club won’t profit monetarily from the event.
“I think it seems really cool,” she said. “People can make movies, which is also pretty cool. We get to watch the movies, we’ll eat popcorn, kind of just chill. So that seems like it will be really fun.”
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Sierra Bihon is a junior at BHS. She is a news & features reporter for the web site.
