OCU’s Film Guild has resumed operations.
Film Guild is a student organization geared towards students of any major, which facilitates movie screenings and the production of student films. They hold weekly movie screenings on Tuesdays at 7:30 p.m. in the theater of the Dawson-Loeffler Center.
“This semester is when we’re starting to get everything up and running again,” said Stephen Jackson, film junior and president of the Film Guild. “Film Guild, in the past, the big question was, ‘Do we want to watch movies or do we want to make movies?’ And my simple solution was, ‘Why not both?”
Felicia Stalzer, acting sophomore and Film Guild social media chair/screening organizer pitched the screenings to Jackson, she said. For the Tuesday screenings, people can go to their Facebook page, OKCU Film Guild, to vote on movies to watch.
“I reached out to Stephen, after I realized that he was the president for the Film Guild, and I realized there was a Film Guild,” Stalzer said. “It is a place to appreciate cinema and let others speak. It lets people share their opinion when they want to, and when you see something that moves you, or you see something that you want to talk about and you haven’t had an outlet to express that it has affected you.”
Jackson said Film Guild has approximately 25 members, and they aim to welcome many non-film majors into the guild. Billy Palumbo, visiting assistant professor of Film, is the group’s faculty advisor.
“So far, that’s all we’ve got,” Jackson said. “It’s low stress. It’s just meant for everybody to have a good time. There’s no mandatory meetings or anything. It’s just supposed to be a lot of fun.”
This new iteration of Film Guild began in April, when Jackson took over.
“There were no members. I think it eventually just died off. It was still technically a thing when I got here; it was ran by a guy who graduated last year named Caleb Holmes, and to put it simply, I didn’t even know Film Guild existed until last semester. And then I was made president, and now I’m going to do my best to get it up and running,” Jackson said.
Jackson spoke about the moment when he became president of the Film Guild.
“It’s kind of funny,” Jackson said. “So, Caleb was about to graduate, and I was just kind of in our lounge area, talking to Billy and Caleb. And he said something like, ‘Caleb was president of the Film Guild,’ and I was like, ‘Well I want to be president of the Film Guild,’ in kind of a joking manner. Then Billy said, ‘Okay, you’re president of the Film Guild.”
Jackson said, in addition to the screenings, they plan to use Film Guild to make student films. He said this semester, they are planning a film making event as a collaboration with The Shadow Collective, a student run theater company.
“We have a budget through the School of Visual Arts, and we allot a section to creating our short films,” Jackson said. “We have equipment. “We have resources that include our professors and our faculty advisor, Billy. So, it’s going to be mainly taking the resources that we have, and using them to teach people about filmmaking.”
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