Rice Cinema can be step toward film program

I remember, back in the days when the battles raged, living in the West Village of New York, and taking full advantage of my two-block distance from the repertory and first-run cinema, Film Forum. Whether it was

Takashi Miike’s mind-blowing Audition, a movie that left my date quivering in tears; Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, prefaced by Camille Paglia hamming it up; or a showing of Gimme Shelter, a documentary on the implosion of the hippy-dippy Altamont concert of the Rolling Stones into unutterable violence (an experience which left a black pit in my stomach that has yet to be excreted), my geographic location provided me with top shelf access to the best the cinema has to offer.

That was, of course, Manhattan, and — let’s face it — Houston’s repertory and first-run scene is poor (Inland Empire anyone?). Yet the Rice community has a resource that can compensate for this sad situation — namely, our state-of-the-art Media Center, located near the police station at the corner of University Boulevard and Stockton. It’s only a hop, skip and a jump away, yet Rice students treat it as if it were on the other side of the world. People tend to forget that movies must be shown on the big screen.

The marginalization of the Media Center from campus life was confirmed by the Real Chick Flicks film series, organized by head Media Center projectionist and English major, Amanda Phillips. Amanda selected a kick-ass group of angry women films (Alien, The Silence of the Lambs, Halloween and Strange Days), yet attendance was ridiculously low. It is not as if she was expecting people to sit through a marathon 15-hour screening of Fassbinder’s Berlin Alexanderplatz (or all the seasons of Alias for that matter). These were accessible films engaging critical issues: feminism, race, power, technology and the cult of violence. Academia can be fun, kids!

I am also the faculty advisor for the Rice Film Society, a group formed by undergraduates to help foster cinematic literacy on our campus. Attendance has been acceptable so far and the more hype the society generates, the more access students will have to film studies at Rice in the future — if not to a fully fledged film program. If you have any interest in film, or even movies as more than a way to move popcorn, I hope you will support the Film Society and the Media Center. And don’t complain that either venue is not showing what you want to see. Get involved and be proactive instead.

Today, Friday the 13th, will be another chance to encourage film at Rice, as it is the opening day of a two-day conference on Hitchcock’s The Birds, organized by yours truly. The Birds is one of the key moments in the emergence of the thrills’n’spills blockbusters we take for granted, a movie both cheesy and scary, where there is infinitely more going on than meets the naked eye. I have invited three leading readers of Hitchcock to offer us their thoughts on how central The Birds has been to changing trends in film criticism and what the film continues to signify for contemporary culture, hence the name of the conference: The Birds NOW!.

Things will begin at the Media Center on Friday at 6 p.m. with each presenter giving a five-minute blurb on what they think you ought to look for when watching the film. A free showing of the film will then follow. On Saturday graduate students will join the discussion at 10 a.m., and faculty presenters will go on at 1:15 p.m. The day will end with another free showing of The Birds at 3 p.m. More information can be found on the conference home page. Search for The Birds NOW! on the Rice Web site.

Am I hyping my own event? Since I live and breathe Hollywood and long ago committed the sin of spin, the question is a no-brainer. Yet this is a chance for you to see that film can both be academic and thrilling. Take a peek. We live in a culture where understanding what we envision is under-valued, if not prohibited. Film studies helps us exit this impasse. Student support for the Media Center, the Rice Film Society and The Birds NOW! will ensure that the cinema is not dead at Rice.

Joshua D. Gonsalves is an

English professor and Resident Associate at Lovett College.

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