Lights, camera, action!: Shepherdstown Film Society returns with spring 2022 season
SHEPHERDSTOWN — After two long years of waiting out the COVID-19 Pandemic, the Shepherdstown Film Society has announced the beginning of its spring 2022 season, with a reception in the War Memorial Building tonight at 5:30 p.m. The reception will be followed, at 7 p.m. in Reynolds Hall, by the showing of the film, “Across the Universe” (USA/UK, 2007, 133 minutes, directed by Julie Taymor).
All of the films shown by the Shepherdstown Film Society are shown for free, and followed by a film discussion by a member of the SFS committee or a person in some way connected to the film’s subject matter, according to Shepherd University Director of Continuing Education and Lifelong Learning Karen Rice. Rice is a new member of the SFS committee, having joined it this year, when the SFS was incorporated into the Lifelong Learning program.
“Lisa Welsh and several other people started this film society in 2004,” Rice said, mentioning Welsh and the SFS committee approached her — and through her, LL’s advisory committee — last year about being run under the direction of Lifelong Learning. “It’s always been conducted in partnership with the Scarborough Society, and so she asked me if Lifelong Learning would take it under its umbrella, so to speak, because we do a lot of similar stuff with the community, like classes and lectures. Lisa thought this would be a natural fit for it, so that she could kind of step down from it.”
The films being shown this season were the final three ones originally selected by the SFS committee for the spring 2020 season.
“These were movies that had already been vetted by the committee and had not been shown in 2020, but they had been planned. I thought that, since these had already been vetted, let’s go with it!” Rice said, noting the movie licensing fees and other costs incurred by the SFS are covered by the Scarborough Society, which has been in partnership with the SFS since its beginning. “The last movie [we showed] was in February or early March of 2020, and then they stopped showing when the university shut down.
“We have been very cautious in bringing people together,” Rice said. “The university lifted the mask mandate sometime in March, and I wanted to get the blessings, so to speak, of the committee, that they were comfortable with people coming in-person to show the movie.”
After tonight’s showing, only two more free film showings will be held this season at 7 p.m. in Reynolds Hall: “Blinded by the Light” on May 13 (USA, 2019, 118 minutes, directed by Gurinder Chadha) and “Snowpiercer” on May 20 (USA, 2013, 130 minutes, directed by Bong Joon Ho).
And, as for what viewers can expect from tonight’s movie, Rice noted that, “If you like Beetles music, you’ll enjoy this movie.”
For more information, visit www.shepherdstownfilmsociety.org or contact Karen Rice at krice@shepherd.edu.