Ever wanted to take a film class? Debate the merits of a cinema classic with likeminded movie buffs? Explore the world of film criticism with your own less-pretentious insights?? You are in luck! Gateway Film Center is making its first such foray into film education with Film’s Cool.
Meeting every Wednesday in June and covering the topic How to See a Movie, the class offers a structured but casual opportunity to learn how to watch films differently. The class is co-taught by Gateway’s Johnny DiLoretto, longtime film critic for the defunct The Other Paper and co-host of WCBE’s Cinema Classics, and John DeSando, DiLoretto’s Cinema Classics co-host and host of WCBE’s It’s Movie Time.
DeSando says the decision to bring education to the film center is part and parcel of Gateway president Chris Hamel’s vision for the center, which is now a non-profit.
“It falls in line with what Gateway had as a longterm plan of providing education for the community,” he says.
DeSando was first brought into the conversation some time ago as he, DiLoretto and Hamel considered changes to their Gateway film series that coincides with the Cinema Classics broadcast.
“Several years ago, Johnny, Chris and I were bouncing ideas around trying to get Cinema Classics right,” he says. “We talked about actually having class. Once the idea of a nonprofit became real last year, Chris got very realistic about the possibility of education in the whole complex of Gateway Film Center. This one looked like the natural, as the basics.”
DeSando says the eventual goal of Film’s Cool is to offer a number of different classes on film, including film production. The first class in the roster amounts to basic Film Appreciation 101, a subject DeSando knows well.
“I was the academic vice president for several years at Franklin University, and during that time I also taught,” he says. He also spent many years as a fulltime humanities professor during his academic career. “My favorite course to teach was film appreciation.”
DeSando will bring some of what he covered in those classes to the Gateway program.
“A few of the films are the chestnuts I had in that course,” he says of the movies they’ll cover during Film’s Cool. “Like The Graduate and Citizen Kane – those are things I always carry in my back pocket whenever I’m talking about film.”
The class will look at specific topics, using a handful of pre-disclosed film as the vehicle for that topic. The films covered include The Graduate, Citizen Kane, Jaws, Casablanca, and Chinatown.
“It’s pretty standard – what should we be looking out for in movies?” says DeSando of the class topics. “You start out with theme and move right into story and design and cinematography, directing, acting. Pretty standard topics for any film appreciation.”
DeSando and DiLoretto will show clips from the assigned film as well as a few others that will enrich the topic of conversation, but DeSando plans to rely heavily on interaction with the students for the class to work.
“It is loose to the extent that we don’t have a script, but we have an outline,” he says. “We need the students. They’re there to become better filmgoers, and part of that is talking about films. We’re not there to be yacking away the whole time, but rather to draw them out.”
Classes run 6:30pm to 8:30 pm every Wednesday in June and are $99 per class, or $25 for GFC members. Register online at gatewayfilmcenter.com.
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