Chapel Hill seniors Tallulah Chen and Sergio Jimenez teamed up with the local Chelsea Theater to create a film club this spring.
The club meets every other Saturday from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. and shows movies relating to the themes of childhood, adolescence and growing up.
Chen met with the Chelsea after a member of the theater’s board approached Chen while she was working.
“The Chelsea is looking to expand its clientele and do more work with the community, so reaching out to youth seemed like a necessary role for a nonprofit,” Chen said.
Chen worked with Emily Kass, the executive director of the theater, to bring the club to fruition.
“I have always been personally committed to helping audiences understand how to ‘read’ and interpret images—of art, photography, advertising or film,” Kass said. “We learned that Tallulah and Sergio were interested in starting a club and, serendipitously, Ray Greenfield, an experienced film director and teacher, stepped in.”
Chen and Jimenez were inspired partially by their experiences running a book club. Both also enjoy film and wanted to create a venue in Chapel Hill for teens to come together and talk about film.
“We want to introduce more teenagers to thoughtful film,” Jimenez said. “It is an opportunity to learn how to critique film, analyze it historically and use the knowledge gained from analysis to learn about big ideas of media and culture in the present.”
While a lot of the three-hour meetings are taken up by watching films, discussion also plays an important role.
“At each meeting, we begin by giving a short introduction, watching the movie and then following up with a discussion exploring as many aspects of the film as we can cover,” Jimenez said.
While the films shown focus on the same themes, Chen and Jimenez have still selected a wide variety.
“We selected [films] from a broad range of genres, schools, locations and time periods to be able to explore the differences and continuities in filmmaking and visual storytelling,” Chen said.
Senior Amanda Zhu plans to attend a meeting.
“I have always loved movies,” Zhu said. “I was really interested in the club because I don’t really get to discuss films with people very often, so it seemed like a great opportunity.”
The club’s lineup for the coming weeks is:
The Hate U Give (May 4)
Fame (May 18)
