For those of you who are interested in how the PG Film Club came to be, here's the story of its origins....
How it came to be
It started out, like most things - with an idea. As PhD life can be isolating, I wanted to create a group where postgrads both from my department and others could come together to meet and have interesting and intellectual discussions. But about what? What kind of topics or things would we discuss? That was to be the main issue. 'Things' being rather vague I tried to find a motive for the group - I was aware that there had previously been a Marxist reading group in our department that was PhD led. However given how most postgrads loath the thought of doing any extra academic reading, other than what is absolutely necessary for teaching and research; I decided against having a political or theoretical focus for the group.
As I continued to battle with the idea of some kind of group - the solution was presented to me during a casual conversation in the Plassey courtyard. Two of my friends from the History and English Departments (Sean Mc Killen and Niall Jordan) presented the idea of having a film discussion group. Get people to watch a film they said - because that was much more likely to happen than anyone doing more readings. Better still, Sean advised - it should be called the 'Al Pacino Club' after the legendary actor who starred in the Godfather and Scarface.
The 'Al Pacino' Committee
So now that I had the plan I then needed to gather the people and organise the club. Through word of mouth and a few emails later, the first PG Film club meeting was arranged. It was held on the 2nd of October 2014 in the Allegro Cafe in UL's Foundation Building and five people turned up. Not a bad start. I wanted to assign tasks and decided what films to discuss for the semester. The Allegro cafe was chosen as it is convenient for most of us, given that our desk spaces are across the hall in the postgraduate research area in the Foundation Building. In other words, the Allegro cafe is an easy hop across the hall. Amongst those few people who turned up was John Hogan, also from the Department of Politics and Public Administration (PPA) who was to become the co-director of the club.
It was John's idea to run the club as a discussion group. Since MA and PhD students don't have a lot of time, he figured that it would be better to send out an email with a download link for our chosen movies.
So how were we to decide on films? Let the members decide or come up with some sort of themes? I liked the idea of giving people a choice yet have some overarching theme discussion that could set off people's imagination and get them to suggest a relevant film. The idea of members downloading the film rather than watching it during a screening gave people the freedom to watch the film at home when it suited, while also leaving us more time for discussion. We planned for the discussions to last an hour and would be hosted every two weeks. And so we had the blueprint for our system.
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