STORY BY GREG LONGLEY
Everyone enjoys a night at the movies. Make it free and it’s a night well spent.
The 18% Grey Club, made up of students in the Bachelor of Applied Arts (BAA) in Photography program, have introduced Friday movie nights to raise money, promote their work and make professional prints of their photos.
Admission is free, and they will be selling snacks and accepting donations of any amount.
“Our general goal is to raise money for our graduating year gallery in Toronto, where we will showcase the best of our work throughout the four years at Sheridan,” Mikaela Baker, a third-year BAA Photography student and vice-president of the 18% Grey Club, told The Sun last semester.
Money raised will go toward the professional printing and mounting of their work and funding of gallery space in downtown Toronto during the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival, the largest photography event in the world, in May 2015.
Animation students also put on free movie nights on Fridays, and Baker said she and her colleagues saw it as an opportunity to get involved in something that was popular and already being advertised.
“We figured some people might not want to see movies that the animation department are playing,” she said, “so we kind of wanted to have that variety.
“We wanted to steer more toward live action movies that are a little more unheard of and not like fake blockbuster films,” she added.
Every two weeks they will choose a different theme.
Last week was modern noir, with showings of Drive and Brick. Tomorrow, they will be showing The Royal Tenenbaums, and the following week, Psycho, as part of the Questionable Protagonists theme. Foreign horror is next, with Let the Right One In and Audition, a Japanese psychological horror film.
The organizers of the 18% Grey Club select obscure titles to capture people’s interests in movies they may not have seen before. The movies they choose tend to have some artistic element.
“We just watch a lot of movies,” said Zackery Hobler, one of the curators of movie night.
“Absorb visual culture, that’s what we’re all about.”
Movie nights take place every Friday from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. in J102, a lecture hall resembling a traditional movie theatre, with a large projection screen and elevated level seating.
Information and updates on the movie nights can be found on their Facebook page at 18% Grey Club.
Movie nights are a first of its kind for the photography students involved in the 18% Grey Club, who are also continuing some of the same fundraising efforts from last year.
They will have bake sales and samosa sales running together in the B-wing every Thursday from noon to 3 p.m., which are a proven favourite among Sheridan students.
“It’s a tradition to sell samosas,” said Baker. “And the past two weeks, we’ve sold out both weeks.”
And most importantly, they will continue selling their posters every Monday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and Thursday from 12 p.m. to 3 p.m. in the B-wing. But that will not start up again for another two or three weeks as they continue to work out the logistics.
Last year, they had their posters printed in Texas and shipped, but now they have the equipment and resources to print on campus, after Canon came to an agreement with the Sheridan photography department to donate ink and paper.
“We’ll have different sizes available and if people want prints on request it’s actually feasible,” said Hayley Stewart, the president of the 18% Grey Club. “Last year we were confined to that one size, so if we shot something that was square it didn’t work, but this year we’ll have more variety.”
Their goal is to offer buyers fresher content and give them the option to have their posters framed, which the photography students will do themselves.
“We have experience mounting work,” said Julia Marcello, a third-year BAA Photography student. “We have to mount our own work in the gallery, so we know how to do it and make it look nice. So I think people will notice a difference this year.”
The posters will go for $10, and framing is another $15. They are also planning on selling buttons for a $1 with their work printed on them, which are expected to be a big hit.
Visit their Facebook page for more information about the club’s initiatives and to view a calendar of all of their fundraising dates.