As the main room of the Great Hall darkened, around 40 students fell silent as they prepared to watch Bong Joon-ho’s critically acclaimed, dark comedy “Parasite.”
The Pierce Film Club held its final film showcase of their series “Mind Benders! Brain Breakers! And Fever Dreams!” by showing the critically acclaimed film “Parasite.” The showcase was held in the Great Hall on Monday, Nov. 18.
“It was something that kind of put the community together,” said Film Club Treasurer Alexis Porter. “By bringing AAPI Club, Film Club and the International Students Club together and kind of bringing that group together to have people have a platform to talk about their own experiences and how movies connect to them.”
Once the film finished, a panel made up of different experts and film enthusiasts included Media Arts and Cinema Professor Nora Sweeney and Psychology Professor Chadwick Snow.
Sweeney wasn’t sure if the movie would be as gripping as it was the first time she saw it.
“I think it’s a movie that kind of depends on your first viewing in a way, like, not knowing what’s going to happen next,” Sweeney said.
The panel started with a member of the audience asking about the main theme of the movie: class.
Associate Cinema Professor and Film Club Adviser Ken Windrun is a fan of the movie.
“I really like what it has to say about social class,” Windrum said. “About the high and the low, about the basement and the penthouse, so to speak, and it literally creates what you could call a spatial metaphor by showing them.”
Sweeney believes that the film highlights how people behave in a capitalistic society.
“I think the movie is about how ruthless people are encouraged to be when living under capitalism,” Sweeney said.
Film Club President Justin Bautista added to the discussion.
“It could take weeks of uninterrupted analysis to figure out every little bit in detail,” Bautista said. “That’s how good of a movie it was. That’s how well-written it was.”
The panel was about an hour long and touched on topics such as class inequalities, capitalism, prejudice and discrimination.
“This is the kind of event that I love more than just about anything we do because you see a great movie and then you talk about it,” Windrum said.
This screening of “Parasite” marked the final film screening for the Pierce Film Club of the semester. The Film Club will have a film festival on Dec. 5 in the Great Hall at 7:00 p.m.
Students are encouraged to submit up to two of their own films by Nov. 28. Each film must be 10 minutes or less to qualify and submissions are open to all LA County students.
