By Kaley Muse
The Magic Lantern held their first movie night of the semester at 7:30 p.m. Friday, September 9, 2023 in Communication 114.
The organization chose to show the 2017 director’s cut of the 1983 film, “The Outsiders”, directed by Francis Ford Coppola.
“The Outsiders” follows Ponyboy Curtis (C. Thomas Howell), his brothers (Rob Lowe and Patrick Swayze), and his friends (Tom Cruise, Emilio Estevez, Matt Dillion, and Ralph Macchio) through the epic high and lows of being born on the wrong side of the tracks.
Dr. John G. Morris, an English professor, has been the faculty advisor since 1990 and explains why “The Outsiders” was picked as their first film this year.
Morris said, “When we had the selection meeting, that was one that they all really wanted to show. I’m guessing part of that is the familiarity of the novel and a lot of students read it in middle school. The students chose all the movies this year.”
The Magic Lantern Film Society has been around since 1982 and the first film the organization ever showed is the 1924 German film, “Siegfried”.
The club began with the intent of showing classic films.
In its infancy, the organization used to show actual film in the old recital hall on campus, but they eventually had to switch over to DVDs because of the cost.
“We [the organization] consider anything that is at least ten years old to be classic and it has to have received some critical acclaim.” Morris said.
This is Magic Lantern’s 41st season of showing classic films and Dr. Morris’ 33rd year as faculty advisor.
Junior Computer Science major, Haley Skiles, serves as the Society’s Vice President for this year. Skiles joined the club because she wanted to try something new that was a bit out of her comfort zone.
Skiles said, “Last year was my first year and all eight of those movies we showed I had never seen before. I felt like I learned a lot, not only from watching them but Dr. Morris is a film encyclopedia so it’s really nice to get out and learn about something that I didn’t know about before.”
Magic Lantern shows eight movies of the course of an entire school year and so they have to hold a yearly meeting to decide which movies to show.
“So, we take recommendations all year long and we keep them on record. In the spring, we have a meeting and Dr. Morris brings a list of a hundred movies and we each bring 10-15 and then we discuss and we can only pick eight so we really have to narrow it down but we try to pick a variety of movies.” Skiles said.
This club is a little bit different than other clubs on campus because The Magic Lantern Film Society does not hold weekly or monthly meetings, besides the movie selection meeting.
“The only regular meetings that we have are the actual movies.” Skiles said.
Magic Lantern has many more movie showings this semester and even next semester. The next screening will be “2001: A Space Odyssey” at 6:30 p.m. on September 29, 2023 in Communication 114 in the Theatre building.
For more information or questions about the movies, the organization itself, or if you have movie suggestions, email Dr. Morris @johnmor@cameron.edu, like the Magic Lantern Film Society on Instagram @magiclanterncu, or go to their website cameron.edu/magiclantern.