In partnership with A24, the Syracuse Film Society is continuing its slew of movie screenings with an advanced screening “Waves.” Directed by Trey Edwards Shults, the film follows a suburban African American family navigating the trials and tribulations of love, forgiveness, and unity following a loss. The screening will take place Thursday in Shemin Auditorium in Shaffer Building at 8:30pm.

SU senior, A24 intern, and co-president of the Syracuse Film Society, Alex Smithline, talks about how the screening came to be and what he expects for its impact on SU’s film community:

D.O.: Why did you guys decide to screen “Waves”?

A.S.: There are a few reasons. When we look for screenings to show, we try to find movies that we think people that aren’t traditional film people may see, that are a little bit out of their wheelhouse but at the same time are conventional enough where people will actually go. With “Waves” it was really cool because it was made by the same producers as “Euphoria,” and we know that people love the show.

We’ve viewed a lot of research on this movie. This movie has got into all these festivals and it’s become a couple people’s fan favorites — it’s just been doing really well in the whole awards circuit. What I really like about the movie is that it does a lot of cool things with storytelling and story structure, which you’ll see in the movie, that I personally haven’t seen in a movie before.

D.O.: As co-president of the Syracuse Film Society, how do you think the A24 partnership has been impacting the society and the film students as a whole?

A.S.: I think the best part about this A24 partnership is we’re able to show a lot of movies that we normally wouldn’t have the chance to go see here in Syracuse.

Traditionally, a lot of A24’s films are shown in limited release in the cities like New York City and in California. If they are shown in a wider release, it’s generally not until two or three weeks after that. So the fact that we as film students are able to go see these movies as soon as they come out—or even right before they come out—is huge because it allows us to stay up-to-date with the conversation of the film scene.

D.O.: How would you describe SU’s film community?

A.S.: I would describe it as they’re hungry to make films and they’re super collaborative. What’s cool about the SU film community is that it doesn’t matter if you’re a part of TRF, VPA, Arts and Sciences, or if you’re not even related to film at all, people love being at film sets and they love creating stuff.

Here at SU, you can get a bunch of people together that have never made anything before and spend your weekend making a short film that gets into festivals. I think that’s super special just how close people in the university are and how supportive everyone is.

D.O.: What have you learned since the beginning of the semester?

A.S.: I learned that people want to do things on campus where they’re able to have a discussion and talk about things. Specifically with film, for some of our screenings that have been a little bit smaller, the people who still showed up want to talk about the movies they were seeing. They wanted to discuss with other cinephiles and discuss the future of filmmaking and talk about why the film mattered to them.

For a lot of us, stories are how we connect and through the film society and through these screenings, we’re connecting with more and more people. I think that’s amazing.

Published on November 13, 2019 at 7:35 pm