Queer film club makes blazin’ trail

Mastermind professor Anthony Barthelemy, while watching the movie Head On, came up with a brilliant idea to help diversify the campus’ culture.

He thought that the school could use a queer film club so students could watch and learn about alternative films about alternative lifestyles.

“Call it an idea from heaven, or perhaps hell,” the jovial professor said. “I was so touched by this movie Head On that I thought it would be wonderful for our campus to have a club that could show such films and we could talk about them.”

He notified student Allison Tucker and I about his idea and together we started the queer film club, which will have its first meeting on Tuesday Feb. 26th at 8 p.m. at hosts’ Associate Masters Mary Stampino and Robert Strain’s apartment in the Hecht dormitory.

“Mostly, we will be showing movies about people with lives that diverge from the norm,” Tucker said.

“Seventy-five percent will be dealing with the homosexual lifestyle, but we will also focus on what type of things other than sexuality could label somebody as ‘queer.'”

Tucker hopes the club will have as many straight attendees as gay. “I know a lot of my friends are going, and I really hope everybody can show up. It’s going to be a fantastic club. Lot’s of fun.”

When you are different from the norm, your identity can’t be shaped by your family or popular culture. Instead, you turn to other venues to find identity.

One of those venues is the arts – film, television, books, theatre, etc. We will definitely be talking about how the various things we watch shape certain identities.

Hopefully, the programming will also include TV shows so that this can become a forum for people to talk about how entertainment has shaped their identities, whether positively or negatively.

Tucker and I are making a series of four clips from certain queer films as a sort of introduction. From there, the club will come to a consensus of what movies we will be watching each week.

I was thinking of The Sum of Us or The Boys in the Band or Harold and Maude as one of the first movies

Add to movies the intelligent co-founders and caramel brownies and the queer film club seems to have it all.