Cathleen Rountree's book "The Movie Lovers Club: How to Start Your Own Film Group" is a fabulous guide for setting up your own film-watching and discussion group.
There's Thursday Night Bowling and Tuesday Night Bridge Club. Now, there's The Movie Lovers Club, good any night during the week!
The Movie Lovers Club
The best thing about starting a Movie Lovers Club is you can pick the day, the people, and the movies. Cathleen Rountree's book The Movie Lovers Club: How to Start Your Own Film Group is a great twist on the traditional Movie Guide Book. It offers recommendations for getting your club started, choosing films, and discussion-openers, including questions about each film, fun facts, and sidebars.
The first part of the book gives readers the particulars for forming a Movie Lovers Club. Part two is broken down into the months of the year; each month has a theme with four choices of films. For example, January’s theme is New Beginnings. The Classic Motion Picture choice is “Truly, Madly, Deeply;” Contemporary Movie is “About Schmidt,” Independent Film is “In America,” and World Cinema Feature is “After Life.” Watch the movies once a week, once a month, or out of order; the point is to watch them!
Author Cathleen Rountree, PhD
Cathleen Rountree, PhD, is a seventh-generation Californian and author of nine books, including “The Writers Mentor” and the five-volume series, “On Women Turning 30, 40, 50, 60, and 70.” Since early childhood, when Cathleen would sit in double-feature after double-feature while her mother worked, movies played a significant role in her development. Cathleen covers film festivals for various venues, writes about the confluence of cinema, psychology, and cultural mythology, and teaches about film.
In a time when movie-watching has never been more accessible, the Movie Lovers Club takes the book- and film-discussion concept to a whole new level. People traditionally meet to talk about books and movies after reading or watching them. The Movie Lovers Club encourages people to share their movie-viewing experience, and then facilitates the conversations that follow.
Can’t get enough? Check www.themovieloversclub.com. There’s an online Movie Lovers Club, complete with message boards, as well as movie news, big screen and DVD film reviews, events, and festival dispatches. Currently online is news from the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City, which runs from April 24 through May 4; the San Francisco International Film Festival, April 24 through May 8, and the International Asian American Film Festival, which ran from March 13 to March 23.
Movie-watching is a wonderful icebreaker. What’s a more comfortable way for new acquaintances to mingle and for long-time friends to discover new things about one another.
The Movie Lovers Club ($16.95, .New World Library, May 2, 2006, ISBN: 978-1930722521)
