Simultaneous conversations compete in the stale air of the Union auditorium as students trickle into the room. The auditorium is transformed into a seedy collegiate cinema on this Saturday night, the only admission price being attendance. Like in a cinema, different groups of people are scattered throughout the room. To entertain them all, there is a flickering projector screen above the stage. The lights are shut off, the blue “No signal” is replaced by a grainy movie of “The Fighter,” and an excited voice shushes the auditorium.
Red Hot After Hours, a campaign to enhance student life, especially on the weekends, is the sponsor of this drastic change in the Union Auditorium’s atmosphere.
Brandon Garcia, a freshman engineering science major who is part of Red Hot After Hours, says that the weekly movie nights of March are a great place to hang out with friends on the weekends. He says that students can “enjoy their weekend pretty much when there’s nothing else to do on campus.”
Red Hot After Hours have shown films ranging from recent animated favorites such as “Despicable Me” to Oscar winners like “The Kids are All Right.” When asked how the movies are picked, Brandon Garcia said “we vote. We have a whole student staff in [SAC] 218 so we pick a group of movies and then we just vote which [movie] we think will be the best for students.”
Stony Brook University, a school that is constantly criticized for its lack of campus student life has always had a cinematic tradition. Stony Brook is constantly showing movies, whether they are the popular Hollywood films that are shown by Red Hot After Hours or critically acclaimed independent films shown at the Staller Center. There are also the films shown by clubs and organizations such as the environmentally conscious documentaries sponsored by the SBU Environmental Club. Then there are the cultural films such as the Korean Studies film series and the Confucius Institute’s film series at the Wang Center. Last but not least are the educational screenings by the Stony Brook faculty, whether they are required class screenings or intended for facilitating academic discussion such as the past screening of “Where the Wild Things Are.”
Whether the average Stony Brook student would find all the films that are shown on campus preferable to the local Stony Brook AMC theater is debatable, but Stony Brook students that know of the Red Hot After Hours movie nights seem to have favorable opinions of them.
Rebecca Quinn, a sophomore double majoring in psychology and cinema and cultural Studies says of “The Fighter,” “I thought that was really good. It went by really fast even though it was really a two hour movie. For a movie about boxing, there was so much depth to the characters, and you got caught up in the story and not just the actual fights.”
Emily Swierski, another Red Hot After Hours moviegoer who is a freshman health science major had similar views. “I thought the movie was awesome. The boxing scenes were highly skilled and Christian Bale is an awesome actor.”
