A little learning

Some new area clubs and courses

Maybe it's American anti-intellectualism that contaminates everybody, but who among us doesn't feel like a bombastic jackass when we talk about "the meaning" of a film we've just seen? Sounding off as we leave the theater, we feel certain we're being pegged by those listening in as some irritating fool who would be parodied mercilessly in a Woody Allen movie.

Such self-consciousness is ridiculous, of course. An interesting film demands to be talked about, figured out -- and it's a natural impulse to want to do so. What avid filmgoers might need, though, is a forum, a safe area for serious discussion -- what most adults lose forever simply by graduating from school.

Enter the Sunday Cinema Club, which will start up February 8 and continue alternate Sunday mornings into May at Cambridge's Kendall Square Cinema. On seven occasions, a new foreign-language or American independent film will be sneak-previewed in its Boston premiere. Afterward, over coffee, club members can ask questions, supply commentary and interpretations, argue cinema with one another, and do everything that's so exhilarating about taking a college film course. And there's no downside: no grades, no exams, no grueling papers.

At $98, a bargain!

The Sunday Cinema Club is coming to us from Washington, DC, where, since the fall of 1992, it's been an extraordinarily successful adjunct of the arthouse screenings at Georgetown's Key Theater. Among the films that have premiered at the Key Cinema Club are Passion Fish, The Full Monty, The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, and Shine. Many movies come with a guest speaker -- a film critic, or the movie's star or director. Among the club's celebrity guests: directors John Sayles and Steven Soderbergh, and actor Terence Stamp, who was charming with his Priscilla stories.

The Key Cinema Club series has sold out the last two years, 530 people per series. (There are no single admissions.) "We re-create the college experience of discussing things," explains Peter Brunette, the George Mason University professor who moderates the weekly discussions. "Film is a kind of communal experience, but it's rare that you get to discuss it in a public or communal way. An hour's exchange after each film often puts it in a completely new light for the viewers. Our audiences have always been extremely articulate, and we go into not only the artistry of the films but ethical, political, and gender issues."

It's reasonable to say that such a program succeeds or fails based on the talents and knowledge of the moderator. Brunette, who's a longtime friend of mine, is an expert on French and Italian cinema and has written the essential book on director Roberto Rossellini. I'm pleased that the Key Cinema Club's director, David Levy, has made an inspired choice for the moderator of the Sunday Club at the Kendall. He's T. Jefferson Kline, an extremely popular Boston University French professor who is as personable as he is brilliant. I'm in awe of his scholarship on French cinema and of his study of director Bernardo Bertolucci.

How to sign up? Call toll-free at 1-888-467-0404. Oh, one caveat. For contractual reasons, you can't know what film will be shown until you show up. David Levy has assured me that "our members love the anticipation associated with not knowing."

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And for those of you who want to learn basic film production without matriculating at a university? Something else that's starting up sounds very promising: the Boston Film and Video Foundation's Fusion Workshop in Film, which the BF/VF describes as its "new low-cost alternative to film school." Beginning January 28, filmmaker Richard Broadman and editor Rob Todd will team-teach seven-to-14-week sessions informing students of basic techniques of professional filmmaking: working with actors, forming a production crew, learning about the art and camera departments. After orientation classes, students choose among specialized production workshops in story development, screenwriting, art direction, and film production.

"There are all kinds of people out there in different professions who may have fantasies about filmmaking, and we'd like to try and find them," says the BF/VF's education director, Laura Wilson. Each seven-week session costs $340 for BF/VF members, $380 for nonmembers. For information about registration, call 536-1540.

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Brookline's Coolidge Corner offers an eight-week Screenwriting and Production Completion Seminar on Wednesday evenings starting February 11. The cost is $500 for this "everything you wanted to know about screenplays" course, including learning to write them using a systematic method developed by the class's instructor, independent filmmaker and scholar Susan Woll.

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Ineptitude or spite? Film School Confidential: The Insider's Guide to Film Schools (Perigee Books), penned by Kevin Kelly and Tom Edgar, graduates of NYU, doesn't mention Boston University's film program. Hey, fellows, BU has the only graduate filmmaking program in New England. And what about Emerson? Mass College? Area schools are bypassed altogether in favor of such important filmmaking programs as those at Southern Illinois at Carbondale and the University of Utah. Foul!