Creating a community of film lovers at Cal Poly
San Luis Obispo offers a handful of places where people can go to watch movies, but they aren’t always easily accessible for students. One club invites the Cal Poly community to enjoy the magic of going to the movies from a classroom in the Agricultural Sciences Building.
The Cal Poly Cinema Club was started in 2022 by senior Cameron King because he was looking for a place to explore his love for film.
“I wanted to share my passion for movies and just kind of the broad landscape of movies throughout history and I wanted to have a community around those interests and there wasn’t one. And so I thought that I should try to fill that gap,” King said.
The club screens a selected film each week on Mondays at 8 p.m. in Building 11 on Cal Poly’s campus. After watching the movie, the group holds a brief discussion about what stood out to them. Meetings were not always packed with people, and in the early stages, King says they struggled to reach an audience.
“One week it was just only one person RSVP and we watched ‘C’mon C’mon’ in my room in my PCV apartment, but then you put more posters up and people start trickling in,” King said.
Sophomore Evan Cork, who attended one of those smaller meetings, is now president of the Cinema Club. He says his favorite part of watching a film is the experience of seeing it in a theater, which he’s trying to recreate in the meetings.
“It’s just such an awesome feeling and I think that’s definitely the biggest aspect, how it brings people together, and that’s kind of what I want to do with the Cinema Club,” Cork said. “It’s a little difficult just with getting a certain room at Cal Poly but definitely I get some of that reaction where people kind of all laugh together and I think that’s definitely part of what brings people back.”
Along with sharing an interest in watching films, King and Cork are both passionate about creating movies. They hope the Cinema Club can be a space for budding filmmakers to work together.
“I also kind of want it to be a place where people who are interested in filmmaking can come and meet other people who are interested in filmmaking and maybe, you know, there can be like a separate group chat where people can talk about little like film projects that they want to do and they can collaborate,” Cork said.
Whether you’re a die-hard cinephile, or you just want to catch a free movie on campus, the Cinema Club is open to people with any level of interest in film.
“There’s just some good people, you know? It’s a young, growing entity on this campus that I hope has a good, bright future and people find a lot of community and an appreciation of different people’s taste,” King said.
To see what films are playing soon, the Cinema Club posts information about upcoming weekly meetings on their Instagram.
