The Cultural Hub of Free Movie Fridays

Tiana Sigala, staff writer

The Dickinson auditorium was in full swing 45 minutes before the showing, and the activity would only pick up. Groups congregated around entryways, pairs located and called out to each other from opposing doors, couples warmly greeted friends and sat together.

The demographic was strikingly dissimilar to the students you might see wandering the halls, as families filed in to claim seats, and elderly folk convened for conversation.

“It’s a great spot to meet friends,” said retired electrician Joe Clendaniel, who tries as often as he can to catch Free Movie Fridays with his bowling buddies. As we spoke, Clendaniel was patted on the shoulder and greeted more than once by passersby.

“All these folks know me–– this is a great place to get together,” he said with a laugh, and he wasn’t alone in meeting friends here. Calls of “I thought I heard your voice” and “fancy seeing you here!” were common in these pre-movie moments.

Free Movie Fridays are a monthly PVCC event during which a recently-released film, one not yet available for home view, is available for free to students and the community alike.

Community, it would seem, is key in these Free Movie Fridays. Beryl Solla, chair of visual & performing arts at PVCC, carefully curates these movies through a criterion of timeliness, critical success, and positive messages.

Further, Solla has shown a proclivity for films with cultural significance, focusing on sharing films by or about members of historically disenfranchised groups.

Solla said, “It seems to me that educators are responsible for sharing ALL the information. It’s not our job to pick and choose- it’s our job to give students all the information that is available. Art is one of the best ways to do that.”

Green Book does not break from this pattern. The movie follows the true story of Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali), a renowned pianist, and Tony Vallelonga (Viggo Mortensen), in the forming of an unlikely friendship through a concert tour around the deep south in a time of strong racial animus.

The storyline deals with themes of racism, homophobia, solidarity, and identity crises.

Through choosing movies that highlight diverse stories and backgrounds, such as Green Book, Solla hopes to share works featuring groups whose art has been historically overlooked.

“It’s great for students of color because they are finally being represented by mainstream media and it’s great for white students because they are not always informed of the cultural/political/economic/scientific contributions made by people of color,” says Solla.

Some of her previous Free Movie Night choices include such representative films as Hidden Figures, Black Panther, and Loving.

Of her dedication to sharing such meaningful stories, Solla said, “Art has always been used to share ideas and culture. Now we have more people telling their stories and we all need to listen.”

Indeed, the crowd listened. The theatre was animated, with viewers laughing and even gasping in unison.

Green Book, while more a feel-good film than others that involve similar, dense themes, certainly had an effect on PVCC’s audience.

By movie’s end, the viewers were perceptibly subdued; some visibly weepy. As the lights came on and everyone filed toward the doors an affable chattiness returned.

Though she was still dabbing at the corner of her eyes with a cloth napkin when approached, Queens transplant Deb Blum left in good spirits, joking, “Those accents were better than some I ever heard in the Bronx!”

Free Movie Fridays will continue showcasing significant and diverse films for the Charlottesville community with On the Basis of Sex in March, a biopic about our first female Supreme Court Justice, Ruth Bader-Ginsburg.

Often, the movies are paired with other PVCC arts events. In April, the Oscar-winning Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is showing, featuring an other-dimensional Spiderman, Afro-Latino Miles Morales. The event is paired with the Annual Student Exhibition & Seventh Annual Chocolate Chow Down which showcases student art and delicious chocolate.

Catch the next Free Movie Friday, On the Basis of Sex, March 15, at 7:30 pm, in the Dickinson Auditorium.