Ciné Club members are more than movie enthusiasts. The student group uses Ciné as a meeting place for film screenings and lectures, but they have ambitious goals.

“The owners of Ciné have always seen it as educational or sort of a community center, not in a YMCA sense, but as a central hub dedicated to cinema, so it only makes sense for them to aid students in learning about cinema,” club president Parker Couch, a film studies and English major from Gainesville, said.

Ciné Club meets every other Wednesday to watch films playing at the theater, which cost $5 for club members. But the organization is just getting off the ground and the schedule is not set in stone.

“As of right now, we’re pretty much running things by ear,” said vice-president Matt Noller, a film studies and magazines major from Bainbridge. “Really [the club's format] is just going to depend on the feedback and support we get from the students and whatever the members end up wanting to do. We don’t want to prescribe what the club is and then rigorously stick to that.”

The club’s first meeting involved a screening of “It Might Get Loud,” followed by a discussion of the film. In discussing each film, club leaders want students to provide input but to also listen and learn from other members in what Couch described as an “impromptu round-table discussion – minus the round table.”

Aside from designated screenings and discussions of films, Ciné Club aims to also provide a platform for students to showcase their own short films. Couch hopes that students will submit shorts to be screened in front of the features, and that they would be included in group discussions in a manner that would ultimately help aspiring filmmakers hear what group-members liked or disliked about their films.

Outside of Ciné, the club finds the Athens film scene negligent.

“It’s just a shame that film is almost nonexistent in Athens, because we’ve got an incredible art scene otherwise, especially when it comes to music, and you’d think they’d go hand in hand,” Couch said.

Compared to similar college towns like Austin, Texas or Wilmington, N.C., where art constitutes a large part of the cities’ culture, Athens is severely lacking a film culture that facilitates the learning about – and production of – film.

“There’s no reason for us not to have a film scene. There is a huge art community here that I really think would be interested in film, but that just hasn’t happened,” Noller said. “In creating Ciné Club, we really wanted to show people the beauty of film and its potential in Athens.”

The impact film has had on Noller and Couch has left the two club leaders desperate to kick-start a film movement in Athens.

For Couch, the love of film dates back to his childhood, where he claims that “film was [his] babysitter.”

Yet, both Noller and Couch know what they’re up against, considering most people don’t share the same enthusiasm for film and aren’t easily motivated to leave home to pay for a movie that could be found online for free.

Moreover, art cinema, in comparison to more mainstream, Hollywood productions, is not all that appealing to most people – mainly because the stories are traditionally harder to follow.

“There is definitely a focus to the group and not everyone is going to like it. The movies we watch and discuss push against the accepted norms of what film making is, and through that seek something that is higher than just entertainment,” Noller said.

“But at the same time, anyone is welcome to join and we actually encourage people who aren’t familiar with art films to come out and see them in an environment where they can be explained properly.”

Though still early in its existence, Ciné Club promises to provide students an environment to enjoy and learn about film from peers and professors who specialize in cinema. If the ardor of the club’s leaders are any indication at all, it is not implausible that in some time, Athens, too, might have a respectable film community.

“Film is a chance for me to connect with something that other people get out of a religious faith,” Noller said.