Despite being a huge film fan, it’s been months since I’ve done anything film-related as a new thing – it was way back in April when I did my at home film festival. I love watching films at-home, but even though cinemas have opened up here in Germany, I’m still not quite ready to go back. I miss the discovery of something new, and the shared viewing experience. The collective gasps, laughs, and sniffs, are things I didn’t think I’d miss as much as I do.
Whilst I’ve no way of recreating that experience without being in a cinema, the closest I could think of was joining a film club. I found the See You Next Wednesday film club in this Time Out article and I couldn’t wait to join in, especially as this week they were watching one of my favourite films – Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein.
The See You Next Wednesday ethos is to watch undiscovered gems or films that are so good they deserve to be seen again. They reflect this in the previous films they’ve seen from documentaries such as The Wolfpack, Indie films like Spring Breakers, and cult classic Buckaroo Banzai.
The film club meets virtually in their Whatsapp group at 8pm UK time each week, before we collectively watch some curated trailers, and then make sure our versions of the film are queued up and ready to go for 8.30pm.
I loved the classic trailers I saw, but I did think that took a strange Christopher Lee heavy path. I’ve only just now realised that my YouTube had gone rogue and instead of playing the other classic horror trailers in the queue, it had actually set up a Christopher Lee “best of” video. My comments in the group chat about some pirate film must have seemed a bit strange when everybody else was watching a trailer for a Hammer horror film!
I don’t need much excuse to watch a Mel Brooks film, especially one with my funniest scene of all time, but it felt really nice to know others were watching the same film, at the same time. The group chat was also an added bonus to this: I could tell that others were finding the same jokes funny, and I learned some interesting trivia about the film too.
This was a fantastic experience, and something I’ll be sure to join in with next week. If you’re like me and missing all things film, check-in with See You Next Wednesday on Monday to see what their next film is.
New Day, New Thing 