The first semester of my sophomore year, still lost in this new college life, having seen their posters in my dorm, I attended every screening of the foreign film festival of the Wildcat Film Appreciation Society. I remember little apart from the movies themselves, though I met a group leader there named Prasanth Chandran. That next semester I studied abroad, leaving them for a semester and throughout the summer. When I arrived back, I found an amazing environment waiting with him for me.
After the weekly screenings, the vast majority of people immediately stand up and leave, but I decided to stay for the discussions. After several weeks, I couldn’t not go — I had people waiting for me. The environment Prasanth cultivated was great for my jet-lagged emotions and well-being: it was a place where we could freely discuss whatever we thought about the movie, and before the screening we talked about whatever. This environment is exactly what I desire to continue as club president — the very reason I kept going, the very reason that people keep going this semester.
The Wildcat Film Appreciation Society is a K-State affiliated club that primarily does weekly screenings of member-elected movies, though we also host international film festivals or co-host cooperative film festivals, like the Ghibli Film Festival in April 2025 with ASU, the Asian Student Union. We plan to do many more screenings in the future. This semester our screenings occur every Friday at 7 p.m. at the Big 12 Room in the Student Union, free for any and all K-State students and faculty.
Being a K-State affiliated club, we have always struggled with film rights; we can only publicly screen movies within K-State’s Kanopy “Public Screening Rights” section, unless we pay for screening rights, which we can only acquire funding to do for film festivals. To expand our range of films, under my leadership I created private Sunday screenings, where members privately get together to simply watch a movie in a room, each member taking turns selecting. Or if a member desires, we all go out together to the AMC in town to enjoy movies as they always have been enjoyed–on the big screen.
The relaxed nature of these screenings creates something even better than the tranquility I felt in the initial screenings I went to after returning from abroad, and we have formed a tightly knit group, though even the official weekly screenings have a lax aura to them, a sort of serenity of cinema.
The vice president, Ben Taylor, provides his thoughts on the club: “The club is important to me since it introduces me to a variety of different ideas and cultures. I love being able to express the films I enjoy and to hear about the films other people enjoy as well.” I personally could not agree more; all walks of life within K-State congregate to watch the same movie together, and if uniting people in cooperative comprehension is not the purpose of art, then I don’t know what is.
On behalf of the Wildcat Film Appreciation Society, we invite you to join us this semester in the Big 12 Room in the Student Union every Friday night at 7pm. Our International Film Festival screenings and dates will be announced soon, and please follow us on our Instagram at @wildcat.film.appreciation or follow our Discord (located within Instagram page) for further announcements!
With the advent of streaming services taking the public spectacle quality out of film, watching movies today can be quite the isolating practice. Countering isolation, we at WFAS hope to produce a harmonic feeling within viewers. We hope to see you at the screenings.
— George Colburn (BA ’26)
K-State English 