New Film Club Launches On City Campus

By Justin Hu (he/him)

A new film club on AUT’s city campus wants to cater to everyone — not just comms students, says its president.

Launched in May, the AUT Film Club caters to a previously unfulfilled niche in AUT’s clubs space — with the new group running activities akin to UOA’s Film Society.

The club’s president, Ryan Chow, says the group already has 200 members after running two of its free movie nights. “Who doesn't love watching movies? Even if it's just that you enjoy watching them and it's just about relaxing; then that's all we really need,” Chow says.

“We've averaged around 50 people coming to our movie nights, and we host these in the lecture theatres, usually in the WG building.”

“We’ll provide movies for people to watch, but also food and refreshments. At the end, we have quizzes to test the audience's memory.”

Chow explains that the club is working on developing other projects, alongside events. He says that the exec wants to host workshops and tutorials on filmmaking, alongside gaining the ability to rent out equipment to students.

“We've got tutorials and workshops planned where you could get everything from, as simple as, how to write a script, all the way up to something like how to fly a drone.”

The film club also has a project underway to produce a weekly video news update which will play on screens around AUT campuses.

Dubbed ‘AUT Weekly,’ the project will focus on “events, club updates and student news” and has been contracted out to the club by the university.

“We'll have a presenter in front of the camera and they'll be reading the scripts that we’re going to be writing from the info provided by AUT,” Chow says.

Each week’s 1–2 minute video update would also be published on the AUT app and through the university’s social media channels.

Chow adds that the club’s exec is currently focusing on running projects for city campus students, but that they’re considering the south and north campuses for future events. He says interested students should get in contact.

“If you want to get involved, we'll have polls out every two weeks for the next movie night and you can pick which movie you wanna watch. And if you ever have a [film-related] project idea, basically just come to our team and we'd be happy to help you out with setting it up as well.”

Learn more about this club at autfilmclub.com or @autfilmclub on Instagram.