By Caitlyn Maltese
Student Life Editor
The Rose O’Neill Literary House is offering three movie nights for students throughout the semester. During these events, hand-selected movies from the staff will be screened on the enclosed porch of the Rose O’Neill Literary House. All of the movies are adaptations of books.
Popcorn and snacks will be provided and, according to the Lit House website, students have the option to stick around for a “rousing” discussion of the film.
The first movie is “The Color Purple.” It was picked by Dr. James Allen Hall, interim director of the Rose O’Neill Literary House and associate professor of English and creative writing. It will be shown at 7 p.m. on Sept. 16.
This film is directed by Steven Spielberg, and stars Whoopi Goldberg, Danny Glover, Margaret Avery, and Oprah Winfrey. It is based off of the novel with the same name by Alice Walker, and was released in 1985, three years after the book was published.
“Alice Walker’s ‘The Color Purple’ was one of the first novels I loved. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, ‘The Color Purple’ depicts a black woman’s struggle against oppression in its myriad forms. Celie’s story inspires me to continue fighting against white supremacist, sexist, and homophobic notions that underpin American society,” Dr. Hall said.
“I think students will be inspired by Celie, and by the depiction of strong women who, despite everything in our culture that tries to silence them, sing out in strong clear voices their lived experiences,” he said.
Just in time for Halloween, the second movie is “The Silence of the Lambs,” which was selected by Lindsay Lusby, assistant director of the Rose O’Neill Literary House. It will be screened on Oct. 21 at 7 p.m..
“The Silence of the Lambs” was directed by Jonathan Demme and stars Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins. The film is based off of the novel with the same name by Thomas Harris. It was released in 1988, 11 years after the book was first published. The book is the sequel to Harris’ novel “Red Dragon”.
“‘The Silence of the Lambs’ is one of my favorite movies. I am a horror movie buff, and recently, I have started to explore drawing from horror movies for material for writing poems,” Lusby said.
“Before the movie starts I want to talk a little bit about aspects of movies, and horror movies specifically, that can be inspiration for poetry or just as a jumping off point for something creative,” she said.
Lusby has written a series of six poems that were inspired by “Silence of the Lambs.”
“In my poetry, I’ve always been fascinated by grotesque imagery and creating a creepy sort of atmosphere—and those are the types of movies that I like to watch too, but until a couple years ago. I never really put together that they could meld in that way,” she said.
Although she has read the book for more context when writing her poems, Lusby was more impressed by the movie. Lusby believes that the book lacked character development and focused too much on plot. She thinks that the story did a great job in lending itself to film.
“It’s not extremely well written, but it is fascinating… I think the movie was the great of the two media for that,” Lusby said.
The series will finish on the last day of classes with “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” on Thursday, Dec. 8 at 7 p.m.. The film was picked by Julie Armstrong, administrative assistant of the Rose O’Neill Literary House.
The film was based off of the novel by C.S. Lewis. It was released in 2005, 55 years after the book was first published. The film was directed by Andrew Adamson and stars Tilda Swinton, Jim Broadbent, and Liam Neeson.
“I’ve been obsessed with ‘The Chronicles of Narnia’ since I was really little… I love the fantasy elements, I love the Christian aspects of the books, that’s really fascinating to me,” Armstrong said.
“They are the kind of books that they take you home when you read them. It’s very comforting to read those books and watch those movies,” she said. “So, the Narnia movie, I would sit in my basement and watch over and over and over again—just rewinding to the parts that I loved.”
“So, it was just, let’s give the students something that they’d enjoy, especially since it was getting close to the Christmas time in the date that I got,” Armstrong said.
Although, she is not a big of a fan of all of the books and movies in the series and calls them “hit or miss,” she said, “The series still has a very set place in my heart.”