Hurricanes, cardinals, car crashes and sea anenomes filled the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art’s Pick-Laudati Auditorium Oct. 6.

Wet Gate, an improvisational “band of projectors” from San Francisco, were performing in the auditorium as part of the Block Cinema series. The three members of the group each man their own 16 mm projector, which they use to create a collage of sounds and images.

Not your average Saturday night at Northwestern.

The Block Cinema series is bringing rare films and film groups to campus this school year on a level never seen in the past.

“There are people who are building off each other and doing certain live performances that either don’t get publicized or just don’t happen here,” says Amy Beste, a member of the NU Film Society. Beste — a Speech graduate student majoring in radio-TV-film — serves as the program director for the Chicago Underground Film Festival.

The series is the brainchild of R/TV/F Asst. Professor Scott Curtis and Block Museum Director David Mickenberg. The films and groups are divided into three series each quarter and the films are shown each week Thursday through Saturday.

The NU Film Society, which includes four graduate and four undergraduate film students, makes final programming decisions for the year-long series. Outside student input is also welcomed by the committee.

The program is funded by a donation from the Louis Family foundation. The money will only last through this school year, but organizers hope the series will continue under an endowment in the future.

For Fall Quarter, organizers are focusing on three series, all of which were conceived by students in the NU Film Society: “Foreign Exchange: 1990s International Cinema,” on Thursdays; “Postwar European Cinema of the Fantastic,” on Fridays; and “Sonic Visions” on Saturdays.

“This is the only thing on campus like this where you have quality film projection and interesting movies that you don’t see just anywhere,” says Curtis, who serves as the faculty adviser to the film society. “You can’t rent some of these movies.”

Case in point: Block Cinema showed “Center Stage” as part of the “Foreign Exchange: 1990’s International Cinema” series this quarter. The 1992 film chronicles the rise of 1930’s Chinese actress Ruan Ling Yu to stardom only to be driven to suicide by the film industry that made her.

The negative of the film was destroyed, so no original print of the film exists. The Film Society tracked down a slightly shorter print of the film with subtitles to show.

“Battle Sounds,” a documentary on DJ culture that was shown as part of the “Sonic Visions” series, was shown at the Whitney Museum of American Art’s biennial celebration. Later this quarter, Chicago band Califone will play two sets accompanied by film. The first set will involve visual improvisation to the music of the band, and the second set will find the band playing along to the 1933 puppet film “The Mascot.”

“The point is to curate motion pictures,” says Curtis. “We think that it should be a place that people can come and learn about movies in a museum environment in the same way that you come and learn about other art forms.”

Jess Lacher, a Speech junior majoring in R/TV/F and a member of the film society, finds the society helps her with her major.

“Anybody who’s interested in film at all needs to see as many movies as possible,” she says. “Your stuff is better if you have a large vocabulary of films behind you.”

Like the improvisational work of Wet Gate, Block Cinema is a work in progress.

“It’s exciting since it is the first year and we’re trying to figure out what type of films we’ll show,” said Will Schmenner, Asst. Curator of Film at the Block Museum.

Schmenner speculates that the series might institute theme weekends or show movies that have broader appeal in coming years.

To keep the ball rolling, he called on interested students to get involved with the Film Society.

“We want to get off to a quiet start where we just take things easy and grow into ourselves,” Schmenner said. “Frankly, right now people’s sweat is a lot more important than people’s dollars. Finding the core group of people who are going to bring life to this student-run film group … that’s what we’re looking for right now.”

“We’ve got a very vibrant art culture on campus with the museum, Pick-Staiger (Concert Hall) and theater, and I want film to be just as much a part of that vibrant culture as the other arts are,” says Curtis. nyou