Responding to recent budget cuts, the Graduate Student Association's Critically Acclaimed Film Experience (CAFE) film series has sought and obtained co-sponsorship that will allow it to return to a full-time schedule.
For the last eight years, the CAFE film series has screened two movies a week during both fall and spring semesters.
"Our program has always tried to show one domestic and one foreign film a week that are not otherwise available in the city," CAFE committee co-chair Pouyan Amirshahi said.
At the beginning of the semester, University Park Allocation Committee (UPAC) cut the CAFE's budget in half, leaving it with only enough funds to screen one film per week.
Amirshahi said that this reduction not only necessitated a drop in the number of films screened per week, but the reduction also has affected the type of films shown.
"With this budget cut, we've had to show movies that are cheaper, more popular and more critically acclaimed," Amirshahi said.
The requirement that screened films to be cheaper has changed the overall tone of the series itself. The CAFE series usually tries to unite a series of films by a theme, or present several films from one region of the world in succeeding weeks. But this year, films have come from a variety of locales and a wide range of genres.
However, both the budget difficulties and the lack of a solid theme have come to an end. The CAFE program has received co-sponsorship of the last six weeks of the series this semester from the Colloquy on Asia in the Era of Globalization, an interdisciplinary group funded by an Institute for the Arts and Humanities Grant.
With the extra funding, the CAFE will be able to show two films a week; one domestic and one Asian, for the last six weeks of the semester. The films that have been selected will be announced soon.
In the meantime, Amirshahi is already thinking about funding for next semester. The CAFE committee plans on seeking co-sponsorship for future series from other campus groups concerned with diversity and international culture. In addition, students attending recent CAFE screenings have been encouraged to sign attendance sheets to prove to UPAC that demand does exist for these types of films.
"We've put up a petition that we want people to sign so that UPAC will fund us next semester," Amirshahi said. "We need those numbers to show UPAC how popular our films are."
Although the funding problem has been temporarily resolved, both CAFE committee members and fans of the series are upset at UPAC's reasoning for this semester's cut. Amirshahi said UPAC felt that the large number of movies already being shown on campus and in town at the cinemas and in the HUB-Robeson Center diminished the need for other films to be shown.
"But those movies are easy to find anywhere," he said. "The movies that we bring to the community are hard to find even in the big cities. CAFE brings a diverse range of art house and critically-acclaimed movies to the Penn State community."
Student fans of the series agree. John Daski (junior-music) hopes that independent films continue to be shown at Penn State.
"It'd be nice if the area had as many art house films as mainstream films," he said.
Morgan Windram (senior-geography) is glad that CAFE will resume its full schedule and has at least temporarily overcome its budget woes.
"These films cater to a different audience than mainstream films. If they get rid of these films, the people that go to them won't have anything left to come to."
