F r o n t   L i n e On OFFScreen by Matt Lorenz Maybe you really believe that everything ends happily. Maybe you enjoy your a priori knowledge of the plot and conclusion of every Hollywood movie. Maybe you even think the stuff Hollywood turns out is damn near close to perfect. Or maybe you don't. If you don't, you'd probably say the difference between a film and a movie is one's good and the other's Titanic. (No, I know Titanic wasn't that bad. But five times? Come on.) And if you love film but are not so into Hollywood, you'd probably also want to know about Adam Popp's latest attempt to tell his U.Va. friends why good films are so important to him. Now he's just telling -- and showing -- more people. Popp founded a new U.Va. organization called OFFScreen last year which is geared toward supplying the U.Va. community and Charlottesville with the independent films they'd never get to see otherwise. "OFFScreen's mission is to bring foreign and independent films to Charlottesville and U.Va., as well as filmmakers and speakers who will help to bring the films to an intellectual and artistic climax," Popp said. "These are films that should be accessible to everyone, and Charlottesville should be no exception." Richard Herskowitz, director of the Virginia Film Festival and faculty advisor to OFFScreen, foresees a valuable interplay between the Festival and OFFScreen. "The Festival generates a lot of attention and excitement, but it disappears after four days," he says. "OFFScreen gives people a chance to sustain an interest in film art that the Festival might spark." Maybe many of us never get past the blockbuster films to the independent ones because we've never considered the idea of what Herskowitz calls "film art." Instead, we think of going to the movies as a nice way to spend an afternoon or evening, or as a way to burn time when there's nothing else to do; that notorious, college need for mindless diversion. But why not ask -- even expect -- as much from a film as from a poem by Whitman or a passage from Nietzsche? Why not find in film that same shudder of awe that comes from anything that moves us or from life in general? Popp thinks those who have never been exposed to anything but blockbuster productions might come back to independent films again and again once they experience them. "Film means more than just Hollywood. Just like in sex, there are a lot more ways to do it than the missionary position, it's just that a lot of people don't know about them," he said. A compelling argument. How do we find out about these new -- um -- types of films that we haven't experienced yet? OFFScreen is entirely student run (and, of course, enthusiastically welcomes anyone who wants to help out) and shows its films on-grounds, mostly in Newcomb Theater. Its next show is Happy Together, which plays this Monday, September 28, at 8 p.m. in Newcomb Theater. Come with $2.50 and your try-new-things hat.

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