Cityside Cinema Club
Brenda has asked for ideas on how to fund the new data projector, and it fits in with a thought I had had.
Many Citysiders are into film. I've recently come across a thing called <a href="http://www.spiritualcinemacircle.com">Spiritual Cinema Circle</a> which is a subscription-based DVD club. It costs about the same as one of the rental DVD services here (when you do the currency conversion), but you get to keep the DVDs. Every month you get 4 films: A feature, a documentary, and two shorts.
The films are about spirituality of various kinds (not necessarily, but also not excluding, Christian spirituality).
My idea is that we get a group together and charge a monthly subscription, which would pay for a group sub to Spiritual Cinema Circle and also buy other DVDs, any remainder (or a certain proportion) each month to go towards the projector. Subscribers get to use the projector (and/or the TVs in the space) and play the DVDs; if you want to do so on a particular occasion and you're not a subscriber, you kick in a koha of a couple of dollars as a "temporary subscription".
Note that for legal purposes we're not charging people to see the films, but for the use of the equipment and access to the DVD library. Like the Cityside non-lending reference library of books, the deal would be that the DVDs don't go off site.
We'd need to work out something about booking regular and irregular times to watch the movies. I'm not sure how many unbooked times there are in a given week.
Thoughts? Responses?

Hmmm....
How about a spiritual sport watching group!
After all there are THREE teams in the tri-nations competition...
And I am sure that spirits and sport could mix...
Ferg
not so sure about the site
I really like the idea in principle, but am underwhelmed by the site and the idea of 'spiritual movies' - especially if the luminaries involved are Neale Donald Walsh, Deepak Chopra and Mr Chicken Soup for the Soul. Shades of the 'bad art' of 'what the bleep' - movies that set out to be inspiring and transformational rarely are, in my experience. But I'd be interested in a similar thing that had good 'secular' movies from independent producers, where we could choose what movies we wanted out of a selection. I generally get much more out of a normal, thoughtful cinema release that's addressing the deeper questions of life from whatever perspective the film-maker has, than movies that set out to offer a specifically 'spiritual' take on things.
What do others think?
brilliant idea, Mike.
brilliant idea, Mike.