Photo by Anna Meassick | Students had the opportunity to play trivia games and win prizes before a showing of Crazy Rich Asians.
The Student Entertainment Committee hosted a free screening of “Crazy Rich Asians” as part of their Winterfest week on Dec. 4 at 7 p.m. in Quinn Auditorium.
This week is the SEC’s Winterfest, which started on Dec. 3 and the committee planned a series of free events on campus for students to celebrate the start of December and welcome the winter. The events are a great way to get some last few days of campus fun in before the end of the semester and final exams.
Before the screening, there was a trivia session involving questions about the previous movie they had screened, which was “A Quiet Place” on Nov. 13, as well as about SEC itself.
Sophomore SEC Executive Naleen Camara said that it is beyond being just a fun trivia session. “It’s also a way to get people involved in the organization as well as the event,” Camara said. “So, people are like ‘oh I want to learn more about this organization.’”
From start to finish, the attendees in Quinn Auditorium were laughing, gasping and crying. When the end credits rolled, people clapped for the critically acclaimed “Crazy Rich Asians,” which premiered in theatres last August and has made headlines for being the first film in 25 years with a majority Asian cast that was produced by a major Hollywood studio. As of October, the film has grossed $238 million worldwide which makes it the highest-grossing romantic comedy in a decade and the sixth-highest romantic comedy of all time.
Freshman Yisel Vasquez Gil heard about the event from a friend and decided to attend. Everyone she knew had seen it, but she never had. After finally getting the chance to see it, she described it as “bomb.”
Another freshman Gia Antolini heard about the event from a roommate who follows the SEC Instagram page where the committee posted about the screening. Antolini decided to see the movie for the first time.
“It had amazing Asian representation,” Antolini said. “The script was absolutely brilliant, [as was] the cinematography.” She also praised the film’s score which has a soundtrack that included songs in both Chinese and English throughout, including a Chinese cover of the song “Yellow” which serves as the background music for the film’s final scenes.
SEC Executive Freshman Maren Drake explained the process of choosing films to screen that involves looking in a catalog of available movies from their distributor that they can choose to rent for 24-hours at a certain price.
For this specific screening, a poll was held on SEC’s Instagram page to decide which movie to show. In the end, “Crazy Rich Asians” beat out “Mamma Mia.”
“We’re trying to get [the student body’s] opinions on things and try to make it more interactive,” Camara said.
The last Winterfest event for this week is the Sheck Wes concert at the Ryan Center at 7 p.m on Friday, Dec. 7. Wes is widely known for his song “Mo Bamba.” Tickets are still on sale for $25. However, the end of Winterfest is not until Wednesday, Dec. 12 with another free screening of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.” at 7 p.m. in the Ram’s Den.
To get further information about SEC events and to vote on polls, follow the Student Entertainment Committee on Instagram and Twitter, both @URISEC.