Clase de Cine (Film Class)

This semester I am taking a class called “ Gender and Sexuality in Spanish Cinema”. It’s awesome. Really fun and entertaining. We watch one movie per week. We have two class meetings: one in which the professor lectures about the movie and the second in which we have a class discussion. The class flies by.

Like all PRESCHO classes that include film watching in the syllabus, this class has DVDS stored in the office for us to watch. We simply have to ask Encarni if we can borrow it and she’ll give us a copy. This worked really well last semester for my grammar class. This semester not so much.

I watch the movies on my computer because we do not have a DVD player here in the dorms. U.S. DVDS are region 1 and Spanish DVDS are region 2. I can only watch region 1 DVDS on my computer. Last semester, there were copies of nearly every required movie in region 1 form. This semester it seems like every time I need a movie, there are only region 2s available. This means I have to go to the office at a specific time to watch the movie. This is annoying. It’s much more convenient to watch it at home on my own time.

Our latest film is “Hable con Ella” (Talk to her). I assumed there would be region 1 DVDS at the office because I know that this movie was released in the U.S. Therefore, region 1 DVDS exist. I have seen this movie on DVD at Smith. I ask Encarni for “Hable con ella” for my computer. Turns out there are 2 region 2 DVDS and about 6 region 4 DVDS. Region 4 is Mexico.

Region 4s do not work for region 1 players. I told Encarni this and she was surprised. Ummmm who’s idea was it to get about a trillion copies of Mexican dvds THAT DON’T WORK IN ANYTHING???????????????? No one here has a Mexican computer or dvd player, so these are USELESS.