Founded in 1949, the Dartmouth Film Society is the oldest college film society in the country. This fall marks the 75th Anniversary!
Throughout this year, we will celebrate the legacy of the Dartmouth Film Society through a series of movies highlighting talented alumni screenwriters, directors, producers, actors, composers and other artists. Films in the series include such notable titles as Gaslight (1940), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), On the Waterfront (1954), Taxi Driver (1976) and The Graduate (1967), and will also feature more recent movies starring alumni actors Mindy Kaling '01, Connie Britton '89, David Harbour '97 and Meryl Streep.
Learn about the Dartmouth Film & Media Alumni Festival we presented in November.
Are you a Dartmouth Student who loves movies?
Meetings are held Tuesdays at 6 pm in Wilson Hall Room 205, open to Dartmouth students only. To get on our weekly email list and be the first to know when filmmakers are visiting campus, email dfs@dartmouth.edu
When the Dartmouth Film Society hosted its first screening on October 25, 1949 (of W.C. Fields' Million Dollar Legs), there were no VHS tapes, no DVDs—and certainly no Netflix. If you wanted to see a movie that wasn't currently in theaters, you had to find a film print and rig up a projector. So that's exactly what Professor Maurice Rapf '35, Orton Hicks and J. Blair Watson, Director Emeritus of Dartmouth College Films, set out to do.
Dartmouth's first proper film history and appreciation seminar was taught in 1964 by none other than Arthur Mayer of Paramount Pictures. This class was listed under the English Department and later the Department of Drama, as the Film Studies Department wouldn't come into being until 1992. During all of that time, the Dartmouth Film Society continued to thrive as a place of welcome for movie-lovers of all stripes.
Many students who participated in DFS went on to pursue careers as creatives and studio executives after graduation, so now it is well-known that the "Dartmouth Mafia" within the film industry is ready to help the next generation of students get started with careers centered around storytelling, the moving image and more.
