The Graduate: A Cinephile's Guide to University

Uni is a time for self-discovery, a place to ‘find yourself’. You’ll sample enough sensory pleasures over the next few years of studentdom to make Dionysus look like a wallflower, but when you need to escape the chaos of gigs, clubs and, occasionally, study, cinema can be a welcome refuge.

Sitting alone in that darkened auditorium gives you a window into a world beyond the lecture hall and the library. You may have turned up in term one with your Time Out Film Guide and Godfather box-set and thought you were a cinephile, but there’s a rich film education waiting for you in Scotland’s arthouse theatres and student film societies.

Mark Cousins (film critic, film historian, film-maker)

Growing up, I had to rely on TV to see films, but I’d read lots of film books, so by the time I got to Stirling uni I felt that I had been starved of cinema. Then, in my course, I saw the Nic Roeg films. Because of Walkabout and Performance, my sense of what a movie could be grew. Watching them was like tripping. And I saw Antonioni’s l’Eclisse which was a bit beyond me then and teased me with its sheer beauty to go deeper into the movie forest.

And so I did. I helped run the film society at uni and at it – in a freezing lecture theatre on Tuesday and Thursday night – I saw Les Enfants du Paradis and Scorsese’s New York, New York, two baroque epics which fused in my mind. I saw Chen Kaige’s Yellow Earth when it came out, at the Macrobert Centre in Stirling, and that could have been the moment when I realised that the forest is huge, and that I’d spend my life in it.

Matt Lloyd (director, The Glasgow Short Film Festival)

After spending my teenage years avoiding daylight in a grubby former porn cinema in the centre of Birmingham, watching Antonioni triple bills for £2, I chose to go to Edinburgh University mainly because of the film festival's reputation. My first trip to Filmhouse was to see John Ford's classic The Searchers - a sell-out show in a 280 seat theatre. As I was used to sharing a cinema with one sweaty man in a trenchcoat, this blew my mind. Sadly, after this initial promise, my student cinema-going became pretty staid. I dutifully signed up to Edinburgh University Film Society at the Freshers Fair, but being an obnoxious ciné-geek I wasn't impressed by the selection of films on offer. It never occurred to me to get involved with the programming of the society. Stupid of me, as I later learned that all the best festival programmers start out by taking over their student film society. I got more joy from late night double bills at the Cameo, sadly no more, and later got a Saturday job there shoveling popcorn and editing the Film Club Newsletter. Pay was rubbish, but the job came with an endless supply of free tickets to both Cameo and Filmhouse, and eventually led to me working for the Edinburgh Film Festival...which is more than I can say for my English Lit degree.

Stephen McRobbie (The Pastels, Monorail Film Club)

When I left school my main passion was the independent music scene; records, fanzines, my group. That was the most important thing to me and I messed up and missed out on a university place. When I finally got in, a year later, I felt appreciative of my luxurious situation (good sized grant, lots of free time). I tried to be diligent, but my kind of diligence included spending a lot of time in record shops and occasionally the GFT. In a way I think I was still trying to map my own identity and I tried to find films that somehow corresponded to the records that I loved.

At school I had loved Gregory's Girl and it wasn't such a big leap into the world of Truffaut and Jean-Pierre Léaud, and through that, Godard and his brilliant-looking 1960s films, which were part pop — the part I was most into — and part Marxist tract. The latter connected to my actual studies and in a way provoked certain ideas that I wouldn't have had otherwise. They helped make my studies seem more 3D and led to a realisation that a great education is part prescribed, part sought out. Now I know I would spend more time in the library but I would also be at the GFT, obsessing over the latest programme and making my picks, and I would be in Monorail trying to prioritise between new vinyls and getting my European cinema DVD collection together.

I think this is probably aspirational behaviour of the kind that would make no sense to our ruling class government but films and records make societies, and societies populated with interesting, educated people.

Chris O’Dowd (actor, The IT Crowd, Bridesmaids)

Like every fucking student in the world, we had Spinal Tap in the tape player and I feel we never took it out. It was in the background of our student days for a couple of years. There’s no doubt in my mind that film has influenced what I do, I could probably relay every line of dialogue.

I might have just finished college, but I remember Magnolia was also a big one for me around that time, and Boogie Nights. Those even more so. I remember watching John C Reilly in those films and realising that’s the actor I wanted to be. He can just do anything. If he’s in a dramatic film he’s the best thing in it and he’s the funniest person in comedies. How the fuck do you do that?

Gareth Edwards (director, Monsters)

When I went to uni I was such a Spielberg and Star Wars nerd (I still am, really), but in around my second or third year I saw a film called Baraka that blew my mind. It’s by a guy called Ron Fricke, who shot Koyaanisqatsi, and it’s probably the best film ever made compared to how little anyone has heard of it. To me, it was as if God had made a video diary of the world. It’s such an epic film. No one says a line of dialogue, nothing happens, there’s no story. It’s literally just shots around the world but it still makes sense; it says everything without saying anything. It hints at a direction that filmmaking can go but no one's really gone into full force. As someone brought up on blockbusters, it was a revelation.