Obscure Movie Group offers films for every taste

With movie nights that have themes like “un-simulated sex scenes” and “horror B-movies,” the members of the Obscure Movie Group share their passion for movies that fly under the radar.

The Obscure Movie Group, a student organization fondly referred to as OMG by its members, has been presenting movies ranging from old foreign films to cult classics to B-movies since 2005. The group’s weekly screenings, which take place every Friday in 1700 Posvar Hall at 8 p.m., are open to all Pitt students.

According to the officers, any movie that did not get enough recognition or a wide release in the U.S. is a contender for the weekly OMG movie nights.

“It’s not just finding weird movies that are weird on their own, but exposing people to weird things that are related to stuff that they already know,” OMG President Sam Schock said.

The group members have an established routine for the weekly movie nights. To choose each week’s movie, they form themed ballots that list three different movies. At each meeting, Schock will show previews for the three movies on that week’s ballot, and the audience votes for the following week’s movie selection.

In order to pick the movie options, the officers conduct research and take suggestions from different group members.

Group Vice President Chelsea Bodnar said a lot of the movie picks come from reading Wikipedia articles and the local newspapers to find current art films. According to Bodnar, researching movie options is never a nuisance.

“It’s what we like,” the senior said. “It’s what we do anyway.”

OMG Secretary Michael Sciubba noted that audience suggestions are important because while the officers’ knowledge of obscure movies is vast, there’s always a movie that they’ve never heard of.

“We live off of suggestions. Most people will know of some sort of weird movie,” Schock said. “We all had a pretty good knowledge of weird movies before we got into this.”

The club’s upcoming movie is a prime example of the kind of film the OMG likes to expose audiences to.

Tonight, OMG will screen the Japanese film, “Visitor Q.” Later, the club will hold a vote for the next week’s movie, which will be horror themed in the spirit of Halloween.

To maintain a level of organization, the officers choose a different theme each week. The themes can be specific, such as “obscure movies made by famous directors,” or fairly general, such as “celestial bodies.”

“Sometimes, if the movies we choose have little in common, we try to link them by title,” Schock said, explaining that for the theme “celestial bodies,” the movie options were “Sunshine,” “Moon” and “The Man Who Fell to Earth.”

To get the movies every week, Schock uses his Netflix account, visits Dreaming Ant — a movie rental store in Bloomfield — or takes advantage of Pittsburgh’s library systems. Although the University — Schock, or one of the officers will fill out a request for snacks at Panther Central — provides the OMG with food for their movie nights, the group does not receive funding to rent the movies.

“It’s unfortunate, but there’s no way to prove that we’re not using it for our own entertainment,” Schock said. “I can’t prove that I wasn’t using Netflix to watch ‘The Office’ on the University’s dime.”

While there is no specific number of group members, the officers said that there are about 500 people on the group’s mailing list. The number of people who show up to the weekly meetings depends on the film of choice and the time of the year.

“Early on in the semester we might get 50 to 70, and as the semester goes on, it dies down,” Bodnar said.

Schock, Bodnar and Sciubba started watching movies together before they came to Pitt.

“We actually all went to high school together, and we had movie parties where we watched bad movies — and good movies,” Schock said.

The officers went to Carlynton Junior-Senior High School in Carnegie, Pa. When Schock and Bodnar arrived at Pitt as freshmen, they were pleased to find the OMG.

“I came to pitt as a senior in high school to visit Sam and find out how it was, and we went to an OMG meeting then,” Sciubba said. “While I wouldn’t say that the OMG was the only reason I came here, it was a factor in me coming to Pitt.”