DOWAGIAC — As students, faculty and staff gathered in the Southwestern Michigan College Art Gallery, the THX sound effect echoed in the background of whispers.

In the next room, over on a projector screen, “Run Lola Run,” a German film released in 1998, played continuously.

Portrayals from students in ART 210 Drawing II course of movie posters stood on one wall with illustrated storyboard images placed on the opposite wall. The students drew the storyboard images before they saw the actual films.

The exhibit, “Film, to be determined,” is curated from films available at Fred L. Mathews Library. The series will feature two film screenings a day Monday through Thursday. Gallery staff, which includes students, will select the timeline of films.  Depending on film lengths, start times will be around 10 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. each day.

“For this one, we decided to pull a collection of films from the library DVD collection, many of which I recommend you go and see,” said SMC’s Visual and Performing Arts Department chairman Marc Dombrosky. “Some of these maybe don’t get checked out as often as they should.”

Dombrosky called the exhibit an introduction to the library’s DVD archive. The films will be selected on a day to day basis.

“The beauty of that occurred to me yesterday while we were figuring out how the popcorn machine works,” Dombrosky said. “[Some students] and I were all sitting here talking as the ‘Shape of Water’ was playing the last 15 minutes of it.”

Dombrosky realized out of the group that he was the only person who had seen it.

“As we were talking, we kind of kept looking at it, and then all of a sudden, we were all just watching it,” he said.

Colleen Welsch, who works in the college’s library, explained the library’s growing collection of DVDs despite an increase in streaming platforms.

“We are still circulating just as many DVDs now. I don’t know why?” Welsch said. “When I first started 11 years ago, our DVD collection was like 100 DVDs. Now we are about 1,200 DVDs. We can’t get rid of them because they are still being used.”

Criteria for ordering a DVD is if it is on the Amazon best-selling list of the top 15 and has over 100 reviews, the library is getting it, Welsch said.

Dr. Maria Derose, who teaches an introduction to film class at SMC, shared with the audience how strong a selection of art and independent movies the library has.

Derose used “Run Lola Run” as an introduction to how women’s roles in film have evolved.

Going back, Derose said women in film have traditionally been secondary characters.

“They were there just to be looked at, just to be pretty,” she said. “They were there to inspire the lead actor to swoop into action, but they kind of fit a lot of those stereotypes you can probably guess; they were supposed to be passive, very fragile, submissive.”

Derose said, starting in the 70s, science fiction and horror movies started implementing more influential feminine characters.

“Nineteen ninety-one was a really important year,” Derose said. “We call it the watershed year for women in film.”

In that year, Derose said “Terminator II,” “Thelma and Louise,” “Silence of the Lambs,” and other films threw passive stereotypes out the window.

“[‘Run Lola Run’] is coming from that tradition,” Derose said. “Think of how active it is. All we see is her running. She is coming out of that tradition.”

Around this time, Derose said issues arose with women’s bodily autonomy and harassment, and women became more active participants in creating their destinies.

Lola, the main character in “Run Lola Run,” is the character doing the problem solving and saving the day, Derose said.

Derose said the movie’s set up is video game-esque.

“Go down a path. Somethings work. Somethings don’t,” she said. “Think ‘Groundhog Day.’ Think time loop. Think video game restart. Answer those questions of, ‘do we always get a second chance how much is it our choice? How much is it fate or destiny, and can we learn from these previous journeys?’”