Movie buffs from the campus and community will have the opportunity to experience French and Hispanic films during the spring 2018 semester at Missouri University of Science and Technology.

Missouri S&T has received grant funding to bring two film festivals to campus in 2018. The long-running Free Film Festival, meanwhile, will be on hiatus during the spring semester due to budget issues. Like the Free Film Festival offerings, the French and Hispanic films will be open to the public and free of charge.

In March and April 2018, Missouri S&T will screen six French films through the French Film Series. The series is funded by the FACE Foundation as part of its Tournées Film Festival program, which brings French and Francophone films to U.S. university campuses. Movies presented through this program are expected to be screened at 7 p.m. on Tuesdays, the same time and day as the Free Film Festival offerings of past semesters.

In addition, the Missouri S&T Hispanic Film Series will return for its fourth year with screenings of five films from January through April. This series is funded through Pragda, a distributor of Latin American and Spanish films, and the U.S. Department of Education, and the Missouri S&T College of Arts, Sciences, and Business and department of arts, languages, and philosophy.

According to Dr. Audra Merfeld-Langston, chair of the department of arts, languages, and philosophy, which sponsors both film series, the offerings are designed to give Missouri S&T students, faculty, staff and members of the Rolla community an opportunity to watch films they might otherwise have no opportunity to view.

“Our Hispanic Film Series has grown in popularity during its first three years as we see a greater interest among our students and community in learning about other cultures,” says Merfeld-Langston, who also is an associate professor of French. “Adding a second festival of French-language films will allow us to broaden our international perspective even further.”

Missouri S&T plans to resume its Free Film Series in the future, says Dr. Stephen Roberts, vice provost and dean of the College of Arts, Sciences, and Business. “We plan to integrate aspects of the Free Film Series with these newer offerings to provide the campus and community with a larger and more diverse rotation of film festivals,” Roberts says.

Listings of the movies to be shown through these two series will be publicized near the beginning of the spring 2018 semester, which begins on Tuesday, Jan. 16.