Things you’ll understand if you live with a Glasgow film Student

Ever been traumatised by a film student? Don’t worry, you’re not alone

3 years ago

Wandering around Glasgow Uni’s campus (well, back when that was allowed) it would be fair to say from the looks you might see that it’s quite difficult to distinguish art students from other students, but trust me, if you ever meet a film student, you’ll know. The following is a list of things you’ll understand if you live with a film student.

They have an absurd DVD collection

Even though it rare nowadays for people to have large DVD collections, film students are an exception. Does your flatmate buy obscure films that aren’t available on streaming sites? Do they have an aesthetically pleasing, colour-coded film shelf? If so, chances are they are a film student!

They always want to watch some obscure artsy film

Picture this: you wake up late one morning (or more likely, early one afternoon), with the worst hangover of your life, wanting nothing more than to curl up on the sofa with a takeaway and watch a cheesy film like Shrek 2. “Ah,” says your film student flatmate, “but what about a 4-hour long black and white foreign language film with no plot? It’s like, one of the greatest films ever made, an absolute must-see.” You agree, because your flatmate is the expert, right? Wrong.

The constant commentary

Film students are terrible at watching films, because they will constantly interrupt the film every two minutes to comment on the lighting. Even if the film you’re watching is one they’ve picked out, they’ll never be satisfied with just sitting and watching it in silence. Your film student flatmate is that one person at the cinema everyone hates who talks all the way through the film, except they live with you and so you can never escape them.

Filmsplaining

Most of us have heard of mansplaining – when a man condescendingly explains something because they just assume the person they’re talking to is completely clueless about whatever it is they’re talking about. Film students do something similar, when they assume you don’t know about a film or director because they’re “very underground” and “you probably haven’t heard of it”. This can be called filmsplaining, and if you know any film students, you’ve most likely experienced it.

Obsessive referencing

Not every occurrence in everyday life can be compared to something that happened in a film once. That is, unless you’re a film student, in which life is a film and film is life. If you live with a film student, you’re almost guaranteed to hear “this happened in…”, or “hey, this is just like that scene in…” more than once a day. Something as mundane and ordinary as a trip to the supermarket suddenly becomes comparable to a quest into outer space or something with a link equally as tenuous. Every conversation has a link to some piece of cinema your flatmate is obsessed with this week.