The University of North Florida’s Movies on the House program showed its first film of the semester last week. 

MOTH began in 1998 and provides students, faculty, staff and guests with free movies and refreshments. 

Nicholas de Villiers, a UNF Professor of English and film, is MOTH’s programming director. He said MOTH shows films that the average person overlooks.  

“The idea is… to show films that aren’t like mainstream cinema or are not at AMC and the other big movie-plexes,” de Villiers said. 

This semester, movie showings will be at multiple locations: the Andrew A. Robinson Jr. Theater and the UNF Gallery of Art on campus and downtown at MOCA Jacksonville. A schedule of all upcoming MOTH showings can be found here.

De Villiers said his colleague, Jason Mauro, created MOTH and worked with the UNF president to conduct on-campus screenings. Mauro chose lesser-known films, which ranged from horror to animation. 

“[When deciding what films to show] I was going on the model of what Jason [Mauro] showed, which tended to be arthouse foreign films and a wide range of genres,” de Villiers said.

De Villiers said he is trying to reach more students with MOTH. One of the showings this semester is a film called “Gaslight.”

“In 2022, [‘gaslight’] was the word of the year from Merriam-Webster; there were thousands more searches, and an exponential number of people were searching for the phrase gaslight,” de Villiers said. “I thought it would be fun to go back and watch the original melodrama noir film with Ingrid Bergman.” 

MOTH will show “Gaslight” on Sept. 25, 2024, at 7:30 p.m. in the Robinson Theater in Bldg.14A, Room 1314. 

Gallery • 2 Photos

In room 1314, attendees filled multiple seats to watch the first film of the semester, "Problemista". (Courtesy of Nicholas de Villiers)

However, MOTH wasn’t always on campus; it all started at a local theater with just two showings per semester. 

“In the past, it was actually like film screenings,” de Villiers said. “[Now] we’ve upgraded to the theater in Robinson.”

According to MOTH’s website, the Regal Cinema on Jacksonville’s Beach Boulevard originally hosted the showings. After Regal Inc. donated film equipment to the program, MOTH began screening films on the UNF campus. 

Now, MOTH screens up to seven times a semester— every other Wednesday. The next feature will be “Jeanne du Barry,” starring Johnny Depp, at the Robinson Theater on Sept. 11 at 7:30 p.m.