West side glory: How will Edinburgh respond to another impressive Glasgow Film Festival line-up?

By Tim Cornwell
Published on Thursday 19 January 2012 09:08

THE Glasgow Film Festival rolled out a cornucopia of film yesterday, in a programme that surely sounded a wake-up call for its older rival in the East.

The line-up for the February festival confirmed that Glasgow has landed at least two major Scottish films. They are Irvine Welsh’s Ecstasy, Canadian made but with leading Scottish names in a film full of echoes of Trainspotting – and Ecosse Films’ rom-com The Decoy Bride, starring David Tennant and Kelly MacDonald.

But for film-lovers there were delights at every turn among a record 239 films. Offerings ranged from early screenings of the new film of The Muppets, to the period drama Bel Ami, with heart throb Robert Pattinson as a dissolute seducer, or a nostalgic retrospective of Gene Kelly’s greatest musicals, topped by a ceilidh-style celebration of Brigadoon, Hollywood’s 1950s fantasy take on the Highlands.

The line-up boasts a new strand of films reaching out to Glasgow’s busy visual art scene, along with the best of modern German cinema, and unlikely venues including the Tall Ship at Riverside. From live music screenings to a new cut of Superman in the “Kapow!” section devoted to comics and superheroes. the line-up spelled confidence and Glasgow style.

One of Scotland’s most capable producers underlined the challenge yesterday for Chris Fujiwara, the artistic director of the Edinburgh International Film Festival, from what has traditionally been its West Coast upstart. Fujiwara has scheduled his first encounter with the Scottish Press a week before Glasgow opens its doors. He takes the helm of the June festival on a surge of goodwill and relief after a deeply troubled 2011, that appears to have included missing out on a premiere of We Need To Talk About Kevin, now carrying Scotland’s Oscar hopes.

Decoy Bride’s producer Douglas Rae, at the helm of Ecosse Films and one of the leading Scottish players in the British film world, described how the industry sees it from outside. “I haven’t been following it at all. I just know that Edinburgh’s in free-fall, and Glasgow’s doing quite well,” he said. “It’s a pity because Edinburgh is one of the oldest continuous film festivals in the world, and I remember growing up there, when it was seen as an incredibly important melting pot of great film-makers from all over the world. I think Edinburgh needs to be reinvented, which is no bad thing.”

Browsing Glasgow’s programme this year turns up one tasty morsel after another. The festival isn’t precious about premieres; it doesn’t think audiences notice, and it likes to please crowds. “I don’t mention them because most people don’t care, they just want a quality film,” says festival co-director Allison Gardner.

So there’s the screening of Big Banana Feet, the 1975 documentary that followed the young Billy Connolly on a tour of Ireland. In another nostalgia trip, there’s The Maggie, about an American airline executive trying to sail a shipload of furniture to a small Scottish island, by the classic Scottish director Alexander Mackendrick. It will screen on board The Tall Ship at the Riverside transport museum – in a fully heated cargo hold, organisers are quick to say.

GFF ambassador Mark Millar, the famous Scottish comic book writer, is back to curate the Kapow! section. Highlights include conversations with David Albard, illustrator of The Walking Dead, the graphic novel and now TV series of a world taken over by zombies, as well as the Superman cut with extra minutes.

More challenging fare includes the new Crossing the Line strand, with video art at the Gallery of Modern Art, or All Divided Selves, artist Luke Fowler’s film collage of the Glasgow counter-culture psychiatrist RD Laing. Weimarvellous looks at the cabaret of Weimar Germany, with the Marlene Dietrich classic Blue Angel followed by an hour of live cabaret. For simple quirky pleasure, there’s Lon Chaney’s classic The Phantom of the Opera, with live Wurlitzer accompaniment.

How to die in Oregon, is one of the meaty documentaries in the Stranger than Fiction strand, along with Autumn Gold, about people who are aged 80 to 100 preparing to compete in a world championships for track and field.

Decoy Bride went Glasgow’s way, said Rae, because it was set for a spring release. “We wanted the first opportunity to screen it publicly to be at a Scottish festival and Glasgow very kindly invited us to premiere there,” he said. The film is loosely inspired by Madonna’s big wedding in Scotland, he said, where decoys were employed to take the paparazzi down the wrong trail.

Ecstasy is also a romantic comedy, but laced with Irvine Welsh’s style; an unhappily married woman, played by Canadian Kristin Kreuk, falls for a hard-partying man in the clutches of both drugs, and drug gangsters, played by Adam Sinclair, originally from East Kilbride. It took ten years to get the film made in Canada, where it opened at the Toronto Film Festival, with Billy Boyd in a supporting role.

The festival’s opening gala, Your Sister’s Sister, will certainly be one of the highlights. In the festival’s low-fi, low-budget approach, a ticket to the film gets you to the opening party, and no celebrity guests are confirmed. “Witty dialogue, great performance, sex, lesbians, all the things audiences love,” jokes Gardner, of the American independent film.

Edinburgh, founded six decades ago, is, of course, the grande dame of Scottish film festivals, with different goals and aspirations – among them as an industry festival that pulls players as well as punters. Fujiwara could come under pressure to ditch those pretensions, or rethink the festival’s move from August to June – still regretted by many, who say it has left Edinburgh under the shadow of Cannes.

Glasgow’s organisers insist they complement Edinburgh rather than compete, but they’ve set a high bar this year. “I think we should be proud to have the No 2 and 3 festivals in the UK in Scotland,” said Gardner. “We should be embracing them, celebrating our inner Brigadoon.”

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