Glasgow Short Film Festival: First events for 2023
Glasgow Short Film Festival opens with Rhys Hollis’ OMOS, and Aussie mashup geniuses Soda_Jerk are back with their latest film, Hello Dankness
We love short films at The Skinny, so we’re super excited to see Glasgow Short Film Festival back next month, running 22 to 26 March. We still have to wait a couple of weeks to hear about the full lineup of shorts from all around the world planned for this edition, but today, GSFF have shared a couple of highlights from the programme, including their always-unmissable opening gala.
OMOS
The festival's curtain will come up on 22 March with OMOS, Rhys Hollis’s new moving image work that pays homage to Scotland’s untold Black history. Hollis’s film centres on four award-winning performers: Hollis themself (aka Rhys’s Pieces), a cabaret performer; opera singer Andrea Baker; dancer Divine Tasinda; and pole artist Kheanna Walke. Hollis describes the film as a “celebratory visual journey of breathtaking performances from Black artists.”
The piece was filmed at Puck’s Glen near Dunoon and Stirling Castle, and plays with the area’s visual connection to Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night's Dream. The film is inspired by a little-known and shameful incident in Scottish history from 1594 during a theatrical show put on for King James VI, during which a lion was replaced by an unnamed Black man, who pulled a chariot through Stirling Castle’s Great Hall. This show was just one of many put on for Scottish royals to feature Black performers.
“Not only is OMOS a homage to Scottish Black history and a celebration of Black performance,” says Hollis, “but GSFF's launch is a moment to share and discuss. We look forward to the conversations at Glasgow Film Theatre, and of course a good dose of one-off live performance.” Read our interview with Hollis about OMOS from our September issue.
Soda_Jerk at GSFF
Also revealed this morning is the bonza news that Australian arts collective Soda_Jerk (aka Sydney-born siblings Dan and Dominique Angeloro) are making a return to GSFF. Their brilliant film TERROR NULLIUS, which mashed up the history of Australian cinema – everything from Skippy the Bush Kangaroo to Mad Max to Muriel’s Wedding – to create a political revenge fable, opened GSFF in wild style back in 2019 and they’re back this year with new feature Hello Dankness.
This one casts an askance eye over the dark (and dank) underbelly of American culture and its recent descent into political insanity. Once again they’re playing in the sandbox of cinema history, and remixing clips from American movies to reimagine the hellscape of the last few years, with films like The 'Burbs, Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, Bad Neighbours and American Beauty among the films they've reappropriated for their moving-image collage.
The Skinny are super fans of this Aussie duo, as is GSFF director Matt Lloyd: “Soda_Jerk are among our favourite filmmakers working today,” says Lloyd, “and their practice embodies the values that are reflected across the GSFF programme – it is critical and curious, transgressive and experimental, and yet extremely accessible and very very funny.”
We can’t wait to see what else GSFF cooked up. Check back here on 22 February to see the full programme.
Tickets for OMOS and Hello Dankness will be on sale from 9 Feb at gsff.filmchief.com/shop/tickets
GSFF, 22-26 Mar, various venues
https://glasgowshort.org