Scotland Film Event Highlights – July 2015

The film world needs no excuse to celebrate the work of Orson Welles. But the filmmaker would have turned 100 this year, so there are more opportunities than usual to catch his films on the big screen, including Filmhouse’s A Touch of Orson season. The mini-retrospective includes the recently re-released classics The Lady from Shanghai (28-30 Jul) and Touch of Evil (10-16 Jul), as well as the underseen Chimes at Midnight (31 Jul-3 Aug) and new documentary Magician: The Life And Work of Orson Welles (4-5 Jul), which sees the likes of Peter Bogdanovich, Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese sing Welles’ praises.

Rockumentary Lambert & Stamp (DCA, 12-13 Jul) centres on the management team Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp, who helped mould The Who into the guitar-smashing rock phenomenon we know today. The doc shows how the chalk-and-cheese pair went from avant-garde filmmakers to fierce business men, and features contributions from Pete Townshend, Roger Daltrey and actor Terence Stamp (Chris's older brother). As well as James D. Coopers’ doc, DCA have also programmed Ken Russell’s rock opera Tommy (12 Jul) and Frank Roddam’s mod teenpic Quadrophenia (14 Jul), creating a fun Who weekender.

If you’re one of the many who had their face melted by action behemoth Mad Max: Fury Road a couple of months ago, you’re probably keen to revisit George Miller’s motorhead dystopian world. Luckly, Filmhouse have you sorted, with an opportunity to see the more scuzzy first in the series, Mad Max (30 Jun), and its action-packed follow-up, Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (2 Jul). There’s no love for Beyond Thunder Dome, the lame duck of the series, however.

Time to dry clean your Spider-Man outfit, 'cause Comic Con is back at Glasgow CCA this month. The cinematic highlights include screenings of Ghost World (30 Jun), The Incredibles (3 Jul) and American Splendour (1 Jul). The latter will be followed by Issue 1, a one-day comic creators mini conference. Open to all skills and abilities, it will include a lecture workshop, discussion groups about using comics as basis for criticism and informal drawing/collaboration.

As you’ll notice from the reviews in the July issue, this is a great month for music movies. GFT also throws a couple of classics into the mix with The Last Waltz (8 Jul), which captures The Band’s farewell concert and is jam-packed with electric guest performances (our pick is Van Morrison's high kicking version of Caravan), and Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous (29 Jul), which should be a nice palate cleanser for anyone who’s caught the director’s latest, Aloha. Talking of shit sandwiches, there’s also a chance to (re)see the rockumantary to end them all, This Is Spinal Tap (15 Jul).