Scottish Film Event Highlights – April 2016

Scotland’s most disreputable film festival, Dead By Dawn (21-24 Apr), returns to spill guts and gore across Filmhouse’s screens this month. Top of this year’s bloody pile is opening film Green Room (21 Apr), a fat-free punks v Nazis siege movie from Blue Ruin director Jeremy Saulnier. We also like the look of pregnancy horror Antibirth (23 Apr), mainly for its pairing of cult actors Natasha Lyonne and Chloë Sevigny. There are plenty of classics too (including a double bill tribute to Wes Craven, 22 Apr), plus a spattering of shocking shorts. Full programme at deadbydawn.co.uk

From the visceral to the radical – over the May Day holiday weekend Glasgow will host the second Radical Film Festival (29 Apr-2 May), following on from the inaugural event in Birmingham last year. It’ll be a space outside the mainstream for organisations to hold events, which will range from a radical cycling outing to feminist film screenings at Glasgow Women’s Library. The focus of the festival is its 1 May “unconference,” an egalitarian forum to debate the future of film in Scotland and further afield. “It’s totally open,” say the organisers. “You don’t even need to be that radical.” See radicalfilmnetwork.com for full details.

Similarly radical, in form at least, is the Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival (14-17 Apr). Over four days, Hawick, in the Borders, plays host to some of the best of what experimental film and artists’ moving image has to offer. Highlights look to be the world premiere of Silver (15 Apr), Allan Brown’s dream logic feature following a man from outer space who’s trying to emancipate his father, and Jennifer (16 Apr), by Nina Danino, which invites us into the closed-off life of a Carmelite nun for a day.

Radical seems to be the theme of this month’s column as the mighty Scottish Queer International Film Festival (SQIFF) brings filmmakers and audiences together on 29 Apr to ask the questions: what is queer cinema? What would we like it to be? And why does the mainstream film industry get it so wrong? The night takes the form of informal discussion in the Club Room at CCA, Glasgow, followed by a programme of short films and clips submitted by filmmakers.

Finally, the 400th anniversary of the Bard’s death is coming up, but his work remains as vital as ever. GFT marks the occasion with a Shakespeare on Film season, which includes Akira Kurosawa’s epic takes on King Lear (Ran, 1-7 Apr) and Macbeth (Throne of Blood, 17-18 Apr), and a rare screening of Richard Loncraine’s Richard III (28 Apr), which sets the play in a fascist state resembling Nazi Germany. The latter is followed by a live satellite discussion with star Ian McKellen.