Dunoon Film Festival and Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival

Fancy turning your film festival experience into a road-trip? Here are a couple of great festivals worth taking a few hours drive for

Preview by Jamie Dunn | 04 Sep 2014

There are two great film festivals with screenings shared across Glasgow and Edinburgh this month (Take One Action and Scotland Loves Anime). But if you fancy getting out of Scotland’s big cities there are two other film happenings worth taking a road trip for.

Dunnoon Film Festival’s sophomore year opens with the Glasgow-set musical God Help the Girl, the directing debut of Belle & Sebastian frontman Stuart Murdoch, who’ll be in town to introduce the screening. It centres on a young woman who’s recovering from a spell in a mental institution by forming a band with a dorky guitarist who takes her under his wing. When we spoke to Murdoch he revealed that their idyllic summer was based, perhaps subconsciously, on the early “romantic” days of his own band.

Most of the screenings at Dunoon have a Scottish bent. There’s Jimmy’s Hall, directed by Ken Loach and written by Scot Paul Laverty, who'll introduce the film and take part in an ‘In Conversation’ event where he’ll discuss his long collaboration with Loach; and a short film double-bill that pairs Black Angel, a 1980 fantasy film that was shown with The Empire Strikes Back on its UK release, and new film Broken, made by local production company UNSCENE. There are also screenings of two of Scotland’s great island-set films: Alexander Mackendrick’s booze-soaked caper Whisky Galore! and Powell and Pressburger’s swooningly romantic screwball I Know Where I’m Going!


Watch our interview with Black Angel director Roger Christian

Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival’s programme is more cutting edge. The theme of this tenth edition is ‘Border Crossing’ – something England’s most northern town knows a thing or two about. It opens with Serbian black comedy Mamarosh. Director Momcilo Mrdakovic’s film is sure to go down well with Berwick’s festival crowd, as it’s reported to be a paean to the glories of cinema and celluloid – think of it as a more droll, less sentimental Cinema Paradiso.

As well as cinema, Berwick serves up several artist instillations not to be missed. Chief among these is US artist Ben Russell’s 16mm work The Twilight State. Part documentary, ethnography and dream cinema, the programme describes Russell’s film as documenting ‘the dematerialisation of borders through the spiritual lives of the territory's inhabitants.’ There’s also a chance to see Rachel Maclean’s A Whole New World, in which the Glasgow-based artist creates a surreal universe that suggests a post-apocalyptic British colony during the Empire’s heyday. She underscores this grotesque green-screen world with Disney songs and right-wing politicians’ speeches to create an eye-popping satire on the notions of nationalism.

The festival closes in style with Pawel Pawlikowski’s Ida, a road movie of sorts in which a virginal teenage nun learns much about her family when she sets out on a journey with her chain-smoking, lascivious Jewish aunt. Read more about Ida by reading our interview with Pawlikowski from the September issue.


A short edit from Rachel Maclean's A Whole New World

Dunoon Film Festival, 12-14 Sep

Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival, 17–21 Sep

See the festivals' websites for full details

www.dunoonfilmfestival.org

berwickfilm-artsfest.com