Glasgow Film Festival 2014 Programme Revealed
The new comedy from Wes Anderson and Scarlett Johansson in Under the Skin among the films revealed in the tenth edition of the Glasgow Film Festival
Glasgow Film Festival launched its tenth edition on Tuesday at the city’s citizenM hotel on Renfrew Street. The festival opens on 20 February with the UK premiere of Wes Anderson’s Grand Budapest Hotel and closes 11 days later with Under the Skin, the long anticipated return to cinema of Jonathan Glazer (Sexy Beast, Birth), which sees Scarlett Johansson playing an alien stalking and murdering men on the streets of Glasgow. Sandwiched in between these two gala events the festival screens 60 UK premieres, a record for the festival, which include the new Michel Gondry film (Mood Indigo), Go For Sisters from legendary cult filmmaker John Sayles and Mati Diop’s A Thousand Suns, a tribute to her late uncle Djibril Diop Mambéty and his masterpiece Touki Bouki.
The Skinny are particularly excited to see the world premiere of the new work from Rachel Maclean, who presents her Margaret Tait Award commission A Whole New World, which the programme informs us is set in the fantastical ruins of a fallen empire and combines a grand narrative with cheap product placement. Other festival exclusives include Documenting John Grierson, which profiles the pioneering Scottish filmmaker, and David Graham Scott’s Iboga Nights, a documentary exploring the controversial drug withdrawal treatment ibogaine.
Other hot tickets include Starred Up from David Mackenzie, which centres on an electric performance from Jack O’Connell as a volatile young offender ‘starred up’ to adult prison, Locke, a much praised single-actor movie in which Tom Hardy plays a stressed Welsh engineer driving from Birmingham to London in almost real time, Xavier Dolan’s Polanski-style twisted thriller Tom at the Farm, Joanna Hogg’s latest Exhibition and The Past, Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi's follow-up to his Oscar-winner A Separation.
This year’s programme also cements Glasgow’s reputation as the UK’s most geek-friendly film festival, with comic-book strand Kapow! returning and another run of video game-inspired film strand Game Cats Go Miaow! The zenith of this geek-fest comes in the form of a Geek vs Gamer Super Quiz, where Kapow! programmer and legendary comics writer Mark Millar takes on the mind behind Game Cats..., the ‘god of games’ Robert Florence, who also brings his debut feature film The House of Him to the festival.
Several guests have already been announced. After his charming appearance at the festival two years ago promoting coming-of-ager Submarine, Richard Ayoade returns to Glasgow with his second feature The Double, an adaptation of the Fyodor Dostoyevsky novella, which stars Jesse Eisenberg in dual roles. Lauren Mayberry of Chvrches-fame introduces The Punk Singer, a doc about Bikini Kill frontwoman Kathleen Hanna. And Dutch filmmaker George Sluizer will be in town to unveil the UK premiere of Dark Blood, a film he began making more than 20 years ago. The reason for the delay? The untimely death of its young star River Phoenix, who died of an overdose 11 days before the shooting wrapped. This pieced-together final edit will surely be one of the must-attend screenings of the festival.
What gives Glasgow its unique flavor is its flair for one-off cinema happenings, and this year’s programme is peppered with pop-up and special screenings in unusual venues. Motor City is celebrated with a brace of events: hip-hop star Danny Brown is teaming up with music video director Rollo Jackson for a live audiovisual set, and 6 Music DJ Craig Charles will be providing the tunes for a party following a screening of Julien Temple’s celebrated documentary Requiem For Detroit? The Tall Ship is again one of the festival’s venues and will make the perfect setting for screenings of The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and The Fog. Indie-folk outfit Admiral Fallow provide a live score to footage from landmark 1951 documentary Glasgow, No Mean City. An industrial warehouse in North Glasgow becomes a retro-futuristic arcade for a ‘total-cinema’ screening of 1980s cult favourite Tron. And a Monster Mash ball will take place at Kelvingrove Art Gallery following a screening of Mel Brooks’ classic horror spoof Young Frankenstein.
Festival co-director Allan Hunter had this to say at the launch: “In the decade since the Festival began, it’s grown almost beyond recognition. One thing remains essential, though – GFF is and will always be an access-all-areas event, where you can meet the filmmakers, ask awkward questions, and make friends with the person sitting next to you. Everyone is a VIP here, and in our tenth year we’re pulling out all the stops, trying to create the best possible experiences for our audiences, and involving as much of the city as we can. 2014 is set to be a thrilling year for Scotland with the Commonwealth Games, Ryder Cup and Homecoming attracting visitors from all over the world. Glasgow is at the heart of these celebrations and we are proud to offer our special anniversary programme as part of what promises to be an amazing period in the life of the city.”
The full 2014 programme is available at GFF’s website; tickets go on sale 24 Jan. Look out for our preview of the festival in the February edition of The Skinny and be sure to pick up the CineSkinny, our guide to GFF, which is published daily throughout the festival.
FROM THE ARCHIVE
Watch: An interview with Rachel Maclean
Mark Millar interviewed at GFF 2012