Glasgow Youth Film Festival needs your help

Glasgow Youth Film Festival (GYFF) needs your help. The GYFF is unique among festivals aimed at younger audiences in that at every stage, from curating the programme to making the festival trailer, the young organisers are involved.

With no adults looking over their shoulder the programme they came up with last year was fun and eclectic. Jared Hess’s Gentlemen Broncos, a gloriously juvenile paean to the transformative powers of the imagination, stood shoulder-to-shoulder with more edifying cinematic fare, such as 70s set coming-of-age tale Stella, a kind of female 400 Blows.

Anime, a genre ignored by most major festivals, meanwhile, had pride of place within GYFF 2010, with Hayao Miyazaki’s Ponyo opening the festival and screenings of Evangelion 1.0 and 2.0 bringing in huge, enthusiastic audiences. As well as programming the films, the young organisers oversee all the festival events and conduct their own post-film Q&As, such as last year's hilarious chat with the director and star of The Scouting Book for Boys, Tom Harper and Thomas Turgoose.

For this unique and innovative festival to thrive it needs support. This week from 6-10 December, The Big Arts Give Christmas Challenge is taking place and any money donated to the GYFF during this time will be matched by Arts & Business.

All donations for the Christmas Challenge have to be made during 6–10 December online at www.thebiggive.org.uk/donate/glasgowfilm. Please support this wonderful festival by giving what you can.