Close-Up: The Magic Lantern

While short films are often treated in the industry as a stepping-stone to feature-length work, The Magic Lantern aims to promote shorts as a valid art form in their own right. Set up by Penny Bartlett and Rosie Crerar in 2006, The Magic Lantern showcases exciting and innovative short films across Scotland and has most recently programmed The Shorts Film Festival (13-15 Feb) at Glasgow Film Festival. We sat down with them both to find out more.

How did you come to set up The Magic Lantern?

Rosie: We wanted to create a platform where people could see top international short films alongside a range of narrative, archive, experimental and local work, as we seek to present short film as an art form in their own right. Considering how significant shorts are in the industry there often aren’t a great deal of opportunities in which to view them.

Penny: We want to encourage debate around the films, by juxtaposing interesting combinations and encouraging people to stay around after the programme or take part in a Q&A to encourage discussion. We’ve also started to notice regulars who come to each event which is great.

How do you go about planning each programme?

Rosie: We start with a theme or a filmmaker that we want to explore in more depth and then go from there. We source films from archives such a BFI and LUX, but we also approach a lot of filmmakers directly.

Penny: We keep it as diverse as possible within these themes with contemporary films as well as films from twenty, thirty, forty years ago, and a real blend of narrative based and more experimental work.

What do you have lined up for this year’s Glasgow Film Festival?

Penny: We’re showing a retrospective of Miranda July’s (‘Me, You, Everyone We Know’) short films as well as a showcase of films produced last year through the Scottish Short film initiative GMAC Shortcuts, alongside a strong line-up of the best new international shorts which includes some exciting new local work, and some great artist film and video programmes.

Rosie: And we’ll have a late night programme at Glasgow’s legendary Subclub, including a closing party at Optimo with a programme of classic avant-garde films along with an eerie David Lynch style red room where Lynch’s early shorts will be screening! We’ll also be reclaiming Glasgow as ‘Cinema City’ with some short programmes back projected onto the windows of former cinemas across the city centre!