Five to see at GFF, 20 Feb: Miles Davis and David Bowie

Two great music films screening today at Glasgow Film Festival: an oldie (DA Pennebaker's Ziggy Stardust concert film) and a mint fresh one (Don Cheadle's take on Miles Davis in Miles Ahead)

Today's Highlights

James White

CCA, 1.15pm

Our reviewer said that James White is "hinged on blazing, brutal performances from Christopher Abbott (best known to UK viewers as Charlie in Lena Dunham's Girls) as the eponymous lead and Cynthia Nixon as his cancer-ridden mother" and that this "low-key but devastating drama has more raw authenticity than a hundred examples of Sundance landfill." If you need more reason to see James White, we can tell you that it's from Borderline Films, the filmmaking collective behind such movies as Martha Marcy May Marlene, Simon Killer and Afterschool. Everything they produce is unmissable.

Read our full James White review

Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation

CCA, 3.30pm

Remember when JJ Abrams remade A New Hope last year? Well, 11-year-olds Eric Zala, Chris Strompolos and Jayson Lamb pulled off the same trick 35 years earlier with their shot-for-shot remake of Raiders of the Lost Ark, and they did so armed only with a Betamax camera and their weekly pocket money. There may be better films screening at GFF (including Steven Spielberg’s original), but you’ll find few made with such heart and passion. Catch the documentary about the film beforehand at 1pm, CCA. Both screenings are £5 each.

Évolution

GFT, 8.15pm

This strange and mysterious film from Lucile Hadžihalilović recalls early David Cronenberg in the way it blends sci-fi and body horror to hair-raising effect. Not to be missed, especially as Hadžihalilović will be around for a Q&A after the screening.

Read our five star review of Évolution

Miles Ahead

GFT, 9pm

Don Cheadle certainly looks the part as Miles Davis in this freeform riff on the jazz genius’s life. Cheadle also directs, and we hear his visuals match Davis’s music’s cool.

Read our feature on five underrated directorial debuts by actors

Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars

GFT, 11.15pm

Say goodbye to David Bowie with the farewell concert in which Bowie said goodbye to his alien rocker alter ego, Ziggy Stardust. "I love the film because it's so off-the-cuff," said director DA Pennebaker about his 1973 concert movie featuring Bowie and his band, the Spiders from Mars – not that you see them much. "We didn't have a lot of cameras. We hardly showed the band. It's a very sexy film, and nobody knows why; he's just standing there singing. But I liked that idea: one man, one concert." 

Notes from the Twitterati

High-Rise seems to have been a big favourite with the Glasgow Film Festival audience, and nice to see the soundtrack being bigged up on Twitter by Stuart Braithwaite, a man who knows a thing or two about scoring a film.

Thanks for #highrise screening #gff16 lovely crowd and fun q and a :) ace. pic.twitter.com/6JMHueUqFh

— mr_wheatley (@mr_wheatley) February 18, 2016

@HighRise_movie Ben Wheatley's High Rise at GFF ticking all my boxes. Wonderfully dark, superb photography & soundtrack. Go see it!

— Laura Aitchison (@lorta99) February 19, 2016

Saw High Rise at GFF. Amazing work by @mr_wheatley Incredible score by @iamclintmansell and the best Abba cover ever by @jetfury & co

— stuart braithwaite (@plasmatron) February 19, 2016

Ben Wheatley giving a very entertaining Q&A at the @glasgowfilmfest screening of High-Rise. #GFF16 pic.twitter.com/4zl6GmUnYx

— Matthew Turner (@FilmFan1971) February 18, 2016

Ben Wheatley Q&A

They seemed to have fun. Check out the Q&A below: