Scottish Film Events: August 2021

This month, a low-key Edinburgh International Film Festival is on the horizon while the tactile cinema of Wong Kar Wai continues to dazzle Glasgow cineasts

Article by Jamie Dunn | 03 Aug 2021
  • Everybody's Talking About Jamie

Cinema is back, baby! Just don’t stand so close and please wear a mask!

As Edinburgh International Film Festival (18-25 Aug) becomes the first large in-person film festival gathering on the UK calendar since... checks notes... March 2020, it’s time to get really excited about watching films in physical spaces again. Among the most eye-catching titles of the 32 new features in the line-up are Leos Carax’s Sparks-scripted musical Annette (21 Aug, Filmhouse – read our interview with Sparks in this month's mag), the meditative Nicolas Cage revenge drama Pig (18 Aug, Filmhouse) and the feature film version of much-loved musical Everybody’s Talking About Jamie (20 Aug, Festival Theatre). We’re also looking forward to the world premiere of Prince of Muck, an intimate portrait of life on the tiny Inner Hebridean island of the title (19 August, Filmhouse).

If you’re in Dundee and looking on enviously at the EIFF lineup, fear not. Both Pig and Prince of Muck will be screening simultaneously at the DCA. Another DCA film to make time for is American indie CODA, which centres on the life of a high-school girl from a small town in Massachusetts who’s the only hearing person in her family. The title stands for Children of Deaf Adults, and reports from its festival run suggest there won’t be a dry eye in the house by CODA's coda.

The film scene is beginning to hot up in Glasgow too. Glasgow Film Theatre's unmissable season The World of Wong Kar Wai continues into August with some of the finest features by this great Hong Kong director. Sensual masterpieces Chungking Express (3 Aug) and In the Mood for Love (22 & 24 Aug) are always worth rewatching, of course, but snap up the opportunity to see deeper cuts Fallen Angels (9 & 10 Aug), Happy Together (15 & 17 Aug) and 2046 (29 Aug) on the big screen too.

One of the buzziest British films of the year is Censor, an ingenious horror set during the moral panic of the video nasty era. Censor's director, Prano Bailey-Bond, comes to GFT to present the film on 16 August and to take part in a Q&A. Bailey-Bond will be through in Edinburgh at the Cameo the following night, and the Tollcross cinema also has a preview of Censor on 13 August

Also look out for a couple of Bette Davis classics gracing GFT’s screens: Now, Voyager, which is newly rereleased, and The Letter. GFF co-director Allan Hunter will be doing one of his famous in-person intros, discussing Davis's life and career, ahead of Now, Voyager on 8 August.