Scottish Film Events: April 2024
Film clubs, short films and a retrospective on Glasgow's own Lynne Ramsay all feature in April's film events round-up
First up, let’s give a shout-out to several regular film clubs – old and new – on the Scottish film scene. The team behind the great Weird Weekend festival have begun a monthly film night at Offline (fka GAMIS), a newish venue in Glasgow’s Govanhill. Their second Weird Weekend night is a peach: Sogo Ishii’s wildly inventive 1984 black comedy The Crazy Family, which was part of the Weird Weekend festival in 2018 (26 Apr).
Cameo’s Film Club, where members get to see new and classic films for one whole pound, is always good value, particularly this month with films as fine as Spike Lee’s blistering Do the Right Thing (14 Apr) and the Coen Brothers’ knockout noir debut Blood Simple (21 Apr) on offer.
In April, Glasgow Film Theatre launch their new Queer Film Night, which will be on the last Sunday of the month. They couldn’t have picked a better film to start than Andrew Haigh’s modern classic Weekend (28 Apr). And we’d be remiss not to mention The Skinny’s own film night: The CineSkinny Film Club. This month we’re showing Yannick, the latest comedy from mad French genius Quentin Dupieux (2 Apr, Summerhall, Edinburgh; 3 Apr, CCA, Glasgow). Tickets at theskinny.co.uk/tickets
Short films are on the menu at GFT this month with In Short, Europe: Best of Best, a festival of award-winning shorts from 28 European countries, from Ukraine to here in Scotland. The festival consists of five programmes screening 20 to 21 April, and the spread of films is impressive, with some smaller nations not particularly known for their cinema output, like the Faroe Islands, Flanders and Cyprus, included in the eclectic programme. Full details on GFT’s website.
The great Lynne Ramsay gets much love this month. Not only is her dreamy debut Ratcatcher receiving a 4K release to mark its 25th anniversary, the GFT are also crowning Ramsay this month’s CineMaster. The Glasgow director's other three features – Morvern Callar (6 & 11 Apr), We Need to Talk About Kevin (20 & 24 Apr) and You Were Never Really Here (27 & 30 Apr) – all screen as part of the season.
We’ve a five-star review in the Film section this month, for Close Your Eyes, Victor Erice’s long-awaited return to fiction filmmaking. If you’re unfamiliar with this Spanish filmmaker's small but brilliant body of work, GFT have timely screenings of his beguiling debut, The Spirit of the Beehive, to get you introduced (14, 17 & 18 Apr).