Scottish Film Events: January 2023

What better way to spend the new year than by slipping down a rabbit hole of cinema with We're Not in Kansas Anymore, Glasgow Film Theatre’s retrospective exploring the intersection between the nightmarish cinema of David Lynch and Victor Fleming's The Wizard of Oz. The occasion for this wonderful film season (which runs until 10 Jan) is the release of Alexandre O. Philippe’s documentary Lynch/Oz, which examines the connective tissue between Lynch’s work and that 1939 Technicolor fantasy classic. 

Or how about a couple of grimy 80s flicks screening on 35mm? Celluloid-nut Matt Palmer (he of All Night Horror Madness) has programmed the tech-noir masterpiece The Terminator in a curious double-bill with Road House, that really good bad movie from 1989 in which Patrick Swayze plays Dalton, a zen bouncer with a masters in philosophy and a penchant for throat-ripping. Both are screening in 35mm and it’s fair to say you won’t see these two films paired together anywhere else any time soon (Cameo, Edinburgh, 13 Jan). 

We get the feeling Dalton would be a fan of Koyaanisqatsi, Godfrey Reggio’s trippy, sorrowful vision of our hyper-connected consumeristic world from 1982 that looks simultaneously prescient (from a 2023 lens) and dated (given how often Reggio’s time-lapse images have been ripped off over the years). It’s screening at DCA on 18 January as part of exhibition Plastic: Remaking Our World.

Also at DCA, there’s a screening of the underseen Studio Ghibli film Only Yesterday (23 Jan). Chosen by artist Matthew Arthur Williams ahead of his DCA exhibition Soon Come, this is a rare chance to see a hidden gem of Ghibli’s colossal back catalogue. It’s one of their more low-key works, concerned with everyday observations of Japanese life rather than the fantasy and magic of other Ghibli films, but it’s no less great for that.

And finally, be sure to make it along to Cameo’s screening of Enys Men (11 Jan), Mark Jenkin’s followup to the brilliant Bait from 2019. Jenkin will be in Edinburgh for a Q&A following the film, and you’ll be hard-pressed to find a more passionate filmmaker. He's sure to have tonnes to say about the film’s tactile 16mm cinematography and its place in Cornish folk horror tradition.