Scottish Film Events: July 2024
Laugh your way through election night with In the Loop, get loved up at Glasgow Film Theatre and head back to the 80s with Cameo
On 4 July, after 14 years and five prime ministers, each more hopeless than the last, we will hopefully be saying goodbye to our cruel, corrupt and inept Tory overlords. There’s been little to laugh about during their reign, but after casting your vote, you should treat yourself to a celebratory chuckle thanks to a sparkling bit of programming at Glasgow Film Theatre. On election night, they’re screening Armando Iannucci’s blistering political satire In the Loop.
Elsewhere, July is a quiet month for cinema. Scottish film fans can look forward to August, though, with the return of the Edinburgh International Film Festival, which launches its programme on 10 July, with tickets on sale the following day. To mark the occasion, EIFF presents a preview of the inventive new slasher film In A Violent Nature (11 Jul, Cameo, Edinburgh). With its blend of poetic aesthetics, its subversive use of film grammar and its bloody carnage, In A Violent Nature should be an excellent taster for EIFF’s new Midnight Madness strand celebrating daring genre work.
With fewer exciting titles due out over the summer period, cinemas are getting creative in July with tonnes of classics back on the big screen. Dundee Contemporary Arts, for example, have a screening of Stanley Tucci’s foodie favourite Big Night (6 Jul) and Francis Ford Coppola's paranoid 70s classic The Conversation (7&10 Jul).
Before Midnight.
GFT are going down the love route, with a season of romances of all stripes. There’s Michael Gondry's sci-fi romance Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (17 Jul), the screwball romp Bringing Up Baby (13-16 Jul), the rapturous queer coming-of-age romance Call Me By Your Name (22 Jul), Paul Thomas Anderson’s underrated and deeply fucked-up romance Punch-Drunk Love (8 Jul, 35mm), plus Richard Linklater’s Before Trilogy is screening across three nights, from 26 to 28 July. The cinema’s Pride season also continues with Hedwig and the Angry Inch on 13 July, with a performance by Pink Pound, and The Watermelon Woman on 31 July, with an intro from our very own Eilidh Akilade.
At Cameo, there’s a rare chance to see Don Hertzfeldt's animation masterpiece It’s Such a Beautiful Day on the big screen — and even better, it’s screening with Hertzfeldt's newest short ME (21 Jul). Cameo are also going back to the 80s this summer, with a season that kicks off at the end of July with Paul Verhoeven’s director’s cut of Robocop (27 Jul), followed by Paul Shrader’s American Gigalo (28 Jul) and Rob Reiner's The Princess Bride (31 Jul), with the season continuing into August.
And in Glasgow, film fans are being treated to a month of outdoor screenings at Queen's Park Arena in the Southside (1-19 Jul). The lineup is an eclectic blend of family favourites (e.g The Aristocats, 6 Jul; The Jungle Book, 17 Jul), which screen in early afternoon, while in the evening it's time for cult movies (eg The Rocky Horror Picture Show, 17 Jul; Labyrinth, 15 Jul), scary movies (eg Scream, 3 Jul; Candyman, 10 Jul) and the odd masterpiece (eg Raging Bull, 9 Jul; Fight Club, 16 Jul). Tickets booked in advance are free, and then sold at a sliding pay-what-you-can rate.