Scottish Film Events: June 2024

June is Pride Month, so your local cinema screens will be populated by more LGBTQ+ folks than usual. Whether you’re looking for stories about a surly gay farmer who gets mucky with the handsome new farm hand (God’s Own Country, 5 Jun), a group of adorable gay socialists standing up to Margaret Thatcher (Pride, 12 Jun), three Aussie drag queens hitting the road in a bus across the Outback (The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, 19 Jun) or an avant-garde riff on Oedipus Rex set in and around a transgender Tokyo club (Funeral Parade of Roses, 26 Jun), Cameo’s ace Out season has you covered. 

The GFT’s Pride season is pretty nifty too, with Bound (18&20 Jun), Portrait of a Lady on Fire (15-19 Jun) and Cabaret (14-20 Jun) all screening, plus chances to see Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (14-20 Jun) on the west coast. On top of that, GFT’s Queer Cinema Sundays continue with Donna Deitch’s luscious romantic drama Desert Hearts (30 Jun). A massive influence of Rose Glass’s Love Lies Bleeding, don’t miss this rare screening on the big screen. 

The CineSkinny Film Club will also be celebrating Pride with a screening of Monica. We’ve teamed up with streaming service MUBI to present this beautifully acted, emotionally resonant drama in which a trans woman reluctantly returns to the mother who threw her out the house decades ago, only to find a different dynamic with her mother’s memory impaired (18 Jan, CCA, Glasgow; 19 Jan; Summerhall, Edinburgh). Get your free tickets at theskinny.co.uk/tickets

The term ‘visionary director’ gets bandied about quite a bit but it can be legitimately applied to Canadian filmmaker Denis Villeneuve. GFT clearly agree. They are crowning Villeneuve this month’s CineMaster, and screening six of his movies, from breakthrough film Incendies (1 & 3 Jun) to his sci-fi masterpiece Arrival (12 & 16 Jun) to box-office smashes Dune Part One and Part Two (30 Jun). Both chapters of Dune are screening in a double bill, with Part Two from a 70mm print.

Film fans in Glasgow have the opportunity to immerse themselves in a cinema marathon with Legacy of an Invisible Bullet, a ten-and-a-half-hour cinematic experience from BAFTA-nominated Glasgow filmmaker Doug Aubrey. Taking place over five days and featuring 170 films and videos, the series is essentially a retrospective of Aubrey’s life spent with a camera in his hand. That film cycle screens 8 to 12 June at GFT, but you can get a more condensed experience with the feature-length cut of Legacy of an Invisible Bullet (GFT, 13 Jun).

Now for a cinema sprint. During the late May bank holiday, dozens of filmmakers in Edinburgh took on the 48 Hour Film Project, where teams have only two days to write, shoot and edit a short film. It’s a crazy way to make a film but every year there are a few gems created. You can see the results of this filmmaking mad dash at Cameo on 3 and 4 June.

All this, plus a trio of righteous film festivals. There’s Refugee Festival Scotland (Various locations, 14 to 23 Jun); the UK-wide SAFAR Arabic Film Festival, which has four screenings in Glasgow (GFT, 22-29); and the UK Green Film Festival, which has events in Dundee, Glasgow and Inverness (DCA, 22-29 Jun; GFT, 23 & 25 Jun; Eden Court, 23 & 24 Jun). There’s also the delightful-looking Take One Action: Summer Gathering at Edinburgh's Biscuit Factory on 30 June. We're getting summer fair vibes, with a vegan group lunch, a jumble sale, screen printing to upcycle your old T-shirts, games for social change and a Take One Action quiz all planned. There’s also the opportunity to help the TOA team decide the theme for their next festival. Sounds like oodles of fun.