Scottish Film Events: March 2022

In Scotland, film festivals – like buses and COVID cases – come in waves. And as you can probably tell from this month’s magazine, March is the start of the spring film fest tsunami.

Joining a crowded calendar that includes Glasgow Film Festival, Glasgow Short Film Festival and HippFest is new event Sands. Set over three days (25-27 Mar) at the Byre Theatre in St Andrews, Sands will see filmmakers from around the world gather in the university town. Nine feature films (including a special mystery film) are included in the inaugural programme. Highlights are a pair of homegrown docs: Will Hewitt and Austen McCowan’s wonderful, deeply moving Long Live My Happy Head, which follows a Leith comic book artist navigating an extremely difficult lockdown, and the much-anticipated My Old School, which follows the jaw-dropping true story of how a 30-something Scot managed to enrol at Bearsden Academy, convincing the teachers and pupils that he was a boy genius from Canada.

If they weren’t already busy enough with the Glasgow Film Festival, the GFT are hosting a brace of films that are part of the Sonica programme. The innovative audio-visual arts festival will be screening two fabulous works from Peter Greenaway: A Zed and Two Noughts (16 Mar) and The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover (20 Mar). Both films are still wonderfully provocative three decades after their release and feature arresting scores by genius composer Michael Nyman.

The Mark Thomas Product was one of the most explosive comedy shows of the 1990s, taking on the corruption at the heart of UK society by blending outrageous comedy and standup with blistering political discourse. Not for nothing, it was dubbed "a brilliantly ludicrous alternative to Watchdog". Thomas will be visiting Filmhouse in Edinburgh on 10 March to show some of his favourite clips from the show and explain what went on behind the scenes, and you’ll get a chance to pick his brain in the post-screening Q&A.

We Are Parable, the film exhibitors focused on bringing Black Cinema to the big screen, are in Glasgow this month with two great-looking events. On 1 March they screen the documentary The Black Cop at Glasgow School of Art followed by a Q&A with director Cherish Oteka and some networking drinks. Then on 4 March at GFT, We Are Parable host Rebel Dread, which tells the story of film director, DJ and Big Audio Dynamite co-founder Don Letts, who’ll be in Glasgow for a Q&A after the film.

And finally, the mighty Summerhall Cinema have a spiffing season in celebration of International Women's Day planned. The lineup features some of the best women-helmed films from the last 12 months, like Janicza Bravo’s Zola, Lana Wachowski’s The Matrix Resurrections, Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog and Emma Seligman’s Shiva Baby. The season kicks off, however, with a 90s classic: witchy teen horror The Craft. Running 8 to 12 March, find full details at summerhall.co.uk