Scottish Film Events: October 2024
In Scotland's cinemas this October, high-octane action films, cinema of the surreal, a load of scary movies and, perhaps, too many film festivals
Might there be too many film festivals in October? Perhaps. In our October issue you’ll find previews of SQIFF, Samizdat, Weird Weekend, Edinburgh Spanish Film Festival, Queer East and the film element of the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival. But there's more besides, like the Edinburgh Short Film Festival (25 Oct-10 Nov, Summerhall); touring music documentary festival Doc'n Roll (from 29 Oct, GFT and Cameo); and a dozen titles from the London Film Festival hosted at GFT (9-21 Oct). Film fans, get set to part with a large chunk of October’s payslip!
Adrenalin junkies should get set for The Art of Action, a high-octane movie season at GFT. From silent masterpiece Safety Last! (11-12 Oct) to brutal western The Wild Bunch (15 Oct) via Jackie Chan’s Police Story trilogy (27-28 Oct), there's an action flick for every taste. We’re particularly keen to check out two Mexican curios by B-movie director René Cardona – The Panther Women (5 Oct) and Bat Woman (19 Oct) – which have been programmed by the mighty feminist film collective Invisible Women.
To mark 100 years since the Surrealist Manifesto was penned, Dundee Contemporary Arts is taking audiences on a trip with Surrealism on Film. On 4 October there’s a double bill of two Czech classics: Věra Chytilová’s Daisies and Ester Krumbachová’s Murdering the Devil. And then on 11 October, there's a screening of Germaine Dulac’s subversive 1928 classic The Seashell and the Clergyman along with the brand-new short Foreign Body on 11 October. The season rounds out with films from Federico Fellini (8 ½, 20 Oct) and David Lynch (Eraserhead, 18 Oct), as well as Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound (6 Oct), which features a wild dream sequence designed by Salvador Dalí.
Halloween is also approaching, which means tonnes of scary movies at cinemas near you. We recommend Tony Scott’s gorgeous vampire flick The Hunger (GFT, 27 Oct, with an intro from novelist Kirsty Logan), Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s deeply troubling J-Horror masterpiece Pulse (Cameo, 18 Oct) and for all those people who like to have their furry friend around to protect them at the frightening bits, a dog-friendly screening of John Carpenter’s slasher Halloween (27 Oct, Cameo). We’re also intrigued by GFT’s Halloween-adjacent screening of Dark Soul, a supernatural thriller set in Edinburgh that aims to make cinema more accessible for blind and visually impaired people by telling its story through immersive sound only, with no visuals appearing on screen (26 Oct).