Scottish Film Events: September 2024

Making a film takes a village (sometimes a small city) of talented people, yet too often film discourse venerates the film director above everyone else. So it’s great to see Sonica team up with Glasgow Film to celebrate a creative role that doesn’t get enough love – the film composer – with a mini-retrospective dedicated to Glasgow’s Craig Armstrong at GFT.  

Armstrong began his film career working on Peter Mullan’s early shorts before penning the score for Mullan’s feature debut Orphans (8 & 11 Sep), and went on to provide music for Mullan’s other two features. Armstrong’s other chief collaborator is Australian director Baz Lurhmann; he composed music for Romeo + Juliet (4 Sep), Moulin Rouge! and The Great Gatsby (25 Sep). Elsewhere in the season, there’s Ray (14 & 18 Sep), for which Armstrong won a Grammy, and the sorely underrated Graham Greene adaptation The Quiet American (21 & 26 Sep). Armstrong will be at GFT for The Great Gatsby screening and will take part in a Q&A after the film. 

Romeo + Juliet also screens in Edinburgh on 23 September as part of Cameo’s nifty Six Degrees of Shakespeare season. It’s a fun lineup showing the diverse range of approaches filmmakers have taken when adapting the Bard over the years. As well as Lurhmann’s film, there are riffs on Hamlet (The Bad Sleep Well, 7 Sep), The Tempest (Forbidden Planet, 30 Sep), and the Henry IV & V plays (My Own Private Idaho, 15 Sep). And in another piece of synergy, My Own Private Idaho screens as part of GFT's monthly Queer Cinema Sundays screenings (29 Sep); arts critic Claire Biddles will give an introduction.

Short film fans should check out the third edition of ShortScape Film Festival, which celebrates emerging filmmaking in the Scottish film and video industry. Taking place ​​5 to 7 September in Leith Arches, there are five short film programmes filled with tonnes of exciting voices on the Scottish film scene, plus networking drinks, a film curation panel and an obligatory festival quiz. 

The wonderful Glasgow Youth Film Festival returns too for its 16th edition – meaning the event is now older than some of its programmers. Curated by Glaswegian cinephiles aged 15 to 18, they’ve put together a fun-looking weekend. Expect brand new films (doc We Can Be Heroes, comedy-drama Uproar), some modern classics (Clue, Booksmart, The Truman Show) and two workshops with Glasgow director Niamh McKeown, who recently directed the BBC Three comedy Dinosaur. See GFT’s website for the full programme.