The best film events in Scotland in March

The ten big screen movie happenings you should make time for this month, from sharply curated shorts at Glasgow Short Film Festival and an anime season at Cameo to the best of silent cinema at HippFest

Feature by Jamie Dunn | 06 Mar 2018

1. Glasgow Short Film Festival

Scotland’s coolest film festival returns this month and the pleasures look to be myriad. As well as some sharply curated short film programmes in the International Competition and a showcase of the best Scottish talent in the Scottish Competition, highlights look to be a sleepover with the dreamy films of Apichatpong Weerasethakul; a mini-retrospective of Kevin Jerome Everson’s work, including his epic eight hour film Park Lanes; Don Hertzfeldt’s World of Tomorrow sequel; a night of music videos by some emerging Scottish filmmakers, followed by a set from electropop four-piece Babe; a screening of 1986 doc Big Fun In The Big Town followed by a selection of hip-hop shorts; and programme Ladies of the Night, which features a selection of offbeat shorts featuring not-to-be-messed-with women taking the lead. 14-18 Mar, Glasgow, various venues

2. Lynne Ramsay: CineMaster

To coincide with the release of Lynne Ramsay’s latest film, the brutal thriller You Were Never Really Here, Glasgow Film Theatre are paying tribute to this great filmmaker by crowning her this month’s CineMaster. Her three previous films – Ratcatcher (1999), Morvern Callar (2002) and We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011) – are screening throughout March. The output may be small for a career that’s spanned two decades, but it packs a mighty punch. 12-26 Mar, Glasgow Film Theatre


Ratcatcher

3. HippFest


The Last of the Mohicans

The Hippodrome Silent Film Festival returns to Scotland’s most glamorous cinema for another unmissable lineup of silent cinema and live music. HippFest opens with the 1920 version of The Last of the Mohicans (David Allison provides the live score). Other highlights look to be a screening of GW Pabst’s debut The Treasure (Der Schatz) and Ernst Lubitsch’s 1927 effort The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg. 21-25 Mar, Hippodrome, Bo’ness

4. Korean Noir: Illuminating the Dark Side of Society

The London Korean Film Festival have lined up a selection of noirs to screen at Filmhouse this month. Edinburgh audiences will have the chance to explore the nation's dark underbelly with films like Poetry director Lee Chang-dong’s Green Fish (13 Mar) and crime melodrama New World (27 Mar), which concerns an undercover agent who finds it difficult to play both a cop and a goon. Each film is introduced by a learned scholar from the University of Edinburgh. 13 Mar-10 Apr, Filmhouse, Edinburgh

5. Studio Ghibli


My Neighbour Totoro

Hayao Miyazaki fans are in for a treat this month as Cameo gives over its Sunday matinee slot to classic animes from the Japanese filmmaker throughout March and April. Kicking off with My Neighbour Totoro on 11 March, the season also includes Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle. Every Sun from 11 Mar, Cameo, Edinburgh

6. Burnt Church Film Club present The Rocky Horror Picture Show


The Rocky Horror Picture Show

Forget The Room – the ultimate late night movie experience is The Rocky Horror Picture Show and you’ve two opportunities to see Richard O'Brien’s kinky musical with Burnt Church Film Club this month. 25 & 27 Mar, Flying Duck, Glasgow

If wild singalongs aren’t your bag, Burnt Church Film Club also have a screening of recent Oscar-winner Guillermo del Toro’s nightmarish fairy tale Pan’s Labyrinth (21 Mar) and a zombie double bill of Night of the Living Dead and Shaun of the Dead (29 Mar) this month. Flying Duck, Glasgow

7. Nae Pasaran tours Scotland

Fresh from its world premiere at Glasgow Film Festival, Felipe Bustos Sierra’s documentary Nae Pasaran will screen again later this month at venues across Scotland. The film tells the incredible true story of how, in 1974, a group of workers at East Kilbride’s Rolls-Royce factory took a stand against Pinochet’s brutal dictatorship by refusing to carry out vital engine repairs on planes that had been used during Chile's 1973 military coup. Our reviewer wrote that “Nae Pasaran has a profound emotional core, found in the humour and sincerity of the personalities of those that acted against a violent military regime on the other side of the planet.” 11 Mar, East Kilbride Village Theatre, 6.30pm; 18 Mar, Dundee Contemporary Arts, 6.15pm; 23 Mar, Eden Court, Inverness, time tbc; 25 Mar, GFT, 4pm; 28 Mar, Filmhouse, 6.15pm (followed by a Q&A with Felipe Bustos Sierra)

8. Event Horizon on 35mm

In January we had a Paul Thomas Anderson 35mm season to mark the release of Phantom Thread. In February a Wes Anderson retrospective kicked off at Cameo in anticipation of Isle of Dogs. And now it’s time for everyone’s third favourite director called Anderson to have his moment in the sun, as Filmhouse’s Uncanny Valley strand screens Paul WS Anderson’s batshit crazy sci-fi horror Event Horizon on 35mm.

It’s basically The Shining in space, with Sam Neill having fun as he picks off his fellow crew members in more and more bloody and outlandish ways. Plot and character aren’t Anderson’s strong suits, but the English director is a first class stylist, and Event Horizon contains some of his most unsettling imagery and jaw-dropping setpieces. Don’t miss this rare big screen outing, as there doesn’t look to be any Paul WS Anderson retrospectives coming our way soon – more’s the pity. 9 Mar, Filmhouse, 11.15pm

9. Glasgow West End Free Film Festival


Daughters of the Dust

The inaugural Glasgow West End Free Film Festival offers up an eclectic lineup of films for its first edition. The festival opens and closes with two debut films from kickarse female filmmakers: first there's Julie Dash's wonderfully atmospheric Daughters of the Dust and the curtain comes down with Lynne Ramsay’s lyrical Ratcatcher. In between there’s Hitchcock’s stunning study of obsession Vertigo, chaotic music-filled comedy Blues Brothers, the nerve-shredding Alien, eccentric animation Belleville Rendezvous and the stylish and sexy Korean thriller The Handmaiden. 17-23 Mar, Glasgow, various venues

10. Speed on 35mm

As a cinematographer, Dutchman Jan De Bont shot some modern classics, including Die Hard and Basic Instinct, but his first stab at directing is similarly iconic. The high-concept plot – Dennis Hopper's bad guy plants a bomb on a LA bus that will explode if the vehicle goes any slower than 50 miles an hour, with Keanu Reeves as the plucky cop who comes to the rescue – could be written on the back of a cigarette paper, but De Bont drags every shred of tension from the limited scenario. The chemistry between Reeves and Sandra Bullock as the civilian who helps him keep the bus moving is also a joy, and makes you wish they’d make more films together. 23 Mar, GFT, Glasgow

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