GFT plan free screenings to celebrate 80th anniversary

Glasgow Film Theatre may be reaching its ninth decade as a cinema, but it remains as lively as ever. And next month it'll be celebrating its landmark 80 Years of Cinema with a weekend of free screenings, and the lineup planned is as diverse as the regular schedule serves up at the cinema on a monthly basis.

Celebrations kick off Thursday 9 May with the a preview of Booksmart, the upcoming directorial debut from actor Olivia Wilde. It's reportedly a rambunctious coming of age movie following two squeaky-clean, grade-A students (played by Kaitlyn Dever and Lady Bird’s Beanie Feldstein), who decide to pack four years’ worth of partying into one wild night before graduating. It's been described by the Guardian as a "funny, filthy, female-fronted competitor to Superbad".

The following day there's Lynch's thrillingly inexplicable neonoir Mulholland Drive, which will be screening in a new 4K restoration, while on 11 May, there's a screening of fantasy classic The Wizard of Oz, which was released the same year the cinema opened (as the Cosmo) in 1939. Eight decades later, Dorothy and co's adventures in Oz are as beguiling as ever.

On the final day of the four-day celebrations, GFT screen Giuseppe Tornatore’s Oscar-winning classic Cinema Paradiso, one of the great love-letters to cinema and the magic of celluloid.

Tickets to these four screenings are free and limited to a maximum of two tickets per person, with the exception of The Wizard of Oz, which is a maximum of four tickets per person. glasgowfilm.org/80years; all donations to Glasgow Film will be gratefully received