Glasgow Film News: July

It's Summer, so the month's big films are blockbusters which will recoup their enormous budgets through aggressive marketing, a need to sit in air-conditioned rooms for two hours, and lack of competition. You guessed it, there aren't many film events in Glasgow in July. Who would want to compete with 'Pirates of the Caribbean 2' (July 6) or Pixar's new film 'Cars' (July 28)? Not to mention the return of the greatest American hero when 'Garfield 2' is released (July 28)! Oh, and 'Superman Returns' on the 14th of July, I'm told.

But there's always the GFT to provide an alternative, and this month they're showing a couple of Jacques Rivette films. Rivette was in the group of French New Wave directors who began as writers for the influential Cahiers du Cinema journal, like Eric Rohmer, Claude Chabrol, Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut, who said that the New Wave existed "thanks to Rivette." 'Paris Nous Appartient' was his first film, with a complex multi-character, multi-location plot shot over two years and running to 135 minutes. If you're a dedicated fan of French cinema, you'll want to catch it on the 3rd or 4th of July. If you enjoy that you might want to see what critics have acclaimed as Rivette's masterpiece, 'Celine And Julie Go Boating', showing on the 24th and 25th, a 3 hour long film with a bizarre plot exploring the nature of storytelling.

GFT also have a new print of Jean Renoir's 'The River', his first colour film, paired with his earlier 'Boudu Saved From Drowning' on the 9th of July. And they're re-showing Raiders Of The Lost Ark on the 14th and 24th. If you've never seen it on the big screen, now's your chance.
If none of that grabs you, perhaps you'd prefer something unpredictable, dramatic, shocking, exciting, hair-raising and world shaking on the big screen? Well, the BBC are setting up a big screen in Glasgow Green to show the World Cup final. You know you can't avoid it.