A collaboration between University of Glasgow’s Cut! Filmmaking and Glasgow School of Art’s Big Screen Glasgow, Glasgow, I Love You‘s programme consisted of short films made by students of UofG, GSA and RSAMD, all shot in and inspired by the city. Unsurprisingly, the selection varied wildly in tone and was by turns inspired, twee, iconoclastic, pretentious, a tiny bit dull and most often very funny and bursting with ideas. The sheer lack of tiring and unnecessary cynicism was the undeclared…

When Mondo Morricone, a tribute to the wide and wonderful world of film score composer Ennio Morricone, was first performed in 2000, its creators Duglas T. Stewart (BMX Bandits) and Davie Scott (The Pearlfishers) were joined by an all-star cast from the Scottish music and film scene including members of Belle & Sebastian, Teenage Fanclub and The Vaselines. Now, over a decade later, the show’s back – and, they claim, it’s bigger and better than ever. Duglas T. Stewart talks…

It has been a year since Torsten Lauschmann was announced as the winner of the inaugural Margaret Tait award at the 2010 Glasgow Film Festival. Part plaudit for consistently innovative and excellent work in art and film, and part commission, the 2011 award will be preceded on Thursday 24 February by the first, and only, performance of the site specific cinema performance At the Heart of Everything a Row of Holes. I have been corresponding with Lauschmann at the behest…

BBC Scotland is on the hunt for talent ‘behind the camera’ with the launch of a project aimed at finding new drama directors. Acclaimed Scottish directors David Blair (The Street, Tess of the D’Urbervilles), John McKay (Hustle, Lip Service, Life on Mars) and Gillies Mackinnon (Trial and Retribution, Above Suspicion) will launch Scotland Directs, a year long programme of events focussed on celebrating, encouraging and fostering directing talent in Scotland, at Glasgow Short Film Festival. Scotland Directs will launch at…

It is shaping up to be a pretty good year for Scottish filmmakers.

One of the most original and engaging films I’ve seen so far this year is The Arbor, Directed by Clio Barnard and Produced by Shooter Tracy O’Riordan. The film is based around audio interviews conducted with the family members of Andrea Dunbar (wri. The Arbor, Rita, Sue and Bob too), a young British playwright who died suddenly, aged 29, back in 1990. Raised on the notoriously rough Buttershaw Estate in Bradford (UK), Dunbar lead a fascinatingly duel existence; she was…

Making a film about a poem, its writer, its content and its legacy, proved, for Rob Epstein and Jeffery Friedman in the case of Howl, a task that exceeded the constraints of the documentary format for which they were contracted and have become synonymous. In fact, it caused a three-year delay to their project, as they set about attempting to harness various platforms through which they could convey the full scope of their intent. To my mind, the effect of…

Before you cringe with embarrassment, I would like to state I’m very aware that this will be the second time I’ve started a review with a quote from Truffaut and I apologise, it’s not intentional; honest, I just never realised that the guy was such a fertile source of perseptive quips and smarts. Anyway; it won’t happen again. Promise. In 1967 he reviewed Jacques Tati’s modernist ‘trompe-l’œil’ or should that be ‘Arc de Triomphe’ Playtime and quite rightly claimed that…

Sheffield was one of the first festivals to include a 360 strand in its programming, introducing Digidocs 360 in 2006. Now the Crossover 360 strand (as it’s now known) runs throughout the sessions programme, with cross-platform and interactive being at the core of the film programme and marketplace as well. We love to explore how the form of factual media is being expanded, and Doc/Fest is one of the world’s best places to discuss interactivity with people who know it…

Doc/Fest is renowned for the quality and breadth of our conference sessions. We invite the industry to submit their session ideas to us all year, so the conference is industry-generated and totally relevant. This isn’t a festival where you’ll get the same issues being discussed by the same people year after year. We want the current big issues to be featured, discussed by the people doing interesting things right now. And we want blunt honesty from speakers and audience. We…