AUTUMN FILM Specialcial
FESTIVAL ROUND-UP Paul Gallagher highlights the local film festivals worth catching this autumn
Scotland’s two biggest film festivals have been put to bed for another year, but the film festival calendar is only just getting started. In fact, a film lover could spend almost every week from now until Christmas in the intimate embrace of a Scottish film festival. If that sounds like a tempting challenge, you’ll want to begin by heading to Shetland for this year’s Screenplay (31 August–7 September). Curated by husband and wife film critic tag-team Mark Kermode and Linda Ruth Williams, it features an eclectic programme that places local filmmakers’ work side by side with established heavyweights. This year also features guest appearances from two of Kermode’s favourite actors, David Morrissey and Toby Jones.
After a brief respite you should
journey from the extreme north of the country to the Borders (and actually just across), for Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival (25–29 September). The 2013 programme includes a tantalising live event with Mercury-nominated band Field Music, premiering a newly composed soundtrack to John Grierson’s seminal 1929 Scottish documentary Drifters (pictured above). Back to the central belt as Take One Action returns to Glasgow and Edinburgh for a sixth year (27 September–12 October) with a heaving schedule of international films, talks and discussions aimed at provoking change and highlighting injustice.
October is a hot month for issues- based films in Glasgow, with the annual human rights documentary festival Document and the Scottish Mental Health Film Festival (whose theme this year is ‘reality’) hitting venues in the city through the month, the latter also in Edinburgh.
Look out too for Africa in Motion in Glasgow and Edinburgh (24 October–1 November), whose 2013 theme is Africa on the Move. Finally, you can head north again just in time for Inverness Film Festival (6–10 November), which has the good fortune to be running right after London’s annual celebration of film, and often features a few titles just days after their glitzy premieres.
➙ 22 Aug–19 Sep 2013 THE LIST 15
see Paul Wright’s poetic first feature For Those In Peril, Jon S Baird’s rumbustious adaptation of the Irvine Welsh novel Filth and Dexter Fletcher’s tender-hearted screen version of The Proclaimers musical Sunshine On Leith. Scottish cinema seemed to have reached something of a creative impasse, giving the impression that all the nation had to offer was fifty shades of miserablism. These three films all hark back to established currents within Scottish filmmaking but also suggest healthy signs of renewal. Filmed around Gourdon in Aberdeenshire, For Those In Peril tells of the lone survivor of a tragedy at sea that has claimed the lives of five other men. Aaron, played by George Mackay, is burdened by guilt and is increasingly seen as an outcast in a close-knit coastal community ravaged by grief. The grim social realist subject matter is steered towards magic realism by Paul Wright’s sense of landscape, location and memories, captured through a variety of different film stocks. There is an echo of Margaret Tait in his film and a sense of a work made without compromise or consideration for the demands of the marketplace.
Filth harks back to another critical moment in Scottish film when Trainspotting was unleashed, displaying a ferocious energy and dynamism that felt like a kick in the pants. Filth is easily the best adaptation of Welsh’s work we have seen since then, faithfully capturing his sense of the grotesque in a savage satirical comedy pitched somewhere between Federico Fellini and Abel Ferrara. James McAvoy gives a bravura performance as Bruce Robertson, a corrupt, manipulative Edinburgh policeman gleefully indulging all his worst appetites for drugs,
sex, violence, racism and ruining the lives of everyone who has the misfortune to cross his path. If Filth offers a hallucinatory wallow in the dregs of the Scottish psyche, then Sunshine On Leith is its big-hearted counterpoint. Almost 40 years after his appearance in Bugsy Malone, actor-turned-director Dexter Fletcher was the inspired choice to direct the film version of the stage hit woven around the music of The Proclaimers. George Mackay and Kevin Guthrie play the homecoming survivors of the Afghanistan conflict struggling to re-adjust to civilian life when they return to Edinburgh. Early industry screenings have had hardened critics sobbing in the aisles.
Given the populist aspirations of Sunshine On Leith and the proven track record of its distributor, Entertainment, it could become the most successful Scottish film of recent years. All three titles bring cause for celebration in the promise of an authentic new voice in Scottish features (Paul Wright), the arrival of thrilling new acting talents like George Mackay and Freya Mavor, the boldness of a major Scottish star returning home to stretch his talent and the successful realisation of that rarest of creatures – a Scottish musical. When you consider that 2013 has also brought such outstanding documentaries as We Are Northern Lights, Kiss The Water and The Devil’s Plantation, there is clearly a resurgent diversity in Scottish film that we should all be celebrating.
Filth is released on Fri 27 Sep; Sunshine on Leith and For Those in Peril are released on Fri 4 Oct.