GLASGOW SHORT FILM FESTIVAL
LOOKING UP
Ever wondered why all the fi lms you watch are in landscape? Eddie Harrison
chats to the founder of Vertical Cinema, an experimental fi lm format that receives its Scottish premiere at this year’s Glasgow Short Film Festival
G lasgow’s Short Film Festival moves to a new, post-Glasgow Film Festival slot in 2015, with a high-end selection of short i lm screenings and events in mid-March. One of the most intriguing is Vertical Cinema (Wed 11 Mar), in which Glasgow’s Briggait will be pressed into service to screen a series of ten specially commissioned works by experimental i lmmakers, projected on 35mm celluloid with a custom-built projector in vertical cinemascope.
‘This is a collaboration with i ve Austrian and i ve Dutch i lmmakers, each making their own custom-made experimental i lm or animation,’ says Vertical Cinema founder Lucas van der Velden, who devised the show with Dutch creators Sonic Arts. ‘We wanted to look into different ways of approaching this set up, so we decided to use 35mm, but i lming vertically. Some of the i lms were created on digital, some using celluloid, and one has imagery created by laser projection. The overall effect is to challenge the audience to think about how we experience the world through cinema.’ When Cinemascope and Panavision widened the cinema frame in the 50s and 60s, one critic described the widescreen format as ideal for ‘funerals and snakes’. While we now expect cinema i lms and television broadcasts to be wide rather than square, Vertical Cinema aims to turn such expectations on their heads.
24 THE LIST 5 Feb–2 Apr 2015
‘We are stuck in an existing infrastructure in the west where all of our [commercial i lm] screenings are digitised, so there’s no room for experimenting with the technology itself,’ says van Der Velden. ‘What we’re doing is we’re mixing analogue technology with new digital projection.’ ‘Things look different when viewed this way; for example, one i lmmaker i lmed a building from a distance using time-lapse, and you’re way more aware of the city, and the sky, and how over 24 hours the sky gets dark and light again. It’s a daily phenomenon, captured in a way that you’ve never seen before.’ ‘It’s great for us to have Vertical Cinema’s Scottish premiere,’ says Glasgow Short Film Festival programmer and director Matt Lloyd. ‘Moving to March means that we can i ll the void when the Glasgow Film Festival i nishes in February, attracting more industry i gures and talent-spotters, as well as our growing audience. It’s one of a number of exciting events we have (see highlights, right), but Vertical Cinema is a real one-off and we’re delighted to welcome them to the city.’
Glasgow Short Film Festival runs from Wed 11–Sun 15 Mar. Vertical Cinema takes place at the Briggait, Glasgow, Wed 11 Mar. For more details, see glasgowi lm.org/gsff