Glasgow Film Festival

glasgowfilmfest: Tickets for Goblin are now on sale! This years first music and film event. exciting times! tickets here - http://ow.ly/DGCl

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 06:25:48 -0800

glasgowfilmfest: Tickets for Goblin are now on sale! This years first music and film event. exciting times! tickets here - http://ow.ly/DGCl

Cary at the BAFTA's

Glasgow Film Festival — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 03:25:12 -0800

Glasgow Film Festival posted a photo:

Cary at the BAFTA's

Glasgow Film Festival — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 03:23:39 -0800

Glasgow Film Festival posted a photo:

Cary at the BAFTA's

Glasgow Film Festival — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 03:22:07 -0800

Glasgow Film Festival posted a photo:

Cary at the BAFTA's

Glasgow Film Festival — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 03:20:35 -0800

Glasgow Film Festival posted a photo:

Cary at the BAFTA's

Glasgow Film Festival — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 03:18:48 -0800

Glasgow Film Festival posted a photo:

Cary at the BAFTA's

Glasgow Film Festival — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 03:17:12 -0800

Glasgow Film Festival posted a photo:

Cary at the BAFTA's

Glasgow Film Festival — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 03:15:48 -0800

Glasgow Film Festival posted a photo:

Cary at the BAFTA's

Glasgow Film Festival — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 03:08:15 -0800

Glasgow Film Festival posted a photo:

Cary at the BAFTA's

Glasgow Film Festival — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 03:06:50 -0800

Glasgow Film Festival posted a photo:

Cary at the BAFTA's

Glasgow Film Festival — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 03:05:13 -0800

Glasgow Film Festival posted a photo:

Cary at the BAFTA's

Glasgow Film Festival — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 03:03:40 -0800

Glasgow Film Festival posted a photo:

glasgowfilmfest: RT @glasgowfilm So - we've been shortlisted for a Golden Twit Award for twittering - we'd love it if you voted for us! http://bit.ly/1KS3nK

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 09:24:15 -0800

glasgowfilmfest: RT @glasgowfilm So - we've been shortlisted for a Golden Twit Award for twittering - we'd love it if you voted for us! http://bit.ly/1KS3nK

Cary at the BAFTA's

Glasgow Film Festival — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 08:28:59 -0800

Glasgow Film Festival posted a photo:

Cary at the BAFTA's

Glasgow Film Festival — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 08:27:20 -0800

Glasgow Film Festival posted a photo:

Cary at the BAFTA's

Glasgow Film Festival — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 08:25:36 -0800

Glasgow Film Festival posted a photo:

Cary at the BAFTA's

Glasgow Film Festival — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 08:23:46 -0800

Glasgow Film Festival posted a photo:

Cary at the BAFTA's

Glasgow Film Festival — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 08:22:10 -0800

Glasgow Film Festival posted a photo:

Cary at the BAFTA's

Glasgow Film Festival — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 08:20:27 -0800

Glasgow Film Festival posted a photo:

Cary at the BAFTA's

Glasgow Film Festival — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 08:18:49 -0800

Glasgow Film Festival posted a photo:

Cary at the BAFTA's

Glasgow Film Festival — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 08:17:06 -0800

Glasgow Film Festival posted a photo:

Cary at the BAFTA's

Glasgow Film Festival — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 07:59:03 -0800

Glasgow Film Festival posted a photo:

glasgowfilmfest: GFF trailer (in conjunction with @CenSta and supported by DCM) has gone into production - read more: http://bit.ly/von4d

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 09:36:18 -0800

glasgowfilmfest: GFF trailer (in conjunction with @CenSta and supported by DCM) has gone into production - read more: http://bit.ly/von4d

glasgowfilmfest: RT @gff_youth It's all GO GO GO at GYFF! Trailer will be ready soon and programme will be finalised in the next few weeks...Stay tuned.

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 09:35:44 -0800

glasgowfilmfest: RT @gff_youth It's all GO GO GO at GYFF! Trailer will be ready soon and programme will be finalised in the next few weeks...Stay tuned.

glasgowfilmfest: Almost ready for the new GFF site to go live! Testing testing testing... #GFF

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 03:56:02 -0800

glasgowfilmfest: Almost ready for the new GFF site to go live! Testing testing testing... #GFF

glasgowfilmfest: If you're here that is...

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 14:57:16 -0800

glasgowfilmfest: If you're here that is...

glasgowfilmfest: We've got Cary Grant at the BAFTAs - come and say hello! #baftascotland

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 14:56:50 -0800

glasgowfilmfest: We've got Cary Grant at the BAFTAs - come and say hello! #baftascotland

Remembering Eustache

Glasgow Film — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 07:23:00 -0800

Reputation is a funny thing. There are film directors, like Alfred Hitchcock or Orson Welles, who never seem to go out of fashion and whose names are better known than many a star. The re-issue of Welles' Citizen Kane has just finished at the GFT and the wonderfully entertaining Me And Orson Welles arrives in early December with a performance from Christian McKay that is less impersonation than uncanny resurrection.

Then there is a director like Jean Eustache who if he is known at all in Britain is known for The Mother And The Whore (La Maman Et La Putain) (1973) (pictured above), a three and a half hour epic most of which is taken up with people taking about sex. It is widely regarded as Eustache's masterpiece and the one film that truly captures the extraordinary self-absorption and disillusionment of the French intelligentsia in the afterglow of May 1968. The presence of Jean-Pierre Leaud as the philandering, narcissistic Alexandre seems to underline its status as a withering critique of the attitudes and iconoclasm of the nouvelle vague.

There was more to Eustache than The Mother And The Whore and this month's French Film Festival shines a focus on a man frequently cited as one of France's most important filmmakers. Eustache was born in Pessac in the south-west of France in 1938 and worked as a railwayman before moving to Paris. His wife was the secretary for Cahiers du Cinema. Eustache began his filmmaking career with the prize-winning shorts Bad Company (Les Mauvaises frequentations) (1963) and Le Pere Noel a les yeux bleus (Santa Claus Has Blue Eyes) (1965) in which Jean-Pierre Leaud earns the money for a duffle-coat by working with a street photographer who needs him to play Father Christmas. The disguise gives him an unexpected confidence and audacity with women.

Often compared with Eric Rohmer, Maurice Pialat and John Cassavetes, Eustache made films that muddied the line between fiction and reality. His documentaries like The Pig (Le Cochon) (1970) captured aspects of French rural life on the brink of disappearing. His features were frequently autobiographical in tone , intense and unrelenting in their pursuit of emotional truth. Numero Zero (1971) features a lengthy interview with his elderly grandmother Odette who talks about a life that has encompassed personal heartache and the tragedy of a nation dragged through wars and seismic social change. My Little Loves (Mes petites amoureuses) (1975) , photographed by the legenday Nestor Almendros, revisits aspects of Eustache's own adolescence to capture a beautiful rites of passage story in which a boy is uprooted from his familiar country life to live with his mother and her lover in the big city. His discovery of an adult world culminates in a first kiss while watching Pandora And The Flying Dutchman-no wonder cinema cast such a spell over his life.

The commercial failure of My Little Loves had a significant impact on Eustache's aspirations and ambitions. His subsequent films saw him return to low-budget documentaries, personal reflections on art and the most obvious example of his blurring of fact and fiction in A Dirty Story (Une Sale histoire) (1977) in which a friend of Eustache tells of an obsession with a peep hole into a ladies room in a cafe. The same story is also fictionalised using actors challenging all kinds of notions about voyeurism and humiliation.

Eustache took his own life in 1981. He once observed: " I see suffering all over. I've always seen it. I hope people don't suffer in vain." The rich and challenging legacy of his films answers that question and makes these rare screenings a top viewing priority this month.

Jean Eustache films screening at the GFT as part of the French Film Festival UK are The Mother And The Whore (November 23rd), Numero Zero (November 24) and My Little Loves (November 25).

Blogger: GFF Co-director Allan Hunter

glasgowfilmfest: Alison and I having lunch with Tom at Warners Brothers, sussing out possible titles for GFF 10, already spotted Dame Dench herself and one o

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 06:00:44 -0800

glasgowfilmfest: Alison and I having lunch with Tom at Warners Brothers, sussing out possible titles for GFF 10, already spotted Dame Dench herself and one o

The Greatest Films Never Made

Glasgow Film — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 07:40:00 -0700

If you could programme a festival of the greatest films never made what riches there would be. Who wouldn't want to see Jack Nicholson as Napoleon in Stanley Kubrick's meticulously planned labour of love that he began working on in 1968 and never quite got out of his system. Around the same time the great Fred Zinnemann was set to film Andre Malraux's A Man's Fate with Peter Finch, Liv Ullmann and David Niven in what he thought would be one of the best parts of his career. The cast was signed, sets were built, a budget of $11 million was assigned to the project and then shortly before shooting in 1969 a new cost-cutting regime at M-G-M decided to pull the plug.

Orson Welles career was strewn with fragments of uncompleted films and unrealised projects. In 1975 when Welles received the American Film Institute Lifetime Achievement Award the audience saw scenes from The Other Side Of The Wind, a semi-autobiographical tale of an aging Hollywood director played by John Huston who is trying to revive his career by making a movie dripping with fashionable sex and violence. The cast also included Peter Bogdanovich and Dennis Hopper. In 1976 Welles claimed it was almost finished. The footage now appears to reside in a Paris vault having spent the past thirty years imprisoned by legal disputes, difficulties arising from financial support from the brother-in-law of the Shah Of Iran and much more. Bogdanovich recently claimed that the film could finally see the light of day at next year's Cannes Film Festival. We'll believe that when we see it.

One of the great abandoned films may well be Henri-Georges Clouzot's L'Enfer. Clouzot was the Hitchcock and Haneke of post-War French cinema; a master of suspense and nail-biting tension responsible for classics like The Wages Of Fear (La Salaire De La Peur) (1953) and Les Diaboliques (1955). In 1960 he made La Verite (The Truth) (1960) a courtroom thriller featuring one of Brigitte Bardot's best roles as a woman accused of murdering her sister's boyfriend. In the first flush of excitement over nouvelle vague mavericks like Truffaut and Godard , La Verite seemed terribly old-fashioned. L'Enfer (Inferno) was to be his rejoinder to those criticisms; a psychological thriller that would use all the cutting-edge techniques at Clouzot's disposal to depict the inner mind of a man consumed by jealousy. It would also embody a sense of the depressions and illnesses that had plagued his own life and " dramatize the feeling of anxiety that kept him awake every night"

Serge Reggiani and Romy Schneider were cast in a film that began production in the summer of 1964. Clouzot's exacting work methods meant that the production was soon way behind schedule. An exasperated Reggiani eventually walked off the set never to return. When Clouzot suffered a heart attack production was shut down and the film was abandoned. He would make only one further film before his death in 1977.

Serge Bromberg and Ruxandra Medrea's dazzling documentary Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno offers an exemplary account of what might have been. 185 cans of film and 13 hours of footage have sat unseen for forty-five years and they provide the backbone to a documentary that shows us wardrobe fittings, tests, behind-the-scenes footage and completed scenes from a film that could have been the equal of Hitchcock's Vertigo or Michael Powell's Peeping Tom. Berenice Bejo and Jacques Gamblin perform scenes from the script. There is a television interview with Clouzot from the 1960s. Fresh interviews from surviving crew members, including Costa-Gavras, testify to Clouzot's painstaking preparations and his plans to use lurid colours, reverse printing and distortions of both sound and image to create the psychological state of jealousy. Every scene appears to have been storyboarded. The script itself ran to a hefty 300 pages. The industry's normal rule of thumb is that a page of script is equal to a minute of screen time so we could have been talking an incredibly long film here. It is a project that seems to have become an obsession and as time wore on it was something that Clouzot could neither master nor control.

In 1994, Claude Chabrol returned to Clouzot's original script and made his own version of L'Enfer but it feels strangely old-fashioned and unsatisfying. The real tragedy of Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno are the sustained glimpses of a film that might have been fantastic. The documentary is a wonderful feat of resurrection and is screening at the Glasgow Film Theatre on Saturday 14th, Monday 15th and Tuesday 16th November. Don't miss it.

Blogger: GFF Co-Director Allan Hunter

glasgowfilmfest: GFF's Allan Hunter on the greatest films never made: http://bit.ly/3BT7qg

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 09:48:53 -0700

glasgowfilmfest: GFF's Allan Hunter on the greatest films never made: http://bit.ly/3BT7qg

glasgowfilmfest: @lizthrilla - we'll be announcing the GFF programme in January. Tickets go on sale on 21st.

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 08:35:42 -0700

glasgowfilmfest: @lizthrilla - we'll be announcing the GFF programme in January. Tickets go on sale on 21st.

glasgowfilmfest: RT @CenSta And they're off! See who's been shortlisted to produce the Festival Trailer + what they're creating http://bit.ly/GFFTrail

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 06:43:19 -0700

glasgowfilmfest: RT @CenSta And they're off! See who's been shortlisted to produce the Festival Trailer + what they're creating http://bit.ly/GFFTrail

glasgowfilmfest: GFF Co-Director Allan Hunter announces GFF10 retrospective of Cary Grant! Read GFF blog to find out more - http://bit.ly/2hJYgB

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 06:20:14 -0700

glasgowfilmfest: GFF Co-Director Allan Hunter announces GFF10 retrospective of Cary Grant! Read GFF blog to find out more - http://bit.ly/2hJYgB

GFF 2010: It's A Boy!

Glasgow Film — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 07:09:00 -0700

If this blog came with sound effects then right about now you would be hearing a very dramatic drum roll as we confirm that the subject of the Festival's 2010 retrospective will be.....Cary Grant. Hopefully that will be followed by wild applause, lusty cheers, dancing in the streets and some responsible carousing in nearby taverns. If I had an ounce of Cary's athleticism I might even be turning cartwheels in the GFT foyer.

Cary Grant probably appeared in more great movies than any other star of his generation from Hitchcock thrillers like North By Northwest and Notorious to peerless screwball comedies like Bringing Up Baby (pictured) and The Awful Truth to impeccable romantic weepies like Penny Serenade and An Affair To Remember. There are even some pretty terrific adventure stories in the Grant repertoire too including Gunga Din. His stunning list of co-stars ranges from Katharine Hepburn to Sophia Loren, Mae West to Ingrid Bergman, Deborah Kerr to Irene Dunne, James Stewart, Tony Curtis, Doris Day, Grace Kelly and so many more. The challenge is to show a selection of films that truly represents his thirty five year career. If you have a particular Cary Grant classic crying out to be seen on the big screen then let us know* and we might still be able to include it in the Festival's big retrospective next February.

The thing about Cary Grant is that he made it all seem so easy. He appeared effortlessly urbane and suave with a witty word for every occasion, a sense of style that every man still wants to emulate and the kind of timing that you see once in a generation. Just watch him walk across a scene and he seems so comfortable in his own skin, moving with an elegance and lightness of touch that almost makes him the equal of Fred Astaire. We know in real life he was someone who fretted and fussed, sweated and strained to get things right but on screen you would never catch him straining. Perhaps that explains why he never won an Oscar until his pal Frank Sinatra presented him with an honorary one in April 1970 for his "unique mastery of the art of screen acting".

It is more than twenty years since Cary died and yet his appeal has never faded. When the American Film Institute ran its poll to discover the greatest male movie stars of all time Cary was number 2, just pipped to the top spot by Humphrey Bogart. Every polished light comedian worth his salt is compared to Grant from Hugh Grant to George Clooney who may well be the closest we have to a contemporary screen presence worthy of the comparison. Nobody writes about film with more insight and wit than David Thomson and in his monumental Biographical Dictionary of Film he wisely notes: "There is a major but very difficult realization that needs to be reached about Grant-difficult, that is, for many people who like to think they take the art of film seriously. As well as being a leading box-office draw for some thirty years, the epitome of the man-about-town, as well as being the ex-husband of Virigina Cherrill, Barbara Hutton, Betsy Drake and Dyan Cannon, as well as being the retired actor, still handsome executive of a perfume company-as well as all these things, he was the best and most important actor in the history of the cinema."

We couldn't agree more and if you want to know the reason why then come and see the Cary Grant films in February. If you want to get into the mood for the retrospective or get into the mood for Christmas the GFT is showing The Bishop's Wife on December 13th, 14th and 15th. Did I really just mention Christmas?

Blogger: GFF Co-Director Allan Hunter

* email us on info@glasgowfilmfestival.org.uk

How low is your budget? How good is your film?

Glasgow Film — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 07:25:00 -0700

Paranormal Activity has, as they say, taken America by storm. Oren Peli's scary movie has been hailed as the 21st century equivalent of The Blair Witch Project. The premise is as straightforward and simple as you could imagine; a San Diego couple move into a new home and things start to go bump in the night. They decide to set up video cameras to capture what happens in the dark but the demonic presence takes umbrage at their actions (how very dare they) and there is even the possibility that they may have opened a channel of communication. Spooky. It sounds as old as the hills but last weekend it earned slightly under $8 million from 160 screens giving it a per screen average of a whopping $57,000. Just to put things into perspective the number one film Couples Retreat (the dire Vince Vaughn/Jon Favreau turkey) earned just over $34 million from 3,000 screens giving it a per screen average of $12,700. A turkey that makes money then. Here's the really interesting thing. Universal are saying the budget of Couples Retreat is somewhere around the $60-$70 million mark. Paranormal Activity, made in 2007, is estimated to have cost $11,000. Bingo!

Apologies for the blizzard of figures being bandied about there but in Hollywood nothing matters more than the bottom line. In the current economic climate the size of your budget has almost become a proud symbol of your filmmaking ingenuity. The lower you can go the more resourceful you must be. Later this month, Britain will have the chance to see Colin, an apocalyptic zombie horror that director Marc Price claims to have shot on a camcorder for less than £50. Shane Meadows' recent mockumentary Le Donk & Scor-Zay-Zee was made in just five days for £48,000 and arose from the director's frustration with the endless uphill struggle to get a film fully financed in the UK. Why hang around waiting for a £1million or £2million budget to come together when you can just go out and shoot something guerrilla style. Meadows act of desperation has now become a philosophy and there could be more of his Five Day Features to come. kids director Larry Clark has apparently signed up to have a go, a prospect more likely to cause anxiety than keen anticipation.

The how low can you go philosophy seems to be fraught with danger. For one thing the philosophy or ethos seems to conveniently overlook the fact that most really low-budget, self-financed films exist because a lot of people probably didn't get paid for their efforts. It is not a basis on which to sustain a viable industry. It has become incredibly easy for anyone to make a feature film but it remains incredibly difficult for somebody to make a good one. I've recently watched a raft of low-budget Scottish feature films and believe me it is not an experience you want to share.

The one low-budget British triumph that you really want to shout about at the moment is Katalin Varga although that is a little tricky because technically it is a Romanian film. Director Peter Strickland was born in Reading and made a film called Bubblegum in 1995. Like many British filmmakers before he found it impossible to build a career in his own country. He wound up teaching English in Budapest and inheriting enough money from his uncle to possibly make a feature film. Katalin Varga was the result, a powerful, unsettling drama that was shot in seventeen days for around 30,000 Euros although Strickland claims the post-production costs were astronomical.

Set in a Transylvania of glowering skies and dark, gothic forests, Katalin Varga combines the earthy intensity of an Emile Zola novel with the grim fatalism of a Greek tragedy as it follows a woman who is banished from her village when her husband discovers that their son is not his son. What follows is a mixture of road movie, revenge saga, thriller and fairytale that is completely compelling.

Katalin Varga was rapturously received by critics at this year's Berlin Film Festival and hailed as one of the events great discoveries. It is a stunning piece of work from a talent who leaves you wanting to see what he might do next. The fact that it was shot for next to nothing makes for a good story but maybe we really need to stop getting excited about how cheap things are. It's not how low you can go that matters but how high you can aim.

Blogger: GFF Co-director Allan Hunter

Katalin Varga screens at GFT until Thursday 22 October.

Pigs, Eels and Insects

Glasgow Film — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 05:13:00 -0700

Asked to name a great Japanese filmmaker who would you choose? Akira Kurosawa perhaps? Ozu? Mizoguchi? There are certainly plenty candidates worthy of the honour but I wonder how many people would choose Shohei Imamura, the subject of a great retrospective at the GFT this month.

Imamura was once described as the "cultural anthropologist of Japan". Asked to define himself by the critic Koichi Yamada, he replied, " I am interested in the relationship between the lower part of the human body and the lower part of the social structure on which the reality of everyday life in Japan is built. " His films are often blackly comic, visceral, populated by flinty, strong-willed women and able to reflect his feelings about the turbulent ebb and flow of post-War Japanese life.

Imamura was born in Tokyo in 1926, the third son of a doctor. A student of Western History at Waseda University, he spent a good deal of time immersed in the black market culture of the era. In the early 1950s he became an apprentice of Yusujiro Ozu, working as an assistant director on three of his films, including Tokyo Monogatari (Tokyo Story) (1953). His own directing career saw him reject the rigorous aesthetic and restraint of an older generation. His best films would be fuelled by irreverence and a curiosity to explore what made Japan the country it had become. His first notable film Buta to Gunkan (Pigs and Battleships) (1961) is a scathing black comedy about the smalltime gangsters feeding off the rich pickings from the American naval base at Yokosuka. The film's biting satire and lack of sentimentality earned him comparisons with the great Bunuel.

Imamura's next impressed with Nippon Konchuki (The Insect Woman) (1963) (pictured above), one of the key films in his career. Sachiko Hidaro stars as the resilient Tome, a woman with the tenacity and survival instincts of a beetle as she endures all the hardships of the war years and the humiliations of the post-War period as she becomes a prostitute and eventually one of the most famous madams in all of Tokyo. There are obvious parallels in Japan's struggles with the price of progress, the repression of individuality and the exploitation of women.

Imamura often said that he thought his films would never be understood or appreciated by an audience outside of Japan but The Insect Woman was released in the UK and his international reputation began to grow in the late 1960s. In the 1970s, he focused on television documentaries picking away at the unhealed wounds of the war years. He returned to filmmaking with the masterly Fukushu Suru-wa Ware ni Ari (Vengeance Is Mine)(1979), an epic psychological drama based on the true story of one of Japan's most notorious serial killers and his horrific 78 day crime spree in the 1960s. The film achieves a startling blurring of fiction and documentary-like authenticity, the surreal and the disturbingly graphic. It casts an unblinking eye at a natural born killer long before Olive Stone was ruffling feathers.

He won the Cannes Palme d'Or for Nayaman Bushi-ko (The Ballad Of Narayama)(1983), a shocking portrait of the primitive social order in a remote mountain village in the 19th century. He would win a second Palme d'Or (shared with Kiarostami) for the quirky, endearing Unagi (The Eel) (1997) following a convicted killer's attempts to re-engage with society.
Imamura's later films constantly sought an understanding of the present from the lessons of the past. The quiet restraint and dignified humanity of Kuroi Ame (Black Rain)(1989) offer one of the few times in his career when it is possible to view the legacy of his apprenticeship with Ozu. The subject matter requires no embellishment and invites no cynicism. On an August morning in 1945 the atomic bomb is dropped on Hiroshima with results that are shown in graphic detail. Five years later, a family in a rural village are trying to think to the future in a community that remains physically and emotionally ravaged by the aftermath of what happened. The result is a solemn, unrelenting immersion in the legacy of humankind's barbarity.

Imamura continued to work into the 21st century, contributing one of the segments to the anthology 11'09''01 (2002). He died in 2006, a few months short of his 80th birthday. His legacy is a body of work that is independent, fiercely critical of Japanese society, distinctive in both its aesthetic and preoccupations and deserving of being much better known by western audiences. The GFT season Pigs, Eels & Insects provides the perfect introduction to his world. Don't miss the rare chance to see these films where the belong on the big screen and at bargain prices if you by tickets for the whole season.

Click here for details on the Imamura season at GFT

Blogger: GFF Co-Director Allan Hunter

glasgowfilmfest: Requesting an invite for Tweetboard Alpha (http://tweetboard.com) by @140ware, for my site: http://www.glasgowfilmfestival.org.uk

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 02:44:59 -0700

glasgowfilmfest: Requesting an invite for Tweetboard Alpha (http://tweetboard.com) by @140ware, for my site: http://www.glasgowfilmfestival.org.uk

glasgowfilmfest: Allan Hunter on The Beaches of Agnes on GFF blog - http://bit.ly/1P7LOZ

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 03:58:30 -0700

glasgowfilmfest: Allan Hunter on The Beaches of Agnes on GFF blog - http://bit.ly/1P7LOZ

Agnes A La Plage

Glasgow Film — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 04:43:00 -0700

There is a whole history of French cinema contained within the life and career of Agnes Varda. The 81 year-old made her first film La Pointe Courte in 1954, a remarkable debut that justifies her status as the godmother of the nouvelle vague. She later won the Cannes Palme D'Or for the graceful charmer Cleo de 5 a 7 (Cleo From 5 To 7)(1961). She was a close friend and collaborator of Jean-Luc Godard, Alain Resnais and Jacques Demy who became her husband in 1962. She spent part of the 1960s in California taking pictures of The Black Panthers and making friends with Jim Morrison and a promising young actor called Harrison Ford. She has worked with Catherine Deneuve and Jane Birkin and directed Sandrine Bonnaire in perhaps her greatest performance as the forlorn young woman at the haunting heart of Sans Toit Ni Loi /Vagabonde (1985), winner of the Golden Lion at Venice. More recently her career has gone in a different direction with installations and a range of documentaries including Les Glaneurs Et la Glaneuse (The Gleaners And I) (2001).

Her latest film Les Plages D'Agnes/The Beaches Of Agnes (2008) is as quirky and idiosyncratic an autobiography as you could hope to see. It is an essay, a rummage through the attic of her memory and a salute to some of those she has known and loved, including the great French actor Gerard Philipe who died almost fifty years ago. The film is a testimony to Varda's irrepressible curiosity about life and people and her appetite for fresh challenges and new horizons. It is also marked by the sense of a woman who feels the hand of mortality gently tapping on her shoulder. So many of the people she has known and loved are long gone and there are affectionate nods in the direction of Delphine Seyrig, Philippe Noiret and Jim Morrison and the acknowledgement that all paths lead back to her beloved soulmate Demy who died in 1990.

The Beaches Of Agnes is not a maudlin film. Varda is too much of a vital spirit to allow that. The film captures her playful side as she sails up the Seine in a boat or includes a few ruminations on sex featuring a naked man clearly excited by his naked female partner. He's so excited that an otherwise inoffensive film has been lumbered with an 18 certificate in the UK, something that must bring a wry smile to Varda's face.

Varda has visited Scotland in the past. I remember one visit that included screenings of her feminist classic L'Une Chante, L'Autre Pas/One Sings The Other Doesn't (1976). Put her in front of an audience and she radiates charm and intelligence, seducing them with a genuine interest in hearing their response to her films. One Sings charts the friendship between two women between 1962 and 1976 and how they have changed. Did the film stand the test of time, she wondered? Did it genuinely reflect the experiences of women in that period? Draping her tiny frame across the length of a cinema seat like a cosy cat, she could have kept them enthralled all evening. Well, apart from the fact that I kept giving her an electric shock every time I passed the microphone her way. Sorry, Agnes.

The Beaches Of Agnes is a constant delight, especially if you have an interest in Varda's career or a love of French cinema over the past half century. Earlier this year it won the French Cesar for Best Documentary. It is well worth checking out when it plays at the GFT this week.

Blogger: GFF C0-director Allan Hunter

glasgowfilmfest: Competition for YOU to make the GFF trailer with @CenSta - http://bit.ly/UuEBm - now open for submissions

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 06:17:22 -0700

glasgowfilmfest: Competition for YOU to make the GFF trailer with @CenSta - http://bit.ly/UuEBm - now open for submissions

glasgowfilmfest: GFF Co-Director Allan Hunter blogging on film success and failure (and the merits of An Education) - http://tinyurl.com/gffblog

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 03:09:04 -0700

glasgowfilmfest: GFF Co-Director Allan Hunter blogging on film success and failure (and the merits of An Education) - http://tinyurl.com/gffblog

An Education in Success and Failure

Glasgow Film — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 03:47:00 -0700

Thirty years ago as a student journalist I interviewed Fred Zinnemann in Port Glasgow. He was directing what would be the final film of a long and distinguished career. It was then called Maiden, Maiden but would eventually emerge as Five Days One Summer. The star was Zinnemann's old friend Sean Connery. Zinnemann was old-school Hollywood, a soft-spoken gentleman with impeccable manners. As an afternoon near the Clyde drifted by, he discussed a career that had included High Noon (1952), From Here To Eternity (1953), Oklahoma (1956), The Day Of The Jackal (1973), Julia (1977) and many others. We also touched briefly upon one of his rare misfires Beyond A Pale Horse (1964), a muddled, miscast drama set in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War. It was a box-office failure. Zinnemann recalled: " You always learn more from a failure than a success. Nobody knows why a film is successful but a failure is somehow salutary. It was only because of Behold A Pale Horse that I was able to make my next film. " The next film just happened to A Man For All Seasons (1966), a glorious adaptation of Robert Bolt's play which won six Oscars, including Best Actor for Paul Scofield and Best Director for Zinnemann.

I was reminded of that conversation earlier this week when I saw An Education, the screen version of Lynn Barber's memoir. The film is directed by Lone Scherfig who made Italian For Beginners (2000) and Wilbur Wants To Kill Himself (2002).

Scherfig's last film Hjemve (Just Like Home) (2007), was a slight, idiosyncratic ensemble comedy depicting a community in crisis. It barely surfaced beyond some random Festival appearances and it seems unlikely that anyone reading this will have had the chance to see it. Perhaps it was the failure of Just Like Home that allowed Scherfig to triumph with An Education (pictured above). She applies a very light touch to the winning story of Jenny, a sixteen year-old girl in the suburban London of the early 1960s. Her ambitious parents believe that her future lies in academic achievement and an Oxford education. Then Jenny meets the charming, debonair David, who seems to represent all her fantasies rolled into one. He is older, more worldly, with a passion for music, painting and the arts. He plays jazz, smokes cigarettes and promises to carry her off to Paris. Even her straitlaced parents are beguiled by him even although his affection for Jenny verges on Nabokov's Lolita.

Scherfig is surrounded by some wonderful collaborators on An Education and really doesn't put a foot wrong. The screenplay adaptation by Nick Hornby is witty and acute. The production designers do an admirable job of recreating the period and John De Borman floods the screen with glowing images. The casting is superb with Peter Sarsgaard blinding us to the sleaziness of David, Alfred Molina capturing all the cowardice and pomposity of Jenny's dad and notable supporting turns from Emma Thompson, Rosamund Pike and Dominic Cooper. Best of all is Carey Mulligan who gives a superbly nuanced performance as Jenny, capturing the mixture of innocence and longing in an adolescent on the brink of adult life. When she wears her hair up she even conjures up the look of Audrey Hebpurn. It is a star-making performance from a youngster destined to earn comparisons with Kate Winslet, Julie Christie and a whole raft of British greats. Lone Scherfig can look forward to a big hit film when An Education is released in Britain on October 30th. Maybe it took the salutary failure of Just Like Home to get her back on track.

Blogger: GFF Co-director Allan Hunter

glasgowfilmfest: Co-director Allan Hunter on the Toronto film fest Audience Award - http://www.glasgowfilmfestival.org.uk/blog

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 02:57:49 -0700

glasgowfilmfest: Co-director Allan Hunter on the Toronto film fest Audience Award - http://www.glasgowfilmfestival.org.uk/blog

The Winner Is Precious

Glasgow Film — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 03:32:00 -0700

Everyone knows that Audience Awards are far from perfect. We've all walked out of Film Festival screenings where people don't bother to cast their vote, nobody is there to collect the ballots or a group of devoted fans conspire to unbalance the democratic process. All these misgivings still don't detract from the amazing track record of the People's Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival over the years. In 2008, Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire received the first indication of the massive public acclaim that was to follow with the Cadillac People's Choice Prize at Toront0. Previous winners include Oscar contenders like David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises and Gavin Hood's Tsotsi.

The 2009 winner (which receives a $15,000 cheque) announced at the weekend was Precious: Based On The Novel Push by Sapphire. Precious has been one of the most talked about and admired films of the year ever since its debut at Sundance in January where it also won the Audience Prize. GFF Co-Director Allison Gardner and myself both saw it at Cannes in May and would probably rate it among the best films in the entire Festival. The main reason is because it is a film of raw emotion and you would need a heart of stone not to be moved by the plight of the central character and the astonishing quality of the performances. My colleague Mike Goodridge has rightly described it as " horribly upsetting and movingly inspirational".

The story is set in the Harlem of 1987. Claireece 'Precious' Jones is an obese teenager living a life of unspeakable hell, mostly at the mercy of her parents. Precious can neither read nor write. She is pregnant for the second time by her own father. Her mother is spite personified, using her as a convenient target for physical and mental abusive. The glory of Precious is that she does not regard herself as a victim. She is a girl with attitude who still has hopes and dreams of how different her life might be. Faced with explulsion from school, she accepts an alternative education programme and finds someone who believes in her and the slimmest chance that her life could change.

Precious features an amazing cast including Gabourey Sidibe as Precious, Paula Patton as her new teacher and Mo'Nique as a monstrous mother who has made it her mission in life to destroy the girl's self-esteem. There are smaller, well-played roles, for Mariah Carey and Lenny Kravitz. It is a gruelling film at times but one that really cuts to the heart. When Oprah Winfrey saw it she was still fighting back the tears when she contacted director Lee Daniels and his team, offering herself as an executive producer and someone who would use her celebrity to draw attention to what is a small and challenging film. True to her word, she swept into Toronto claiming all the front pages and the majority of the attention at the film's press conference.

The film is so good, so vibrant and compelling that it no longer needs Oprah to act as a cheerleader. It is winning the hearts and minds of everyone who has seen it. The Toronto award is an endorsement of how broad its appeal may be. Like Slumdog Millionaire it celebrates the triumph of the underdog. Like Slumdog it could be travelling all the way to Oscar glory.

GFF Co-director Allan Hunter in Toronto

Just A Girl Called Mary Pickford

Glasgow Film — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 03:21:00 -0700

Here's an anniversary that seems to have passed most of us by. It is 100 years since Mary Pickford made her first screen appearance. Pickford virtually invented the concept of the movie star. In her heyday she was as famous as Madonna, as beloved as Kylie and more popular than both of them put together. When she visited Russia in 1926 large swathes of the country's biggest cities came to a standstill as crowds choked the streets desperate for a glimpse of their idol in the flesh.

Pickford was born Gladys Mary Smith in Toronto and it was her home town that celebrated her career on the final day of the Toronto Film Festival with a sparsely attended screening of William Beaudine's Sparrows (1926) which suggests just how difficult it can be to attract an audience to silent cinema. The print from the Library Of Congress was in pristine condition, the sympathetic piano accompaniment was expertly handled by Gabriel Thibaudeau and the setting of the Elgin Theatre couldn't have been more atmospheric and yet the audience was strictly hardcore buffs.

Perhaps there is something about Mary that fails to attract the modern viewer. Renowned for her golden curls and wholesome image, her popularity earned her the title of America's Sweetheart and a salary that nudged $10,000 a week in 1916. She was the screen embodiment of the Victorian Miss. Seen today she seems to belong to the era of waxed moustaches, starched bonnets and dastardly villains who tied distressed damsels to the railway tracks.

Sparrows is a typical Pickford vehicle. She was 34 when she made it and her character must be all of fourteen. Molly is a kind-hearted tomboy, trapped on a grim farm in the the Louisiana swamplands where she becomes a surrogate mother to the ragamuffins being kept captive by the mean-spirited, profiteering owner. Danger lurks in every treacherous swamp and in the gleaming gnashers of some very realistic alligators but we know our angelic miss will lead them to the promised land of a new life.

Pickford's acting style is far from subtle; joy is expressed with a dance and a clap of the hands, terror conveyed with wide-eyed stares and a mopping of the brow. It is little wonder perhaps that her films seem quaint. She lacks the dramatic poise of a Lillian Gish or the sophistication of a Gloria Swanson. She doesn't beguile in the manner of Keaton's deadpan stoic or Harold Lloyd's daredevil go-getter.

Time and changing fashion have largely consigned Mary Pickford to the dusty vaults of movie history. In life she retired from the screen in 1933, aged just 41. There were always rumours of a comeback but none that came to pass. Her acting style simply didn't suit the demands of the sound era for a more realistic, naturalistic performer. She received an honorary Oscar in 1976 for her "unique contributions to the film industry and the development of film as an artistic medium". She died in 1979 and there will never be another movie star quite like her.

GFF Co-director Allan Hunter in Toronto

Colour The World With Scots

Glasgow Film — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 03:18:00 -0700

Toronto is probably the biggest Film Festival in the world. It screens more than 300 films each year and is like a colossal department store housing everything you might want from a single lightbulb to a luxury three piece suite. In film terms that means everything from experimental low-budget ventures to the latest star-studded Hollywood contenders.

Highlights from this year's Festival include the witty and surprisingly poignant Jason Reitman comedy Up In The Air with George Clooney as a corporate hatchet man criss-crossing America delivering his messages of doom and hoping to find his soul along the way. Scott (Shine) Hicks makes a strong return to form with The Boys Are Back, a sensitive Nick Hornby-style male weepie in which jet set sports journalist Clive Owen is widowed and left with the responsibility of becoming a full time parent to a boisterous, 6 year-old boy.

Fashion designer Tom Ford proved to be a natural born filmmaker with A Single Man, an accomplished adaptation of the Christopher Isherwood novel in which Colin Firth gives an unusually heartfelt performance as a gay English professor in 1960s California. Grieving the death of his lover (Matthew Goode) he spends a critical day pondering whether there are any valid reasons to go on living.

The comforting things about any major Film Festival these days is that you see Scots everywhere you look. We are a small country that produces some of the finest screen actors in the world. In Men Who Stare At Goats, Ewan McGregor holds his own against the likes of George Clooney, Jeff Bridges and Kevin Spacey in a wacky comedy about the American military's attempt to wage psychological warfare using soldiers gifted with psychic superpowers. Laura Fraser plays Clive Owen's wife in The Boys Are Back and Tilda Swinton stars in the stylish, eyecatching Italian melodrama Io Sono Amore (I Am Love) (pictured above). Best of all is the brilliant Shirley Henderson in Todd Solondz's comeback Life During Wartime in which she shines among an all-star cast playing Joy, a neurotic women haunted by the ghosts of past lovers and the lingering legacy of missed opportunities.

Given all the Scottish talent making the most of some wonderful opportunities on the world stage, Toronto leaves you wondering why there isn't a great project from a Scottish writer or director that could put their services to use on home territory.

Blogger: GFF Co-director Allan Hunter from Toronto Film Festival

glasgowfilmfest: The White Stripes documentary great. Interesting to see Jack White in a kilt.

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 12:30:16 -0700

glasgowfilmfest: The White Stripes documentary great. Interesting to see Jack White in a kilt.

glasgowfilmfest: Just on my way in to see The White Stripes documentary. Hope it's good.

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 10:43:45 -0700

glasgowfilmfest: Just on my way in to see The White Stripes documentary. Hope it's good.

glasgowfilmfest: Films are great but am loaded with a hideous cold so trying not to cough in screenings.

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 14:50:27 -0700

glasgowfilmfest: Films are great but am loaded with a hideous cold so trying not to cough in screenings.

Haneke Takes Top Honours At Cannes

Glasgow Film — Mon, 25 May 2009 03:54:00 -0700

Until Sunday night Michael Haneke had never won the Cannes Film Festival's top prize. Jury President Isabelle Huppert has starred in the Haneke films The Piano Teacher (2001) and Time Of The Wolf (2003) so it wasn't entirely unexpected that her jury would seek to remedy that situation this year by giving the Palme D'Or to Haneke's epic study of fear and malice The White Ribbon.

Cannes this year was all about celebrating the individual vision of the auteur in a global film cultural that seems more inclined towards the formulaic and industrial. Haneke is certainly a glorious example of the European auteur. The White Ribbon has echoes of Arthur Miller's The Crucible or Ibsen's An Enemy Of The People as it follows the way a community spirit is shattered by strange events, suspicions and misunderstandings on the eve of World War One. Like all of Haneke's films it makes nothing explicit, it is a brooding, enigmatic tale shot in glorious black and white in which the viewer is invited to speculate on whether this is about the loss of innocence at a moment of global catastrophe, a study of the human condition or a stark warning of what was to come in twentieth century history. I think It is a film that will continue to grow in the memory.

Haneke certainly seemed pleased with his triumph, declaring: "I can say this is a moment where I am truly happy." Jacques Audiard's brilliant crime drama A Prophet won the Grand Jury Prize with Red Road's Andrea Arnold winning her second Jury Prize for Fish Tank, a compelling but grim tale of a teenage girl whose life changes when her mother attracts a handsome, charming new boyfriend in the shape of sexy Michael Fassbender. It's the kind of film that won widespread admiration invariably followed by the comment that they can't imagine anyone paying money to see it.

The Best Actress prize for Charlotte Gainsbourg in Lars Von Trier's Anti-Christ was a big surprise although maybe it was more of a reward for enduring the hardships of that gruelling misfire than any acknowledgment of real accomplishment. Equally unexpected but rather inspired was the choice of Christoph Waltz as Best Actor for Quentin Tarantino's The Inglorious Basterds. He certainly stole the film with a mesmerising portrait of the blithe, chilling Nazi Colonel Hans Landa.

Big cheers too for the special prize given to 87 year-old Alain Resnais whose bizarre screwball comedy Wild Grass seemed to provide vast amusement for French colleagues in the audiences whilst leaving the Brits and other nationalities completely baffled. It is made with such verve and charm that you are almost persuaded to forgive Resnais his eccentricities and if it is his final film then it's not a bad way to end a career.

Blogger: GFF Co-director Allan Hunter in Cannes

The Basterds Are Coming

Glasgow Film — Thu, 21 May 2009 07:42:00 -0700

Wednesday was a perfect Cannes day. Blues skies. Shimmering seas. Piercing sunlight as soon as dawn broke yet by 8am some 2,300 journalists had filled the Lumiere cinema eagerly anticipating the world’s first press screening of Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds. The demand to see the film was so intense that an extra screening was added at 9am to accommodate 400 more journalists. The film itself is…pretty entertaining and borderline offensive depending on your feelings about how seriously cinema should address the legacy of World War Two. In Tarantino’s case WW2 is the inspiration for a big cartoon of a movie fantasy in which an elite unit of vicious Jewish-American soldiers use the power of cinema (quite literally) to stop the Third Reich. It bears no resemblance to history as we know it and has more of a feel of a spaghetti war movie (lots of borrowed Morricone music on the soundtrack) or as Screen International colleague Mike Goodridge dubbed it Kill Adolf, Parts 1 & 2. It feels as if Tarantino has written some great individual scenes (or chapters as they are called in the film) but doesn’t necessarily stitch them together in an entirely satisfying manner. Great roles for Diane Kruger and Melanie Laurent. A ridiculous appearance from Mike Myers as a tally ho British officer who is much too Austin Powers to take seriously. A few brief moments from Aussie veteran Rod Taylor ( The Time Machine, The Birds etc) as Winston Churchill. Michael Fassbender as a terribly stiff upper lip British hero. Brad Pitt disappointingly dull as Lt Aldo Raine-although lighting up the evening premiere with Angelina. Not as much action as the trailer might make you think but lots and lots of Tarantino dialogue and good Saturday night fun but somehow you can’t see it winning any prizes.

Many of us thought that Michael Haneke’s latest The White Ribbon might be a strong Palme D’Or contender but after seeing it I’m not so sure. It is set in a small German village in 1913 and looks absolutely beautiful-gorgeous black and white images, snowy scenes straight from Ansell Adams. As with all Haneke films there is an unsettling atmosphere as the soul of the village appears to be contaminated. The children turn rebellious there are incidents and accidents, jealousy and malice. Everything is soured and yet nothing is explained. It could just be a reflection of human nature as the world lost it’s innocence in the last months before World War 1 or an indication of what was to come in the Germany of the 1930s. Everything is open to interpretation but after 150 minutes you really want more than ambiguity.

A few brief words on some other highlights from the competition titles-Ken Loach’s Looking For Eric is extremely funny and endearing as a despairing postie receives life lessons from the great Eric Cantona (“ I am not a man, I am Cantona” ). Well worth catching at the GFT next month as is the appearance from screenwriter Paul Laverty in early June. Pedro Almodovar and Penelope Cruz are reunited on the luscious melodrama Broken Embraces - a complex, assured slice of gornw-up filmmaking. I’ve tended to give Lars Von Trier the benefit of the doubt in the past but Anti-Christ convinces you it’s time for the padded cell and the pureed food. An intellectual’s idea of torture porn, it is extremely unpalatable complete with full frontal genital mutilation. Artificial Eye have bought it for the UK and we can only wish them the best of luck.

Blogger: GFF Co-director Allan Hunter in Cannes

Cannes Do Spirit

Glasgow Film — Mon, 18 May 2009 03:18:00 -0700

It is shaping up to be a pretty vintage Cannes with an abundance of good movies in most sections of the Festival. It is sixteen years since Jane Campion won the Palme d’Or here for The Piano and her films since then have often been very disappointing but she is right back on form with Bright Star, a beautifully crafted and ultimately very moving account of the tragic love between the poet Keats and his neighbour Fanny. It looks fantastic and has the kind of performance from Abbie Cornish that is already attracting Oscar buzz as they say. Also in the main competition is the brilliant A Prophet from Jacques Audiard, the man who gave us The Beat That My Heart Skipped. Imagine Prison Break crossed with an Alexandre Dumas novel like The Count Of Monte Cristo and you have the pulse of this gripping crime drama in which a petty criminal is sentenced to six years in prison and becomes embroiled in the turf disputes of warring inmates that he learns to survive and master. It is an incredible piece of storytelling on a par with Gomorrah and Optimum have bought it for the UK which makes it one to watch out for. Many other highlights include Mother from The Host director Bong Joon-Ho an epic tale of crime and a mother’s love that plays like a mixture of Miss Marple crime-solving and Almodovar melodrama. Completely compelling for a 140 minute running time. Also fantastic is Precious, the story of a very large, very sullen 16 year-old black girl who has suffered terrible abuse at the hands of her father and mother but rather than seeing herself as a victim she knows that she is a beautiful, wonderful person and sets out to take on the world. A glib sentence doesn’t do justice to the emotional power, daring and toughness of a film that deserves a huge audience. Disappointments include Ang Lee’s mild-mannered Taking Woodstock with Imelda Staunton channeling the spirit of the late Shelley Winters in an overwrought performance as an embittered Jewish momma and Johnnie To’s hilariously bad Vengeance, a kind of Death Wish Does Hong Kong in which French idol Johnny Hallyday (looking all of 112) sets out to avenge the Triad killing of his grandchildren and son-in-law even though he has a bullet in his brain and is fast loosing his memory. Probably a blessing if he ever had to sit through this codswallop. With a bit of luck we can avoid that stinker for the Glasgow Film Festival and continue to seek out the cream of the crop.

GFF Co-director Allan Hunter, in Cannes.

image: Jacques Audiard's A Prophet

The Only Way Is Up At Cannes

Glasgow Film — Thu, 14 May 2009 03:09:00 -0700

Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images

A grumpy old man has become the first big star of this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Carl Fredricksen may be 78 years old and computer generated but he had critics applauding wildly after a screening of the Festival’s opening night film Up. The tenth feature from Pixar , the studio behind Toy Story and Monsters Inc, is the first animated feature to ever open the world’s most important film festival. Ed (Lou Grant) Asner provides the voice of the retired balloon salesman who finds a new lease of life when he ties thousands of balloons to his house and flies away to the wilds of South America. He is joined by eight-year old stowaway Kevin, a perky Wilderness Explorer whose wild enthusiasm is a complete contrast to Carl’s crotchety demeanour. “ I’m a sucker for sentimentality, “ claims Asner. “ The film has something to say about celebrating life, and the union of two souls is always much sweeter than the isolation of one.” Up will open in Britain in the autumn and was set to delight a celebrity audience at a red carpet opening night gala where Bryan Ferry paid musical tribute to 84 year-old French chansonnier Charles Aznavour who provides the voice of Carl in the French language version of Up. British hopes in the Festival rest on romantic drama The Fish Tank and the latest Ken Loach film Looking For Eric in which a British postman and dedicated football fan receive lessons in life from Eric Cantona.

Blogger: GFF Co-director Allan Hunter

Glasgow Film Festival 2009 Highlights

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 05:27:56 -0700

GFF09 is now over. Thank you to everyone who made it the success that it has been. We're still waiting for the final figures but it looks like we'll have exceeded 25,000 admissions over the course of the festival. We've had some great guests and brilliant audiences. We'll also be planning some events throughout the year so please sign up for the e-mailing list on the left and be the first to hear from us.

And finally, a date for your diaries: GFF10 will run from 18 - 28 February 2010.

Glasgow Film Festival

glasgowfilmfest: Tickets for Goblin are now on sale! This years first music and film event. exciting times! tickets here - http://ow.ly/DGCl

Cary at the BAFTA's

Cary at the BAFTA's

Cary at the BAFTA's

Cary at the BAFTA's

Cary at the BAFTA's

Cary at the BAFTA's

Cary at the BAFTA's

Cary at the BAFTA's

Cary at the BAFTA's

Cary at the BAFTA's

Cary at the BAFTA's

glasgowfilmfest: RT @glasgowfilm So - we've been shortlisted for a Golden Twit Award for twittering - we'd love it if you voted for us! http://bit.ly/1KS3nK

Cary at the BAFTA's

Cary at the BAFTA's

Cary at the BAFTA's

Cary at the BAFTA's

Cary at the BAFTA's

Cary at the BAFTA's

Cary at the BAFTA's

Cary at the BAFTA's

Cary at the BAFTA's

glasgowfilmfest: GFF trailer (in conjunction with @CenSta and supported by DCM) has gone into production - read more: http://bit.ly/von4d

glasgowfilmfest: RT @gff_youth It's all GO GO GO at GYFF! Trailer will be ready soon and programme will be finalised in the next few weeks...Stay tuned.

glasgowfilmfest: Almost ready for the new GFF site to go live! Testing testing testing... #GFF

glasgowfilmfest: If you're here that is...

glasgowfilmfest: We've got Cary Grant at the BAFTAs - come and say hello! #baftascotland

Remembering Eustache

glasgowfilmfest: Alison and I having lunch with Tom at Warners Brothers, sussing out possible titles for GFF 10, already spotted Dame Dench herself and one o

The Greatest Films Never Made

glasgowfilmfest: GFF's Allan Hunter on the greatest films never made: http://bit.ly/3BT7qg

glasgowfilmfest: @lizthrilla - we'll be announcing the GFF programme in January. Tickets go on sale on 21st.

glasgowfilmfest: RT @CenSta And they're off! See who's been shortlisted to produce the Festival Trailer + what they're creating http://bit.ly/GFFTrail

glasgowfilmfest: GFF Co-Director Allan Hunter announces GFF10 retrospective of Cary Grant! Read GFF blog to find out more - http://bit.ly/2hJYgB

GFF 2010: It's A Boy!

How low is your budget? How good is your film?

Pigs, Eels and Insects

glasgowfilmfest: Requesting an invite for Tweetboard Alpha (http://tweetboard.com) by @140ware, for my site: http://www.glasgowfilmfestival.org.uk

glasgowfilmfest: Allan Hunter on The Beaches of Agnes on GFF blog - http://bit.ly/1P7LOZ

Agnes A La Plage

glasgowfilmfest: Competition for YOU to make the GFF trailer with @CenSta - http://bit.ly/UuEBm - now open for submissions

glasgowfilmfest: GFF Co-Director Allan Hunter blogging on film success and failure (and the merits of An Education) - http://tinyurl.com/gffblog

An Education in Success and Failure

glasgowfilmfest: Co-director Allan Hunter on the Toronto film fest Audience Award - http://www.glasgowfilmfestival.org.uk/blog

The Winner Is Precious

Just A Girl Called Mary Pickford

Colour The World With Scots

glasgowfilmfest: The White Stripes documentary great. Interesting to see Jack White in a kilt.

glasgowfilmfest: Just on my way in to see The White Stripes documentary. Hope it's good.

glasgowfilmfest: Films are great but am loaded with a hideous cold so trying not to cough in screenings.

Haneke Takes Top Honours At Cannes

The Basterds Are Coming

Cannes Do Spirit

The Only Way Is Up At Cannes

Glasgow Film Festival 2009 Highlights

Modeselektor live at the Arches

The Age Of Stupid with Director Franny Armstrong

'The Daisy Chain' With Director Aisling Walsh and Actress Mhairi Anderson

Last Chance Harvey: GFF Closing Gala '09

Infinite Space with Director Murray Grigor

One Day Removals with Director Mark Stirton

Who Killed Nancy with Director Alan G. Parker

Comfort And Joy with Bill Paterson and Clare Grogan

Valentino: The Last Emperor

Anvil! The Story of Anvil

An Iolaire

Childless with Director Charlie Levi

Q&A with Jodie Whittaker

Glasgow Shorts Film Festival Opening Night

New Town Killers with Richard Jobson and James Anthony Pearson

Goran and Mr Paul

Remembering Mary Gordon

GFF Opening Gala '09 - In The Loop

Is Anybody There? with Director John Crowley

Robin Hood with live ukulele

Nosferatu with live music by David Allison

Shorts Extra: Toggle

Who Do You Think She Is?

Shorts Extra: Christmas With Dad