Glasgow, I Love You
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 thread of the evening and its greatest strength.
The opener, Louis Paxton's Fool Proof, was potentially the broadest (not to mention the widest) comedy. Starring the director alongside Neil Bratchpiece (sometimes known as The Wee Man) and Paddy Kondracki as a trio of intermittently convincing neds whose plan to execute a robbery fails foul thanks to the general ineptitude of the gang, the film succeeded on its own terms and made everybody laugh.
Aaron McLaughlin's minimalist document Four Mile Bike Ride focussed on the awkward conversation between an old German woman and a young Scottish man, neither of whom have a particularly firm grasp on the other's language. As the discussion over a potential procurement - of a set of stairs? - falters and the young man's spirited but doomed attempt at successfully speaking German dissipates, the effect is a humorous consideration of human communication, small but perfectly formed. Points off for the "your" instead of "you're" in the subtitles - or was that a deliberate comment on the unreliability of language?
Andy Dow's Waste Art was a funny and well-poised satire on cultural pretension that managed to be incisive but not too impressed with its own cleverness - always a problem when commenting on the art world when you're actually in it. Featuring a painter, a musician, a poet and performance artists demonstrating and expounding the new theory of Waste Art, where the work is nonsensical and disposable because, amongst other declarations, we as a race are a waste of space. It's deadpan, articulate and hilarious, but works most because the vapidity of the theory and its adherents belie the heart and intelligence of the creative team behind the film.
Gillian Park's Ghost Story was an elegant rendition of a rather vanilla romance between a young woman recently single and what seemed to be the ghost of a 1940s serviceman. The performances were subtle, the tone was balanced and the film nicely undercut early audience expectations of more traditional spooky residence action, even if the results were a bit more Laura Ashley than Laura Mars.
Überman, directed by Eamonn Jones of RSAMD, closed the show and was a standout thanks to its dry humour and rough but effective style. In fact, the direction and the editing stood out in their irregularity - by eschewing a more standardised and polished approach, the filmmakers have skipped straight past the idea of aping standard mainstream fare and have begun to carve themselves a more distinctive path. The gonzo approach to costume design, set design and props compliments the straight delivery of the lean script and leaves you wanting more.
Which is great, because all of the contributors to the evening display nothing if not potential. The programme isn't screening again during the festival, but some of the films can be found online and Big Screen Glasgow show a film every Tuesday night in the Art School's Vic Bar, preceded by student shorts. It's free to all, students or otherwise. The Cut! Filmmaking Society also meets regularly and is open to all students with an interest in collaborative filmmaking.
Sean Welsh
Film Festival Blogger
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Comments (2)
"Points off for the "your" instead of "you're" in the subtitles"
That's a pro-subtitlers' critique right there.
It's a fair cop.