Produced by The Skinny magazine in association with the Glasgow Film Festival

Editors Jamie Dunn Becky BartlettDesigner Mark TolsonDigital David McGintyC

INE

THE OFFICIALDAILY GUIDE

FRIDAY 25 FEBRUARY

WHAT’S INSIDE?

GFF BOX OFFICEOrder tickets from the box office atwww.glasgowfilmfestival.org.uk

or call0141 332 6535

or visitGlasgow Film Theatre12 Rose Street, Glasgow, G3 6RB

info@glasgowfilmfestival.org.uk

2 » PICKS OF THE DAY Highlights of day eight at GFF 2011

2 » INTERVIEW: TORSTEN LAUCHSMANN The Margaret Tait Award winner discusses his specially commissioned work for the GFF 3 » REVIEWS You Instead Battle Royale 3D Contemporary Days

4 » WHAT’S NEW ONLINE The latest news, comments and pictures from the festival

4 » COMPETITIONWin two tickets to see Qim-mit: A Clash of Two Truths, a documentary investigating the mystery surrounding the disappearance of the Inuit’s sled dog population, by answering this simple question courtesy of the lovely people at Quotables

SPONSORS

GUERILLA FILM-MAKER IN OUR MIDSTWarm Tennents lager, tent sex and The Proclaimers singing “I’m Gonna Be

(500 miles)” with 85,000 backing singers; All familiar to those who make the

annual pilgrimage to Kinross for T in the Park. DAVID MACKENZIE brings

this festival experience to the GFF with You Instead. Words: JAMIE DUNN

David Mackenzie, the award winning director of Hallam Foe and Young Adam, cuts a rather unassuming figure. Meeting him for the first time you might guess he’s in accounting or academia – a geography professor, perhaps. What you don’t expect is a guerilla film-maker knee deep in mud amidst the hedonistic throng of T in the Park. But find him there you would, as last summer he took a crew of eighty to Kinross to film You Instead, a romantic comedy-cum-concert film that’s as energetic and riotous as Scotland’s flagship music festival itself. “I think that’s what makes the film what it is – the festival becomes part of the character of the movie. To me, anyway, that’s what I’m most proud of: it really does capture the essence of what it’s like to be at a big music festival.”

How was it shooting a low-budget, independent film with enough extras to make Cecil B. DeMille blush? “In many ways it has the biggest production values I’ve ever had, but because we decided to shoot it entirely on location during the festival it was over very quickly, so we had to cram a lot into

our four and a half days filming.” He confesses, however, that he was ner-vous about the undertaking: “Initially it seemed impossible. To shoot a feature in that time frame seemed completely crazy – it was a lesson in how to do it in a way. That’s what made it so much fun to make – being able to see an opportunity and just take it, to go with the flow and just take advantage of the magic that the environment gave to us.”

This must have been quite a culture shock for a director who’s used to the general inertia around filmmaking – the constant waiting around for blocking, lighting, shot setup etc – particularly as his most recent film, the Ashton Kutcher-starring Spread, was made in Hollywood. “It was invigorating to have that much freedom, to be able to think on my feet that fast and almost to be operating in thinking time as opposed to the usual machinations of film-making. There’s just something incredibly jazz about it”.

You Instead has its world premiere tonight at 19.30 @ Cineworld, Renfrew Street

CINE

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HOLES WHERE THE HEART IS

With less than a month to go before the premiere and only screening of his site-specific commission at Glasgow Film Festival, Torsten Lauschmann is deep in the making process. At the Heart of Everything a Row of Holes is a continuation of his interest in the origins of modern technologies. It be-gan, he says, as a logical progression from making video projections that are more like paintings than traditional rectangular, single-screen films, to us-ing a massive £30,000 projector with a moving head – “it looks like something from a Terminator film” – that will make use of the whole auditorium at Glasgow Film Theatre.

At the centre of the film is the self-playing piano – the late nineteenth cen-tury innovation that, for writer William Gaddis, American novelist and essay-ist, epitomised all that was evil about the rapid mechanisation of society. After a lifelong obsession he eventually published a book, which Lauschmann shows to me now. “It’s about how you don’t have to learn to play the piano. You can just buy a piano roll that’s playing perfectly – that kind of instant gratification,” he explains of Gaddis’ theory. “He wrote it the year before he died, so it’s like he’s losing his mind within it, which I quite like. He is a bit of a grumpy old man.”

There will be a player piano in the GFT along with the projection, the keys playing to coincide with what’s happening on the screen. An untrained but enthusiastic pianist – the artist’s seven year-old son – may also perform for the film, “if he’s up for it.” Lauschmann has been down to the GFT and marked out the areas and architectural features that he wants to project onto.

“It’s going to be interesting to see how it works because it’s such a formal environment. If you do it in a gallery, people have less rigid expecta-tions about what’s going to happen. It’s funny, when you enter the cinema the lights go off and the curtains open, and that signals the beginning.” In fact, the interior, design, and warmth have already signalled the start of

the cinematic experience, an effect that Lauschmann wants to extend in a soundscape. “Maybe when you enter the cinema, there’s already sound playing,” he muses. “Maybe it continues at the end, and you leave while it’s still on.”

Known for work that exists in differ-ent forms and on multiple platforms, screening the film at Glasgow Film Festival is hardly a prospect to unnerve Lauschmann. But how strongly do the audience figure in his thoughts when he’s making work? “I usually don’t think about the audience, really. Not in an obvious kind of way. I guess I’m the audience. I dunno if I’m a good audi-ence; I have a short attention span.” He reflects on this. “That’s probably quite a good thing.”

Perhaps the art audience in general has a short attention span, I suggest. “It gets shorter all the time!” He laughs. “What I said about the sound and walking into the cinema, it is quite a selfish thing because I want to work out for myself, how does it feel? And I

hope that somebody else will say, ‘oh yeah, what does that do?’ Obviously, on a subconscious level, you do think about what something can mean.”

Maybe it’s the grasp of a work that has only a few weeks before airing, but Lauschmann seems to be constantly probing, thinking about what things might mean. He passes me a DVD that inspires him, First Contact, about 1930s explorers trekking to Papua New Guinea to look for gold. In his favourite scene, a native tribesman sports a Kellogg’s Shredded Wheat packet left by the visitors on his head as a symbol of power. “Suddenly the meaning is totally lost and reversed,” he explains. “It’s an illusion that you can fix meaning. Discourse is only possible if you limit it through language and culture, but art doesn’t really work that way… It doesn’t let you off the hook from making meaningful work, though. It just says you can only do what you feel is right in this particular moment, and hope that it resonates – now, or later, or at all.”

COMIC CAMP 11: COMICS, GAMING AND THE FILM INDUSTRY 11.00 @ CCA Ideal for anyone interested in gam-ing, publishing and related industries, the two-part event includes a discus-sion about the current blurring of the boundaries between the mediums.

LITTLE DEATHS 18.30 @ GFTFrightFest’s first film, a series of three shorts, will be introduced by direc-tors Sean Hogan, Simon Rumley and Andrew Parkinson, who will be joined by actors Kate Braithwaite (Waking the Dead) and Tom Sawyer (Vinyl, Hollyoaks) for a Q&A following the screening.

GOBLIN19.00 @ ARCHES The iconic band, best known for providing the soundtracks for many of Dario Argento’s horror classics, including Susperia and Profondo Rosso, will be performing music from these films and others.

PEARLS ON THE OCEAN FLOOR 19.00 @ CCA Director Robert Adanto will be attending the screening of his documentary about Iranian female artists and the challenges they face in their country. Adanto will be both introducing his film and staying for a Q&A session afterwards.

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TODAY’S

PICKSWinner of the inaugural Margaret Tait Award in 2010, TORSTEN LAUSCHMANN invited JAC MANTLE to his studio for an insight into his forthcoming screening at Glasgow Film Festival 2011. Words: JAC MANTLE

FRIDAY 25 FEBRUARY THE CINESKINNY 3 WWW.THESKINNY.CO.UK

REVIEWSYOU INSTEADDirector: Dave MackenzieStarring: Luke Treadaway, Natalia Tena & Gavin Mitchell

You Instead attempts to

capture the sights, sounds, and smells of Britain’s most ram-bunctious music festival, T in the Park. For the most part, it’s successful. The film centres on a will they, won’t they, (of course they will), relationship between Adam (Treadaway), the cocksure, skinny jeans-wearing frontman of electronic two-piece The Make, and Morello (Tena), keyboard player for punchy, punky girl band The Dirty Pinks. There’s a palpable chemistry between the pair, on screen and on stage – both more than convince as rock

stars. Embracing the chaos of the festival, the direction is loose and inventive as we follow the two bands and their entourage through 48hrs of flirting, fight-ing, partying and performing. Mackenzie’s film is not perfect – one performance is so broad and big that it almost unbalances the second act – but when it works it’s electric: an improvised mash-up of Tainted Love, a mud-caked shower and a murky sunrise with a choir of seagulls being three of the film’s many transcendent moments.

[Jamie Dunn]

BATTLE ROYALE 3DDirector: Kinji FukasakuStarring: ‘Beat’ Takeshi, Tat-suya Fujiwara & Aki Maeda

K i n j i F u k u s a k u ’s b l o o d -

t h i r s t y t e e n k i l l e r s c l a s -s i c , B a t t l e R o y a l e , i s b a c k , b u t t h i s t i m e t h e s p l a t t e r a n d g o r e w i l l b e f l y i n g o u t o f t h e s c r e e n a s w e l l a s a c r o s s i t , a s i t c o m e s t o t h e G F F i n r e t r o f i t t e d 3 D t o c e l e b r a t e i t s t e n t h a n -n i v e r s a r y . S e t i n t h e n e a r f u t u r e , a f t e r J a p a n h a s g o n e t h r o u g h s o m e f o r m o f s o c i e t a l c o l l a p s e , a c l a s s o f t e e n a g e r s f i n d t h a t t h e i r s c h o o l t r i p h a s t a k e n a d r a s t i c t u r n f o r t h e w o r s e . T h e y a r e i n f o r m e d b y t h e i r e m b i t t e r e d f o r m e r t e a c h -e r ( Ta k e s h i K i t a n o ) t h a t “ t o d a y ’s l e s s o n i s y o u k i l l e a c h o t h e r o f f ”.

T h e y h a v e e n t e r e d t h e w o r l d o f B a t t l e R o y a l e , a g o v e r n m e n t - o r g a n i s e d f i g h t t o t h e d e a t h o n a d e s e r t e d i s l a n d , f r o m w h i c h t h e l a s t s u r v i v o r w i l l e m e r g e t o a h e r o ’s w e l c o m e f r o m a n e x p e c t a n t n a t i o n . W h a t f o l -l o w s i s a u n s e t t l i n g m i x o f s h o c k i n g v i o l e n c e , i n a p -p r o p r i a t e c o m e d y, a d o -l e s c e n t r o m a n c e a n d p u l p p h i l o s o p h y , a l l s e t t o a l u s h s c o r e o f p o p u l a r c l a s s i c s . B a f f l i n g a n d u n f o r g e t t a b l e .

[ K e i r R o p e r - C a l d b e c k ]

L o n g b e fo r e I ke a b r o ke d o w n a n d f l a t - p a c ke d m o d e r n i s m fo r t h e m a s s e s , R o b i n a n d L u c i e n n e D ay w e r e h a r d a t w o r k d e s i g n -i n g t h e fo u n d a t i o n s o f w h a t n o w s e e m s c o m m o n p l a c e . M u r r ay G r i g o r ’s C o n te m p o -r a r y D ay s t a ke s a g o r g e o u s l o o k a t t h e i c o n i c h u s b a n d a n d w i fe t e a m’s i n n o v a t i ve f u r n i t u r e a n d te x t i l e s w i t h a m i n i m a l i s m t h a t , l i ke t h e

c o u p l e , i s m u t u a l l y c o m -p l i m e n t a r y. L u c i e n n e w i t h h e r g i f t fo r p a t te r n , w a n te d to b r i n g c o l o u r b a c k to p o s t - w a r t e x t i l e s a n d s a w h e r w o r k a s f i n e a r t . R o b i n d e m o n s t r a b l y e xc e l l e d i n p r o b l e m - s o l v i n g , b r i n g i n g a n e w b e a u t y w i t h i n f u n c t i o n -a l , a f fo r d a b l e 3 D fo r m . A s m u c h a s w e l o ve g e t t i n g l o s t i n t h e a e s t h e t i c s o f s h o w s l i ke M a d M e n , i t r e a l l y d o e s

fe e l s p e c i a l l o o k i n g b a c k a t t h e r e a l t h i n g , e s p e c i a l l y w h e n v i s u a l l y to l d w i t h t h e s i m p l i s t i c e l e g a n c e a n d l a c k o f p r e te n c e o f i t s s o f t l y m u te d s u b j e c t m a t te r. C o n te m p o r a r y D ay s r e s o -n a te s m o s t e m ot i ve l y i n i t s r e p r e s e n t a t i o n o f a f a m i l y e n te r p r i s e , w h i c h b r i n g s g o o s e b u m p s to t h e s k i n a n d a p r i c k l e to t h e e ye .

[ J u l i e t B u c h a n]

CONTEMPORARY DAYSDirector: Murray Grigor

QUIZ TIME

WHAT’S NEW ONLINE?FRIGHTFESTCheck out FrightFest’s website for listings of what’s showing today and tomorrow.

http://bit.ly/FrightFest-GFF

INCENDIESFestival blogger Yasmin Ali takes a look at Oscar nominated, Incendies showing tonight @ 20.45 and Saturday @ 13.15.

http://bit.ly/GFFIncendies

MALCOLM RENNIE IN BALIBOThe Daily Record have conducted an interview with Margaret Wilson and Sue Andel, cousins of Scottish journalist Malcolm Rennie on whom Robert Connolly’s Balibo is based. (Saturday, 18.00 at GFT)

http://bit.ly/RecordBalibo

REINVENTING THE RULESThe Herald’s Alison Rowat interviews Archipelago

director Joanna Hogg ahead of its GFF screen-ing. (Sunday, 18.15)

http://bit.ly/HoggGFF

ROUTE LOACHMichael MacLennan doesn’t like Ken Loach’s Route Irish, read why at STV.tv.

http://bit.ly/RouteLoach

Search ‘SkinnyFilm’ to find us on Facebook and tweet us your thoughts @SkinnyFilm

PIC OF THE DAY

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Download your FREE Glasgow Guide iPhone appNOW INCLUDING WHAT’S ON LISTINGS

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GIVEAWAY:

Qimmit: A Clash of Two Truths

Feb 26, 13.00 - CCA

Qimmit: A Clash of Two Truths explores the mystery of how and why sled dogs disappeared from Inuit culture, a mystery that has left deep wounds across Canada’s Arctic. To win tickets to see it at GFF, simply answer the question following our quotable clue:

“Sometimes you have to lie. One often has to distort a thing to catch its true spirit.” — Robert J. Flaherty

Complete the name of this 1922 silent documentary about a fam-ily in the Canadian Arctic: “______ of the North”.

Email jamie@theskinny.co.uk by 10am on Friday 25 Feb to enter.

Alan McGee arrives at the red carpet for Upside Down.

@WESTENDTHEBESTPersonal faves so far @glasgowfilmfest Point Blank & Little White Lies. Gilles Lellouche brilliant in both. Off to Balibo tonight

@DOBOWORTHShouldn’t really be look-ing forward to Battle Royale 3D as much as I am #gff11

WHAT DIDYOU THINK?

We collected six of the best tweets from Twitter❝

❞@TALLYYHOGot the (crap) Disney chan-nel on TV and am planning to go to Asda. What I want to do is get on that train to Glasgow. #gff11 Bum.

@PHOTOHILLMark Millar was amazing today at cca #Glasgowfilm-festival. if you get a chance see him. he is very funny and inspirational

@QUIETTRICKSTERRoute Irish: Grim and typi-cally unflinching, masterful work from Ken Loach. @glasgowfilmfest

@YOISHO56RT @just_56 13 assassins was @glasgowfilmfest surprise film tonight. Damn good viewing, cheers!

Pho

to: S

tuart Craw

ford

Here’s the GFF daily

quotable:

“Al l i t takes is one idea - the r ight idea - to change every thing.”

— Mark Mi l lar

ht tp://qtbl.es/fnsMXH

V is it Quotables to see many more GFF quotes as the festival goes on: ht tp://qtbl.es/glasgowfi lm