48 minute read
Our autumn Screen Special
Screen Culture
Remember those 18 months when the only way we could engage with culture, society and our loved ones was through screens? That dystopian nightmare is hopefully behind us, but that doesn’t mean screen culture has gone anywhere. Over the next few pages we take the pulse of screen culture here in Scotland by exploring the health of the Scottish documentary, animation, television and artists’ moving image scenes. We also celebrate film festivals returning to brick and mortar venues again, and get excited for the future of blockbuster filmmaking by looking at the career of talented Quebecois director Denis Villeneuve ahead of the release of his sci-fi epic Dune. Ready your peepers and get comfortable, we’re about to add a whole mess of titles to your watchlist.
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What’s Up Doc?
Scottish documentary appears in rude health. We speak to some of the emerging voices in this nurturing doc scene to get a flavour of what makes it so vibrant and discover what’s been enabling this success
Interview: Rohan Crickmar
For a small nation with an increasingly distinct cultural space within the British film industry, Scotland has had peaks and troughs of production. But in terms of documentary, the volume, diversity and reach of its output has steadily grown over the last two decades. Production companies like Hopscotch (John Archer), Lansdowne (Nick Higgins) and Aconite (Aimara Reques) have had award-winning success with titles like The Story of Film: An Odyssey (2011), A Massacre Foretold (2007) and Aquarela (2018). The documentary scene in Scotland has also received international recognition, with established figures like Amy Hardie (The Edge of Dreaming), Sue Bourne (Jig) and Mark Cousins (I Am Belfast) regulars on the international festival circuit. So what has been enabling this growth? And who are some of the new generation of doc makers who have made Scotland their home?
Institutional support and internationalism Alastair Cole’s Iorram and Cindy Jansen’s Prince of Muck are among this year’s most vital Scottish docs. The former – the first entirely Gaelic-language documentary feature – is an innovative look at the Hebridean fishing communities and their relationship to the sea, and blends contemporary filmed footage by Cole and his small team with carefully selected use of an oral archive going back to the 1930s. New Zealand-born Cole has been working in Scotland since 2008 and straddles the line between academia and filmmaking, a route that makes it possible for many creative documentarians to make a living while working the lengthy periods necessary to complete such films. For Cole, the support of Adam Dawtrey at Bofa Productions, based in Stirling, was crucial, as too was backing from Screen Scotland, the body that allocates screen funding within Creative Scotland.
Prince of Muck, meanwhile, tells the story of Lawrence MacEwen and his stewardship of the titular small island off Scotland’s west coast. It’s typical of the internationalism of Scotland’s documentary scene: director Jansen is Dutch, and it’s co-produced by René Goossens of Dutch production house De Productie and Grant Keir from Edinburgh-based Faction North. A real hallmark of Faction North’s production work is their ability to find the right creative partnerships for the projects they work with, maintaining strong links with London and increasingly looking further afield for possible co-production opportunities. For example, Keir is currently producing Off the Rails, a coming-of-age doc directed by English filmmaker Rob Alexander (Gary Numan: Android in La La Land). This outward-looking nature of the contemporary Scottish documentary scene has undoubtedly been shaped by the expertise, training and support offered to filmmakers by the Scottish Documentary Institute (SDI). Founded by Noé Mendelle in 2004 to “nurture documentary filmmakers and audiences in Scotland and beyond”, the SDI has become a focal point for encouraging documentary making throughout Scotland. Yearround, the SDI offers training, masterclasses, networking opportunities and distribution support and has created a number of initiatives including Bridging the Gap, the Edinburgh Pitch, Right Here and, most recently, the New Voices development programme for women and non-binary filmmakers.
New talent and community For Flore Cosquer, the Head of Talent Development at SDI, offering greater accessibility to early career training and development is key. This ambition to open up and demystify the industry extends to New Voices and the 50/50+ Women
Cow with Calf on Beach , Prince of Muck
Black, Black Oil
Direct(ory), which directly address the imbalance between the number of men and women getting opportunities to direct their own documentary projects. Cosquer also wonders if we shouldn’t be having a more open conversation about the ways in which we support creative artists, looking toward emerging US models that are beginning to shift away from project-led support towards a greater investment in individuals developing and sustaining film careers. A crucial first step on the doc making ladder has been facilitated by Bridging the Gap, which has been running for nearly two decades now. For Glasgow-based doc maker Hannah Currie the scheme literally “filled a gap” in her career, enabling her to complete a very personal short documentary, That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore, that went on to have a huge international festival release and walked away with the BAFTA Scotland award for Best Short Film. Alongside this SDI-supported development opportunity, Currie also describes the launch of BBC Scotland in 2019 as “an absolute game-changer for establishing myself as a documentary filmmaker.” Her graduation project We’re All Here was picked up by the BBC Scotland New Talent Scheme and developed into a half-hour film that aired on the channel in May 2019. Currie has continued this relationship with the channel and is currently in the process of editing an hour-long doc about a Glasgow talent agency and the various hopefuls it handles. “Scotland is overflowing with characters and stories that need to be filmed,” Currie enthuses. In the heart of Edinburgh’s northside, we can find Melt the Fly, a dynamic new documentary production company started by childhood friends Austen McCowan and Will Hewitt. Like Currie, they view the arrival of BBC Scotland as offering “opportunities to move things up in our careers.” Similarly, their short film Sink or Skim (2019) was commissioned by Louise Thornton as part of the New Talent Scheme that had developed Currie’s We’re All Here. In the space of three years, despite two of those being heavily interrupted by COVID, McCowan and Hewitt have managed to produce three high-quality short films and are about to launch their feature doc debut, Long Live My Happy Head. McCowan and Hewitt suggest that compared to London, Edinburgh is a smaller pond to operate within as a creative. For them, there is a tighter sense of community in their little corner of Leith, with Freakworks (a post-production house), Bloc Collective (a filmmakers collective) and Studio Something (the production company behind A View from the Terrace and Scary Adult Things) all a few minutes walk from one another. “There is a sense that the first steps into filmmaking are a little easier in Scotland and there are more opportunities for independents like ourselves,” they say. That said, they still perceive a gap between the industry side of things and the distribution and exhibition side of things within Scotland: “films generally need more assistance getting out into the world,” they note.
Making that first feature Underpinning so much of what is happening in documentary in Scotland at the moment is Screen Scotland’s continued support for documentary creation. Thanks to Screen Scotland “we are at a point in the development of documentary in Scotland where creative documentary is on everyone’s lips,” says Cosquer. But how do you build on the progress and successes of the last few years? Sonja Henrici is an Edinburgh-based producer, originally from Bavaria. She has worked in the film industry in Scotland since 1999, first at EIFF and then as a co-director of the SDI until 2020. Her slate currently includes BBC Scotlandsupported title Black, Black Oil, which explores Scotland’s complex relationship with North Sea oil, and a documentary from London-based German director Eva Weber about Angela Merkel. Henrici says she’s concerned that “there may be a gap emerging within documentary in Scotland between filmmakers like Felipe Bustos Sierra [Nae Pasaran (2018)], who have made a first feature, and those emerging talents who have yet to make that step up to feature level.” Both Inma de Reyes and Lizzie Mackenzie are Scottishbased documentary makers in the process of completing their first feature-length films. Mackenzie, who is from Oban, was the recipient of one of the UK’s major documentary development awards The Whickers, which helped fund her debut doc feature The Hermit of Treig, which looks at an elderly hermit called Ken who has lived in self-imposed isolation in the Highlands for over four decades. The hotly-anticipated film is currently nearing the end of post-production and is due to air on BBC Scotland later in the year. As with many of the filmmakers discussed here, Mackenzie credits the close mentoring of Amy Hardie as crucial. Having served an internship on Hardie’s forthcoming doc feature HorseMen, Mackenzie was accepted to the UK-wide ScreenSkills Rising Directors Scheme. For Mackenzie, a hallmark of the Scottish doc making scene is a sense of collaborative community, with Scottish doc makers tending to be generous with their contacts and with sharing knowledge. De Reyes is a doc filmmaker from Spain, who came to Edinburgh in 2017 to do a Masters in Film Directing at Edinburgh College of Art. She mentions Noé Mendelle and Emma Davie as early, crucial mentors. But Bridging the Gap was, for De Reyes, a huge boost to her career. Her short film Vivir Bailando was developed through the scheme, which led to conversations with Aimara Reques, the producer of Aquarela and founder of Aconite Productions, who went on to produce De Reyes’ debut feature documentary, The Boy and the Suit of Lights, a coming-of-age story about a young toreador from her hometown near Valencia, due for release in 2022. Scottish documentary-making has come a long way in a very short period of time. There are now a number of senior figures working in documentary within Scotland, offering their support and expertise to emerging new talents. There is also an environment that seems, on the whole, to be supportive and nurturing, and, as Sonja Henrici puts it, founded within an ethos of “compassionate filmmaking.” At its core, contemporary Scottish documentary seems to reflect the quietly international and outward-looking politics of post-devolution Scotland. Long may that continue.
Watch Iorram online at modernfilms.com/iorram
Small Screen Scotland
Ahead of Edinburgh-set comic thriller Guilt returning for series two, we speak to writer Neil Forsyth about the show’s word-of-mouth success
Interview: Jamie Dunn
Scottish telly is pretty hot right now. BBC One’s drama à la mode is the daftly enjoyable Vigil, a submarine-set whodunit starring Suranne Jones and Rose Leslie as Glasgow detectives investigating some shady happenings onboard the UK’s nuclear deterrent. It’s going great guns on Sunday nights, debuting with over ten million viewers, making it easily the biggest new UK drama of the year. Another Scottish hit with a briny flavour is Annika, which stars Nicola Walker as a fourth-wall-breaking Maritime Homicide DI. The logline may sound like something found on Alan Partridge’s old dictaphone, but this skew-whiff crime drama is breaking viewing records on its channel Alibi. Meanwhile Robert Florence and Iain Connell, the duo behind absurdist sketch show Burniston, look to have another cult comedy on their hands with The Scotts, a demented sitcom shot in the style of a glossy reality TV soap. And smaller in scale, but no less impressive, is the tender micro drama Float. Written by award-winning playwright Stef Smith, it tells, over six delicate ten-minute episodes, the compassionate love story that blossoms between two young women who find themselves stuck working as lifeguards at a smalltown pool. The jewel of this recent glut of Scottish small-screen success though is Guilt, which aired on BBC Scotland and BBC Two in 2019. The first major drama from BBC Scotland, it’s a darkly hilarious moral satire that explores the unravelling of two Edinburgh brothers (played by Mark Bonnar and Jamie Sives) after they accidentally kill a man while driving home drunk from a wedding and scramble to avoid retribution. Over four twist-filled, hugely satisfying episodes, the brothers are put through the wringer as they attempt to keep the truth about the hit-and-run from ruining their lives.
Guilt was so good, in fact, it felt like a bit of a miracle that the underfunded BBC Scotland hit it out of the park on their first attempt. Speaking to Guilt’s writer, Neil Forsyth, on the phone ahead of the eagerly-anticipated Guilt 2, we get the sense that in some respects the channel’s budget limitations helped contribute to its sharp writing. “Guilt is quite a dramatically tight show,” he says. “There’s not a huge number of locations, there’s a lot of two-hander scenes. So it’s not an all bells and whistles, big action thriller or anything. So instead you have to trust the performances – and hopefully the script – to tell a great story without feeling you have to have these huge flourishes for the sake of it.” This isn’t to suggest the show looks threadbare in any way. It wouldn’t look out of place in the company of a slick US series like Fargo or Breaking Bad. Forsyth’s dialogue has the hard-boiled flavour of American crime fiction but it’s also extremely Scottish in its gallows humour and themes of duality (good and bad, rich and poor, saint and sinner), which fits snugly in the legacy of Caledonian antisyzygy that runs Float from Robert Louis Stevenson to Ian Rankin. It also makes vivid use of its Edinburgh setting. “Edinburgh is a physically stunning place,” Forsyth says, “and I’m probably about the hundredth writer to talk about the light and shade between the New Town and Old Town.” Forsyth
Guilt
knows the Scottish capital well. He grew up in Dundee but began his writing career there while also tending bar at The Three Sisters pub to pay the bills. “I’m very fond of the city, and I wanted to get as much of it on-screen as possible?”
Guilt’s Scottishness hasn’t dampened its appeal abroad; the show is proving to be a similar word-of-mouth triumph over in the States. Forsyth puts some of this success down to Guilt’s specificity. “You’re trying to thread a needle, where you’re trying to create something that was very of itself in terms of locality,” he explains. “The only place this show could be set is Edinburgh and Leith, and that has to feel very authentic. But you also want it to have a universality of storytelling and characters that could be understood and enjoyed all around the world.” That’s easier said than done. But one of Forsyth’s shortcuts to compelling storytelling is having the audience in mind when he sits down to write. “I think about my viewer as someone who has knocked their pan in all day at a job, maybe one they don’t particularly enjoy, and they’re sat down at night with a drink. They’ve looked at the schedule, found this thing called Guilt, and they think, ‘well let’s give this ten minutes.’ And that’s the viewer I always think about. I try and give them a reason to keep watching after that first ten minutes and draw them in through storytelling and character. That’s certainly an ambition.” We reckon Forsyth has succeeded in this endeavour. We defy anyone to watch the first ten minutes of Guilt and not be desperate to see it through to its gut-punching close.
Guilt is available to watch on iPlayer, with Guilt 2 due to air in October
Win, Lose or Draw?
While most of the film industry ground to a halt during the pandemic lockdowns, animators continued to work industriously in isolation. We speak to three recent graduates from Edinburgh College of Art to hear what their future holds
Interview: Nathaniel Ashley
The Night Library, dir. Catherine Shaw
An Taigh Solais , dir. Alina Brust The Magentalman And The Gentlemint, dir. James Crang
The pandemic was an unmitigated disaster for most industries, causing profits to plummet and forcing workplaces to drastically change the way they function. Yet, talking to young animators in Edinburgh, there’s a sense that lockdown has been more of a blessing than a curse in their field. “The animation industry is one of the few sectors that I think has been doing pretty well during the pandemic,” says 22-year-old animator Alina Brust, who recently graduated from Edinburgh College of Art. “It’s easier for animators to work from home than actual film stars so I think that’s been getting more popular.” The shift towards working from home has also made it less difficult for animators living outside of London to build a career; Brust recently applied for a three-month internship with a studio based in London, which she would not have been able to afford if it was in-person. Not that in-studio work is likely to die out completely. James Crang (22), one of Brust’s fellow graduates, welcomes the growing flexibility but thinks that the siren call of creativity and collaboration will ensure most animators will want to keep coming into the studio. “It’s much nicer to be able to do work with your co-workers, your friends, and actually being involved in it rather than doing it all externally, but I think there’s going to be a lot more leeway on what a studio is doing remote and in-studio.” However, that increasing accessibility is a double-edged sword. While Brust and Crang’s coursemate Catherine Shaw (22) is glad that the industry is beginning to open up to more people, she’s also aware that the resulting competition will make her life harder. “I think there are a lot more jobs than there were before but also there are so many people wanting to become animators,” she suggests. “It’s so easy to find them all online that it’s harder to stand out amongst all of that.” All three remain largely optimistic about the path the industry is following. Shaw is keen to emphasise that, although there is undoubtedly still room for improvement, animation is becoming far less homogenous than it once was. “There still aren’t enough women in the highest positions, and there’s still not enough access for minorities,” she says. “But that’s improving a huge amount. People who are hiring now are way more likely to be inclusive employers.” Meanwhile, Crang notes that studios are becoming more willing to take risks. He points to the success of Sony’s animated 2018 superhero film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse as an example of major studios experimenting with unique animation, rather than mimicking Disney’s house style. However, he believes there is still a way to go before the industry can fulfil its potential. “What I’d like to see happening is animation being treated more like a medium, rather than a genre,” he says. “It’s very rare to have adult animation, especially for films, and that really needs to change because animation is such an impactful storytelling medium.” For now, though, they are focusing on getting their films in front of audiences. All three are entering films into festivals, a process that can take months. Crang has had his final project, a queer romance titled The Magentalman and the Gentlemint, accepted by a number of festivals, including Last Frame Queer Fest. Meanwhile, Brust’s short film An Taigh Solais, which follows an elderly shepherd, premiered at Edinburgh International Film Festival in August and will be entered into the Celtic Media Festival and MG Alba’s short film competition, FilmG. Likewise, Shaw is planning to apply to FilmG when she promotes her short film The Night Library, a story about rejecting apathy and embracing curiosity. In the meantime, they are aiming to work more traditional jobs to help pay the bills. Both Shaw and Crang are searching for part-time work while they build their portfolio. And Brust is currently employed at a renewable energy company, where she creates short videos explaining more about the services they offer. Although she would like to work on a major film at some point, she’s enjoying the current gig. “I’m actually doing animation work, which is crazy.” Though they may be facing an increasingly competitive industry, all are optimistic that animation is changing for the better. With accessibility, diversity and individuality on the rise, a new golden age of animation could be on the horizon.
Think Big
Ahead of Dune arriving in cinemas, we look back at Denis Villeneuve’s recent run of blockbusters to gauge if he has what it takes to bring Frank Herbert’s epic sci-fi novel to the screen
Words: Rory Doherty
Too often in genre filmmaking, the human component is forgotten. When watching big, bombastic films, we’re used to underdeveloped characters crumbling and slipping away entirely under the blockbuster spectacle. This is never a problem with the Hollywood movies of Canadian director Denis Villeneuve. Before helming the monstrous Dune, Villeneuve’s projects had been getting progressively bigger in scale and scope. But in each, a crucial narrative rule was inscribed. The vast, expansive nature of the story was always rooted in a lone protagonist’s point of view, so the audience feels the weight of confronting a new world along with the character. In other words, we don’t simply gawk at the blockbuster thrills in a Villeneuve joint: we experience them ourselves. In the triple-punch of Sicario (2015), Arrival (2016) and Blade Runner 2049 (2017), we follow skilled and experienced protagonists as they’re forced to recalibrate their understanding of the world by facing something previously unimaginable. These characters – an FBI agent, a linguist and a (robot) detective – have rigid expectations of how to act when faced with a crisis, but as they step into the unknown, they question how much good their training will do them. The films ask: Can facing a towering new world force us to change and grow?
In the drug thriller Sicario, federal agent Kate (Emily Blunt) is brought on to an unorthodox taskforce to hunt down key figures in a Mexican cartel. The brutal and unflinching way her superiors deal out justice has Kate tearing herself apart over her ethics in the field. Throughout the film, Villeneuve fosters a feeling of disorientation; you get the sense that, like Kate, the important information is being kept out of your reach. Of these three films’ protagonists, Kate certainly has the least agency, but she always fights to make the moral choice down to her final submission that, in the hellish war she’s neck-deep in, such efforts are pointless. The fact that she can’t shake her preconceived notions of how justice should work means she’s forever out of place, something that
Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved Photo: Chiabella James, copyright © 2020
Director Denis Villeneuve and Javier Bardem on the set of Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure Dune, a Warner Bros. Pictures release
ultimately saves her soul as others wade deeper into moral degradation. Villeneuve’s follow-up, Arrival, sees a character undergo a similar journey – albeit a much more humanist one. Louise (Amy Adams) is an accomplished linguist who’s brought in by the military to decipher the language of aliens who have just touched down at random points across the planet. What sets her apart from her military colleagues is how willing she is to adapt to her surroundings – soon, it’s the authorities that are catching up with Louise, rather than her lagging behind. The scope of Arrival’s story encompasses the whole planet, but even as the geopolitical stakes are raised, Louise always remains the focal point of the narrative. By learning the aliens’ language, the way she thinks will literally change. In less deft hands, this would be a difficult concept to express to an audience, but with an emotional foundation to Louise’s character – and a nifty bit of misdirection – the seismic, brain-altering impact these aliens will have on humanity is beautifully realised. It’s Louise’s continual adapting to her new surroundings, even at the risk of her being completely overwhelmed, that makes her story as impressive as it is affecting. In Blade Runner 2049, Villeneuve’s first franchise outing, a distorted mirror is held up to Arrival’s narrative. Following an android detective known as ‘K’, we see again the centring of the protagonist in an enormous, planet-changing discovery, but here it’s played differently. In a world where the android population is made to feel like they don’t belong, K learns that one of his kind was biologically born, and starts to wonder if he is that special child. Thinking that this would prove his humanity, he’s devastated to learn that he isn’t the ‘chosen one’, and almost abandons his mission to help bring salvation to his fellow androids. But just because he’s not the most important person on the planet doesn’t mean he is any less deserving of humanity, something he learns is not found in being biologically born, but rather finding a cause and sharing empathy for those like you. Villeneuve’s Blade Runner film argues that the most meaningful discovery you can have in an overwhelming world is learning you have a place in it. Villeneuve’s worlds are often imposing and inhospitable, but the scariest thing about them is how they make people deconstruct a core part of what makes them human. His characters are always stronger for this confrontation, and it’s a crucial process in coming to terms with an environment that makes you feel insignificant. Dune is a story about a young man, Paul (Timothée Chalamet), forced to shoulder a multifaceted, tortuous legacy on a harsh, unstable planet; it’s through this singular journey that we acclimatise ourselves with the blinding alien planet of Arrakis. It’s a big, imposing world, but there’s no doubt it’s safe in Villeneuve’s hands.
Dune is released 22 Oct by Warner Bros
Sicario and Blade Runner 2049 are streaming on Prime Video
Queer We Go
Scottish Queer International Film Festival’s new programmers Nat Lall and Jamie Rea tell us what they're bringing to this always lively and inclusive celebration of LGBTQ+ filmmaking
Interview: Jamie Dunn
Photo: Tiu Makkonenn It’s all change at the upcoming Scottish Queer International Film Festival. The seventh edition sees Nat Lall and Jamie Rea take the reins as co-programmers and they’ll be delivering the festival’s first hybrid edition, with events taking place 6 to 10 October in-person at the festival’s usual hub in CCA Glasgow, with some available online. But elsewhere, this is the same old SQIFF, with a fierce commitment to marginalised queer stories that aren’t given space at other LGBTQ+ festivals, never mind mainstream cinemas. New Scottish queer filmmaking talent gets a typically good showing this year, with a brace of programmes featuring LGBTQ+ shorts made locally. There’s a showcase of films from deaf filmmakers called A New Chapter Begins. Also look out for shorts programmes exploring kink (Spill your Kinky), gender and gaming (GA(Y)MERS), and queer science fiction (Sci-fi Happening). Among the features, meanwhile, are Adam, a sweet comedy about a cis boy who’s confused for a trans boy by the girl he likes, and cult lesbian action-comedy D.E.B.S. We speak to SQIFF’s new programming team to find out more.
The Skinny: Were there any new elements you were keen to bring to the festival this year? Jamie Rea: Well, as a deaf curator, that is a new and exciting element that the festival will have this year. It means I have been able to privilege deaf creativity in screenings and in the programming of the festival. I’ve brought deaf filmmakers to the festival as well as deaf guest speakers. And, for the first time ever, we’ll have creative conversations in sign language – my first language – and that’s a very new thing for the festival.
Can you tell me a bit more about that programme featuring work by deaf filmmakers? JR: This year we tried to really honour deaf filmmakers in the programme. Each of these films offers a piece of dynamic and creative filmmaking. Some films are from the US and some from the UK but they’re all about deaf people finding love and making connections. They are films about people, really – but we see deaf creativity, how difficult communication barriers can be in relationships and the power of sign language.
SQIFF has been one of the most forward-thinking festivals in Scotland in terms of accessibility and inclusion – for example, with its sliding-scale pricing policy. Why do you think SQIFF, in particular, has been at the forefront of making these inclusive policies more widespread in Scottish film exhibition culture? Nat Lall: Well, for one it isn’t run by a white, cis, straight, nondisabled man lol. That makes a BIG difference. The team is diverse, like actually, not like performatively. I don’t feel like a token. Especially in terms of disabilities. I think disability can often get left out of ‘intersectional’ queer discourse. Yes, sexuality matters, race matters, class matters... and so does disability.
There’s also a focus, this year, on gaming culture, which is most associated – in the mainstream imagination at least – with straight cis men. Can you tell me why you wanted to include that strand? NL: Honestly, I’m so far removed from that idea as I game lots but rarely with straight cis men. But, you’re right in terms of mainstream associations. Gaming can be a great way to take on another body in an alternative realm. Or even to ‘test-drive’ a different body before modifying your own in the physical realm. It’s a way to experiment with gender for sure. I’ve done a lot of personal research into gender and gaming. A lot of games actually have a high percentage of women players, especially over the last decade. It is just that the games women tend to play are not seriously considered as games. For example, “SQIFF is a blank would your nan who plays Candy Crush all canvas. It allows day consider herself a gamer? There’s plenty LGBTQ+ artists to more to say but I’ll leave come together and that for the GA(Y)MERS screening Q&A. create and share the What makes a film work we do” festival like SQIFF so important to the Jamie Rea LGBTQ+ community? JR: Celebration. In the same way that Pride celebrates the LGBTQ+ community, so does Photo: Tiu Makkonenn SQIFF. It’s a place to share our stories, express ourselves and honour our creativity. SQIFF is a blank canvas. It allows LGBTQ+ artists to come together and create and share the work we do. It’s a gateway to that beautiful place where we meet, make new connections and enjoy the films that the LGBTQ+ community have offered us.
SQIFF takes place 6-10 Oct, CCA Glasgow, with some events and screenings available online. For the full programme and tickets, head to sqiff.org
Africa on Screen
Scotland Loves Anime returns with the very best of Japanese animation, new and old. We pick out some of the highlights, from a cyber-fairytale riffing on Beauty and the Beast to a goofy espionage caper
Words: Jamie Dunn
Africa in Motion goes online-only this year with a huge programme of over 90 films and events shining a light on the brilliance and diversity of African cinema
Words: Jamie Dunn
The End of Evangelion
Belle Mamoru Hosoda might be the most exciting voice in Japanese animation right now. With films like Wolf Children and Mirai, he’s certainly proven himself one of the form’s most inventive and emotionally sensitive directors. Hosoda’s eagerlyawaited new film is Belle, a curious cyber-fairytale riffing on Beauty and the Beast, which follows a grieving teen girl who channels her emotions into a glittering virtual universe where her avatar is a music idol. 16 Oct, Filmhouse
The Deer King Some ex-Studio Ghibli talent is involved in The Deer King, namely co-directors Masashi Ando and Masayuki Miyaji, who’ve conjured up a visually sumptuous epic worthy of their mentor, Hayao Miyazaki. This might be a lush fantasy film set in a mystical kingdom, but there are plenty of realworld parallels too, from The Deer King’s environmental themes to its plot concerned with a deadly pandemic sweeping through the countryside. 3 Oct, GFT; 17 Oct, Filmhouse
The End of Evangelion This rare chance to see the final chapter of the Neon Genesis Evangelion saga on the big screen should be jumped at. As in that groundbreaking 90s anime series, expect jaw-dropping battles between giant organic robots controlled by troubled adolescents and beautiful, terrifying, god-like creatures called ‘Angels’, combined with avantgarde sequences taking us inside the dark recesses of its characters’ minds. 17 Oct, Filmhouse
Lupin III: The First Lupin, the legendary gentleman thief, is having a bit of a moment. The French, live-action Lupin series starring Omar Sy proved immensely popular when it debuted on Netflix earlier this year, and now Takashi Yamazaki brings us a 3D animation featuring this dashing daredevil. One reviewer described this new adventure as “Looney Tunes by way of Ocean’s Eleven”, which is recommendation enough for us. 1 Oct, GFT; 11 Oct, Filmhouse
On-Gaku: Our Sound A trio of high-school ne’er-do-wells decide to start a band, despite having no musical talent, in this charmingly loosey-goosey comedy. The animation, made on a shoestring over seven years by firsttime director Kenji Iwaisawa, is similarly freewheeling, blending rotoscope animation, handdrawn characters, and painted backgrounds. It’s a skew-whiff delight. 12 Oct, Filmhouse
Scotland Loves Anime takes place 1-3 Oct at Glasgow Film Theatre and 11-17 Oct at Filmhouse in Edinburgh. View the full programme at lovesanimation.com
On-Gaku: Our Sound
This month Africa in Motion (AiM) celebrates its sweet 16th edition, which means we’ve the annual opportunity to dig into the wealth of inventive filmmaking from across the African continent that rarely catches the eyes of UK distributors. Sadly, this year’s edition will be restricted to the small screen as it’s online-only, but the upside is that its 90-odd films, along with a plethora of poetry events, music, talks and workshops, will be available to film fans all over the UK. For AiM festival director Liz Chege, the purpose of the festival remains the same as ever: to empower and awaken imagination through the power of film. “I’m delighted that even during these extraordinary circumstances, our festival has continued to support African artists and filmmakers in the wider Black diasporas to celebrate their talent and heritage,” Chege says. The festival kicks off with music documentary Elder’s Corner, in which musician and filmmaker Siji Awoyinka tracks down some of the Nigerian pioneers of Jùjú and Afrobeat. It’ll make for a fine taster for the music-themed films to come in AiM’s Setting Pace strand, which features docs on Afro-Cuban music (Soy Cubana) and jazz (Brenda Fassie, Not A Bad Girl), and online performances from rising stars Balimaya Project and Jas Kayser. Other strands include Family Matters, which delves into films centred on familial relationships; Great Expectations, which concerns films about dreamers and the shifting perspectives on ideas of legacy; and Queer Africa, which puts a spotlight on the shifting landscape of African queerness. There’s also a Women in Focus strand, which gives the festival its closing film, Honey Cigar, a tender coming-of-age tale set in 1993. The annual AiM shorts competition is also back, and look (and listen) out too for a new initiative in partnership with the Scottish Poetry Library and Obsidian Foundation that sees AiM
Elder’s Corner
commission work by three Black female poets – Tjawangwa Dema, Clementine Ewokolo Burnley and Zakia Carpenter-Hall. Responding to the COP26 climate change conference, the poets have been asked to compose a piece each on the theme of the natural environment, which will be turned into a performance short film and will have its world premiere at AiM.
Africa in Motion takes place online 15-30 Oct
Still from Dear Prudence re-imagined, Anne Colvin, 2021
The Great Virtual Scottish Comeback
We meet some of the Scottish filmmakers and programmers whose working lives have been profoundly reshaped by the pandemic
Interview: Derek McArthur
In March 2020, the creative sector rushed to furlough workers and panicked together paths to operate online. New infrastructures sprung up to replace the shuttered doors of cinemas, theatres and museums. Regardless of how secure their situation, artists and curators faced challenges in the upset. Concerns of transitioning online, translating work to the virtual landscape and issues that already plagued the Scottish creative sector compounded as a result. However, a word that came up frequently in my conversations with those in the creative sector was the word ‘adaptable’. Creatives are adaptable. They may not be able to charge inflated digital rental prices on Disney+ to shore up lost incomes but, like roaches rearing their antennae after an apocalypse, an artist will adjust to whatever situation they find themselves in. As the crisis got ugly, the art world pushed through to see the speckles of beauty. This is an insight into the Scottish arts during this period, the trials and tribulations, and the lessons learned. An isolated triumph The transition to a fully online space was unfamiliar territory for a lot of artists. Anne Colvin, an Edinburgh-based artist who works across moving image, poetry and ephemeral intervention, came across the dilemma of transitioning online as her project Dear Prudence re-imagined revolved around collaboration in a designated space. “We were in lockdown and had to work entirely remotely from our respective bases in Edinburgh, Glasgow, London and Lagos,” she explains. The scrambling to get back to families and loved ones had made the project an international affair. Objects for the installation were finished in Colvin’s home studio while costuming was done in collaborator Katie Shannon’s London studio. When the project was re-contextualised into its new form, vocalists Nichola Scrutton, Louise McVey and Bumi Thomas sent recordings from a home studio in Glasgow and a brewery in Lagos, respectively. This change in circumstances shook artists out of their comfort zone. Ultimately this turned out to be a positive thing, allowing artists to rethink the relationship to their work and overcome the unfamiliar challenges that make success all the more triumphant. “It was born out of adversity but was transformational, both existentially and psychologically,” says Colvin. “I don’t normally work collaboratively and this approach brought its own rewards and challenges, but I feel that the success of the project and the work made under such difficult circumstances represents an amazing achievement, a state of mind even. Moving forward I will carry this with me.” Although circumstances were less than ideal, artists like Colvin are used to operating on the fringes. Coming to terms with the new world revealed a will and strength that might have never been realised otherwise.
The virtual world It was not just artists navigating the swamps of the
new world. Festival curation took on a remarkably different approach, exchanging the communal nature of the festival audience for lonely laptop screens. Michael Pattison, the co-director of Alchemy Film & Arts, including its annual film festival, felt the rug being pulled when the work from home order was issued. The complex infrastructure involved in festival organising meant that the workflow of such an intricate operation was significantly altered. “Once physical workplaces close and internal communications become digital, these workflows are stripped of spontaneity, creativity, rest and the social context required of empathy, effective management and proper care,” he opines. Transitioning to an online platform made many in the art world cognisant of the virtual spaces they now had to work with. Online festivals, exhibitions, concerts and film premieres were common occurrences throughout lockdown. The vast majority of these were built independently from the abundance of mainstream platforms that occupied the time and attention of many during this period. Michael notes the influence of corporations such as Netflix and Amazon. “These platforms have monopolised audience expectations when it comes to consumption. More audiences want everything available all of the time – a kind of libertarian chaos that renders curation redundant, stretches worker capacity, and possibly limits artists from getting remunerated for their work and from showing their work and engaging audiences in meaningful settings.” Independence from these platforms helps to facilitate a presentation closer to what the artist intends, as delivery orients around how to effectively communicate ideas through an online space. The rigid structures of more mainstream platforms discourage this sort of freedom. Restrictions on physical spaces seem to have cheered on outside networks elsewhere. The victory of artists making tangential dents in the cybersphere is celebrated by Pattison. “Artists have possibly shared their work more than ever, have possibly spent more time speaking about their work than ever, and have possibly connected with audiences more than ever since March 2020,” he asserts.
The Big Gloom The future of Scottish arts and culture cannot be sugar coated. The prevailing sense is that the sector will be in for a rude awakening once government spending drives cease to have effect. “The imminent decrease in government funding probably won’t really hit for a while, but I’m pretty certain that it’s coming,” director of LUX
Scotland, Kitty Anderson surmises. Cuts to the arts have been government orthodoxy for an extended time and neither the UK nor devolved government is innocent. A year before the pandemic, Creative Scotland CEO Iain Munro remarked that the sector was at a ‘tipping point’. Failure to support creative institutions meant that the potential growth of the sector was undermined. Despite increases to production in Scotland, this responsibility did not align with funding needs. The neglect has created problems within the workforce, predicating an industry built on freelance and temporary work, and creating a situation where increasing production without proper support has led to a skills gap issue. It is inevitable that these problems will increase post-pandemic without significant overhaul and review of government policy. Glasgow-based artist Jennifer Wicks, who works across film, sculpture and music, reflects on the sort of crisis arts and culture is in, particularly at the education level. “Art education has been in a seemingly permanent state of crisis, particularly within smaller further education colleges which have always been looked down upon, perhaps because they’re more working-class. But now the Tories have cut funding even more with a focus on STEM. This ultimately means they are trying to harvest a generation of workers. “The access to art and the impact it has on mental health and wellbeing especially by lower socio-economic groups, vulnerable groups and children often isn’t regarded,” Wicks continues. This drive to look at the arts as not a business but something that is imperative to the wellbeing of a country and its citizens should be reflected in funding structures and how funding is allocated, suggests Michael Pattison. “If funding continues to be distributed by means of assessments and panel reviews, the arts will likely continue towards professionalisation in line with the bureaucratisation of funding infrastructures and the emergent top-down managerialism that overlooks the creative sector.” As Hollywood invades the streets of Edinburgh and Glasgow to film next summer’s big blockbuster, the Scottish government promises ‘year-round engagement’ with the US film industry. It’s a lofty ambition but questions about how sustainable, practical and culturally fruitful this will be remain. Once the circus leaves town, what are the locals to do?
Emerging fortunes While established artists and curators struggled with an abrupt transition, emerging artists were not so dampened by expectations. The online world presented a blank slate for new artists, unhindered by the chaos and turmoil experienced by institutions and organisations. Jonas Hämmerle, a recent graduate of the University of Glasgow, co-founded his own production company Air It Out Films in 2019 with the intention of independently releasing his directorial debut Getting By. Hämmerle was in post-production when the pandemic took hold and had to reassess its release. “A viewing in cinemas was obviously off the table for an unknown amount of time, which is why we decided to organise an online premiere and release of the film.” The film was initially released on Amazon Prime Video, but a policy change towards short films led to many smaller creators being wiped from the platform. Getting By was a victim of this change, running at just over half an hour. “It is unfortunate for smaller companies and emerging filmmakers like ourselves because we lose a huge opportunity for our films to be seen,” he explains. Squeezed out by an arbitrary rule change, the film landed on YouTube, where Hämmerle noted the directness of the platform. With YouTube being user-based and easily disseminated, it at least provided a small way to deliver community to his online audience. The attention to an online audience naturally paid off. Getting By received the Audience Award at the GlasgowON Film Festival. Without any prior expectations, emerging artists could mould and alter their situation amid the chaos of ongoing circumstances.
The Road Ahead It has been nearly a year and a half since the creative sector went through major upheaval. Although fears about its future are justified, hope still remains. New ideas will blossom and new voices will emerge as night follows day. It is human nature to create, yet we live in a world where that has not always been respected. These impulses find a way regardless. The passion and resilience of Scotland’s art world will secure its future. While the road ahead will no doubt be a long and frustrating one, now is not the time to let our identities be less heard.
Earlier this year Alchemy Film & Arts, LUX Scotland and The Skinny worked together to offer an open-call programme of writing workshops for early-career writers, addressing artists’ moving image and experimental film. This text is the second in a new series of commissioned writing that result from this partnership programme
Image: courtesy of the artist
Rhyze Up
We speak to Rhyze about growing fungi, empowering their community through food and the radical potential of the humble mushroom
Interview: Katie Goh
Mushrooms are having a bit of a moment. Recent books like Merlin Sheldrake’s Entangled Life and Netflix’s documentary Fantastic Fungi, as well as many, many TikTok videos, are exposing people to the fascinating world of fungi, from how they connect the forest floor through underground mycelium networks, to their incredible ability to grow from and on just about anything. It’s this latter, adaptable quality in particular that attracted a group of mushroom fans to band together as Rhyze, a radical, mushroom growing collective based in Edinburgh. “A group of us got together during the pandemic, keen to start a project around food and community education, something that would empower people to lead more sustainable lives and feed themselves and their communities,” explains Marco Tenconi, Rhyze’s Cultivation Coordinator. “We wanted a project that would work around our urban lives and the physical constraints of being in the city, and mushroom farming is just perfect for that. You can grow a lot of mushrooms in a small space, they don’t need much light and can grow on all kinds of waste streams that are a big problem in our towns and cities.” “And mushrooms are just cool!” adds Mim Black, who joined Rhyze in October 2020, as the project really got going. “They create life because they break down matter and turn it into soil and themselves. They can grow on things like oil, breaking it down and turning it into themselves, and then when you test the mushrooms they don’t have any of the toxicity from the object they grew from. A lot of people know about how mycelium connects a forest’s trees and spreads nutrients between them. In a way, mushrooms are an amazing metaphor for how we can resist capitalism because by building community and sharing and by being a bit more like mushrooms, we have a better chance of undoing a lot of the crises that we’re currently facing.” Rhyze describe themselves as an anti-capitalist food collective, more interested in giving people the tools to grow their own produce, than making a profit from the fruit of their labour. As Marco says: “One of the things we’re interested in doing is trying to rebuild some kind of food commons and to empower people to be able to feed themselves and their communities, and not have to always depend on monetary exchange and the world’s food supply chain which we see as inherently exploitative.” Mim reckons that lockdown has given people a greater appreciation for the natural world and growing things themselves. “It’s a vital part of being a human being, especially being in nature collectively, like volunteering at gardens and allotments,” she explains. “That’s definitely something we want Photo: Lauren Waterman Rhyze to be a part of and we’re already working with a couple of gardens around Edinburgh to set up farming that mixes with mycology because there are various mushrooms that have really good symbiotic relationships with plants.” As well as growing mushrooms themselves in a big, yellow shipping container, Rhyze also
Photo: Lauren Waterman
runs workshops to teach people how to grow mushrooms at home. “People can grow mushrooms in their households just by using household waste, like old coffee grounds or cardboard,” says Marco. “So it’s also accessible to people who might have mobility issues as constant bending over and gardening can be a big challenge. That’s one of the things we’re also interested in: finding ways to grow food that are accessible to everyone, not just people who are mobile and have access to green space.” Rhyze is still in early development – they incorporated as a non-profit in December 2020 – and are slowly recruiting volunteers for specific roles. The collective aims to be non-hierarchical, a flat structure in which everyone’s voice will be heard. “We want everything to be accessible and open sourced,” adds Mim. “We’re not aiming for endless growth, [rather] we want to work in cooperative and nonhierarchical ways. We want communities to “By being a bit more come to us for the blueprint but then do like mushrooms, we what they want with it.” In Rhyze’s near have a better chance future are free mush- of undoing a lot of room growing workshops, a big opening the crises that we’re party when the team finishes work on their currently facing” shipping container farm and recruiting new Mim Black members as part of the government’s Kickstart Scheme (so, if you’re under 25, on universal credit and excited about mushrooms, watch this space). Being a radical food collective is hard work – physically and emotionally – but one that bears bountiful returns. “It’s constant labour but what you get in return is just incredible,” says Marco. “The crucial role that fungus plays in our ecosystems has only really come to light recently. Rhyze is a cool way to motivate people and start conversations in communities and households about ecology, how everything’s connected and how we humans need to care for our ecosystems – or they’ll stop caring for us.”
Visit rhyzemushrooms.scot to find out more about Rhyze and to sign up to their newsletter
Kaleidoscopes
of Gender Interview: Rosie Priest Illustration: Beatrice Simpkiss
Gender is always in flux and so are pronouns we use to describe our gender identity. One writer explores their/her pronouns and speaks to others about their relationships to using multiple pronouns
Society often thinks of gender as a spectrum with two binaries on either side – women, who use the pronouns she/her, and men, who use the pronouns he/him – and in between the two, lies a grey area of non-binary people who typically use the pronouns they/them. But what this limited spectrum doesn’t accurately convey is how gender, like sexuality, is an incredible kaleidoscope: agender, pangender, gender fluid, genderqueer, cisgender, gender outlaw (sounds awesome), non-binary, bi-gender, omnigender… The list goes on and on. With many different gender identities, it makes sense that sticking to one set of pronouns (i.e. she/her, they/them or he/ him) wouldn’t be a comfortable fit for everyone. Daisy (they/she) relates to this feeling of not being quite at home with the gender binary spectrum. “I think I actively don’t relate to the version of ‘woman’ that is in media and celebrated as the norm. I feel androgynous, sometimes elements of feminine or masculine energies are stronger but I mostly feel a bit wibbly wobbly in the middle.” Harry (they/she) feels similarly: “She/her don’t hold my identity for a number of reasons; it doesn’t fit my relationship with my soul or body. It’s like wearing the shoe of someone who’s the same size but has a different weight and gait so it feels off. My soul and body don’t fit with conventional, patriarchal expectations of cis female persons.” Drew (he/they) reiterates this estrangement: “I believe my pronouns say that I am a male, but a ‘weird’ one, one that doesn’t typically ascribe to everything that is male. I grew up believing I was going to be female; I was taunted as such, socialised as such and I fully did not want anything to do with what was ‘for boys.’ As an adult, I’ve always been incredibly ‘femme’, again bullied as such.” Tammy (he/she)’s case is a little different as she is intersex, meaning that she was born with both female and male reproductive organs. His ongoing understanding of his gender has gone hand in hand with recognising his biology. “People struggle,” Tammy says. “They don’t get that I have never been
able to be a girl or a boy, I’ve always been both but was forced to be a girl. I’m in my 40s now and only realising that I was never meant to be one gender – I’m both. I spent so many years confused, lost, scared.” I ask Tammy if he’s had any moments of people using her multiple pronouns properly. “To be honest, people always look at me like – are you a man or a woman – and end up using “they” and so for a long time I identified as non-binary and would roll with that. It wasn’t until I started saying, ‘No, it’s she or he,’ that things started to click for me.” Just like Tammy, Harry, Drew and Daisy, the gender I am often assigned by people doesn’t seem to fit my full story. For me (I use they/she pronouns), woman-ness has often felt like a strain. I felt like a lot of what defined me as a ‘woman’ was linked to trauma, typically sexual, psychological or physical. Daisy reiterates this feeling: “I was spiked when I was 18. Only recently have I understood that part of my mechanism to deal with that was to tell myself that my only role in life was to be the ‘woman’ having sex happen to me, rather than the reality that I am a person in the world who can give and receive sex with respect and compassion.” I recognise playing that part. I understand ‘woman’ as a part of me but not my definition. A woman+ or, perhaps, a non-binary person with a woman-esque part. Just as it’s a kaleidoscope, our relationship with gender is constantly shifting and changing. I don’t have a fully formed answer for my gender, but I know that it’s somewhere in that spiralling, emerging, disappearing, colourful chaos. And if I never manage to see it or iterate it exactly, I’m a lot more comfortable within that chaos than anywhere else. Care and kindness is often as important as getting pronouns right. As Harry says, “I feel lucky to not have a binary gender, so am happy with any pronoun so long as it’s spoken with compassion and respect.” Expressing confusion or frustration does not create a safe space. I still ruminate on a friend responding with an “ergh, gross” when discovering I was queer and it has meant I am hesitant in spaces to share pronouns, even with my nearest and dearest. This also means that it isn’t always safe for the person you’re asking to express their pronouns if prompted. Be mindful. For example, when discovering someone uses multiple pronouns, I often consciously lean into using the one I imagine they experience the least – a small but often detectable signal of allyship. As Drew so perfectly puts it: “My gender feels flexible, and my pronouns express that, and sometimes it feels like the language that surrounds this is the most liberating part of it… My pronouns now feel like a reclamation of me.” We should all be supporting that liberation through exploring, playing and caring for the language we use.
