84 minute read
Meet the Team – 6 Editorial – 7 Love Bites – 8 Heads Up – 11 What’s On – 16 Crossword
Championing creativity in Scotland
Meet the team We asked – What are you currently angriest about? Editorial
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Rosamund West Editor-in-Chief "That I had Sk8tr Boi stuck in my head for one full day last month after proofing Laurie's Olga Koch interview." Peter Simpson Digital Editor, Food & Drink Editor "I *was* annoyed that my bus stop had moved 100 yards up the road, but that's been fixed. Basically, I'm open to su estions." Anahit Behrooz Events Editor, Books Editor "lol. lmao."
Heléna Stanton Clubs Editor "Suella Braverman – I need not elaborate more."
Harvey Dimond Art Editor "My £60,000 (and growing) student debt."
Sandy Park Commercial Director "The price of literally everything." Polly Glynn Comedy Editor "That you can’t get Cadbury’s Mini E s outside the Easter retail bracket. Oh. And the general Westminster shitshow including how a nurse would have to work for 20,000 years to accumulate the wealth of Rishi Sunak."
Lewis Robertson Digital Editorial Assistant "Twin Peaks isn't on any reputable streaming sites when it's the perfect season for it! That, or the despair." Rho Chung Theatre Editor "That's between me, my therapist, and my mom when I'm tipsy."
Laurie Presswood General Manager "I worked Avril Lavigne lyrics into a piece in last month's issue and not one of my colleagues has commented on it."
Tom McCarthy Creative Projects Manager "George." George Sully Sales and Brand Strategist "How difficult it is to settle on one answer to this question." Jamie Dunn Film Editor, Online Journalist "A Grab Bag of crisps now cost over a quid! If this country wasn't already an island, I'd throw it in the sea."
Eilidh Akilade Intersections Editor "The general vibes. Majorly off." Tallah Brash Music Editor "The uneven paving slabs of Edinburgh can go fuck themselves. Yes, I fell today (Thu 27 Oct) at lunchtime. I have hurt my hand. It hurt to type this."
Production
Dalila D'Amico Art Director, Production Manager "Literally everything. Leave me alone " Phoebe Willison Designer "Avanti West Coast."
Editorial
Words: Rosamund West
The Scottish cultural community was rocked last month by the sudden closure of Edinburgh’s Filmhouse, and the unceremonious redundancies of its staff, as well as those of Edinburgh International Film Festival. We invite some of the people whose lives have been enriched or altered by these institutions (hint: everyone in Scottish film) to share what made them so vital, and consider what needs to be saved from the organisational ashes. Clearly there were issues within these businesses that go far beyond the cost of living crisis. Glasgow Short Film Festival’s Sanne Jehoul has penned an op-ed considering what a better screen sector should look like; one built on fairness, diversity and passion. Celebrating that passion, we speak to a pair of directors – Ruben Östlund discusses his latest satire on the global elites Triangle of Sadness, and why film people really just want to watch Adam Sandler movies. Scottish director Charlotte Wells introduces her much-anticipated debut Aftersun, which hits cinemas this month. There’s an overall sense of protest and resistance necessary in our ongoing national shitshow. Music talks to some of those leading the charge against inequality, starting with London-based DIY punk group Big Joanie. As they release their second album Back Home, the trio discuss diasporic identity in Britain, and being the change they want to see in the music industry. We meet fellow trailblazers Nova Twins ahead of their Scottish dates, and hear how they’ve helped foster a community for Black and POC punk and heavy rockers. Hyperdub founder Steve Goodman, aka Kode-9, drops by to share a quote-filled Q&A covering indyref2, the mind-expanding potential of dance music and Scotland’s complicity in colonialism. Art takes a tour through Norman Gilbert’s Tramway retrospective, talking to his son about his intimate paintings of family life. One writer also explores Hannah Lim’s solo show in Edinburgh Printmakers, which challenges ideas of ornamentalism in discussions of Asian art to explore her cultural identity as a woman of mixed Singaporean and British heritage. As Scottish poetry festival Push the Boat Out returns, we chat with some of the poets featured in More Fiya, the BlackBritish poetry collection which will be celebrated in an event on 6 November. Clubs meets the people behind the Redstone Press label as they gear up to celebrate their fifth birthday, while comedy talks to Jessica Fostekew about pubic hair and humanity’s capacity for change. Intersections takes influence from Swedish culture to consider the radical potential of their coffee-and-cake ritual of fika. We then talk to activists about the costs of speaking up, digital discourse and how to survive under the weight of public scrutiny. A global gathering of creatives coordinates each year to celebrate Fair Saturday, a counterpoint to the preceding Black Friday which aims to centre creativity and empathy in rejection of mass consumerism. We take a look at some of the events being staged in Scotland to imagine building a better society. As the fourth play in Rona Munro’s James Plays, James IV: Queen of the Fight tours Scotland, we meet director Laurie Sansom to discuss racism and royalty. Finally, we close on a surreal and horrifying note with a Q&A with author, actor and visionary Garth Marenghi. Turn to the inside back page to learn more on the 17th century goblin slayers of Dublin Town, and battering Richard Osman.
Cover Artist
Irina is a London-based illustrator passionate about animation, typography and all things creative. Her work is characterised by grainy textures, bold colours, and an overall feeling of calmness.
@irina.selaru
Love Bites: On Old Bread
This month’s columnist looks at remembering, forgetting, and all that rests in a stale baguette
Words: Graham Peacock
I’m not good at throwing things out. I keep torn receipts, empty envelopes, and broken glasses with old prescriptions. My drawers are filled with expired loyalty cards, high school textbooks I forgot to return, and flyers from insignificant events. It’s not that I’m nostalgic. I’m bad at reflecting, or remembering things how they happened. I look back and don’t care like I used to. I can’t fill in the blank spots. I’ve lost touch with the versions of myself that first picked up these objects, as well as a lot of the people who gave them to me. Last month, I came back from a trip to Marseille too lazy and preoccupied to unpack. Days passed. I picked out what I needed as and when. Eventually I tipped out my bag, and found the remains of a half torn baguette from a sunset picnic, rock hard, and wrapped up in faded paper. It was probably ten days old. The thud to the floor felt ominous. I knew there would be mould. My impulse was to keep it: to file it away in a cupboard or a box under the bed. But filing away mould would mean things had gone too far. I wanted to keep the bread because I wanted to remember the supermarket where I bought it, the sea port where I ate it, the rats and tourists and locals who moved along the path, and that by the time the sunset picnic started, it was already dark. I want to keep it all. Without the bread I’ll forget. Bread is perhaps my limit though, so I threw it out. I’m not convinced my memories will dry up any less without these objects, but I still, as a general rule, believe there’s some way to keep everything forever.
19. INDIE 20. NOTED 21. STOIC 22. OLD 23. STARS 26. BTS 1. MONITOR 2. PROFITABILITY 3. FADE OUT 4. REELS 5. ACTOR 6. POPCORN 7. LAZARUS 9. AI 10. MET 11. EU 16. NEW WAVE 17. LOT 18. RERUN Down 27. AID 28. YIELD 29. CREDITS 30. SOB 1. MOP UP 3. FORMULA 6. PAL 8. CAMEO 12. OUR 13. TIE UP 14. SET 15. READ BETWEEN THE LINES 19. INN 22. OUT 23. SOS 24. ROI 25. DUB Across Crossword Solutions
Heads Up
Phoebe Green
The Mash House, Edinburgh, 19 Nov, 8pm Scrappy Manchester singer Phoebe Green’s music is as bold as their trademark look. Using the bubbly energy of pop and the dreamy possibilities of synth as a subversive starting point, her music – upbeat and wryly dark – explores the tempting absolution of selfdestruction found in heartache and coming-of-age. Witty, vulnerable, and helplessly seductive, her smart electro-pop beats and honest lyricism mark her out as a shining new name in indie pop.
Glasgow Print Fair
The Lighthouse, Glasgow, 5 Nov, 10:30am For one day only, Glasgow Print Fair is taking over The Lighthouse with some of the bi est and best names in printmaking selling their wares. From local to further afield artists, numbered among the stallholders are anarchic powerhouse Black Lodge Press, Brighton-based illustrator Lucy Sherston, Scottish literary magazine Extra Teeth and even some The Skinny contributors, including the lovely Lauren Morsley and Katie Smith.
Photo: Nan Goldin There has never been a more crucial time to support Scotland’s independent film culture. We pick out some of the most unique screenings and film festivals this month, as well as the usual gigs, exhibitions, and theatre Compiled by Anahit Behrooz
Photo: Lewis Vorn
Image: Lucy Sherston Phoebe Green Photo: Alexander Sofeev The Great Western
Various venues, Glasgow, 12 Nov, 12pm This year’s Great Western, Glasgow’s daylong festival dedicated to some of the most exciting names in contemporary music, returns with one of their most stunning lineups yet. Catch the likes of Pussy Riot (get ready to rage), Los Bitchos, Martha Ffion and Withered Hand across the city’s venues – from Stereo to The Hug and Pint and more.
Pussy Riot, appearing at Great Western
Image: Courtesy of Lighthouse Bookshop Radical Book Fair
Assembly Roxy, Edinburgh, 1013 Nov If you too are feeling extra angry and extra wanting to do something about it given, well, everything, then Lighthouse Bookshop’s annual Radical Book Fair is a great place to start. Themed this year around “Our Fight”, events include a panel on Mutual Aid featuring activists Eshe Kiama Zuri and Miss Major and organisations Food Not Bombs and United Sex Workers, a queer life drawing session, and the usual delicious curated book stalls.
All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, showing at Inverness Film Festival Lucy Sherston at Glasgow Print Fair
Inverness Film Festival
Eden Court, Inverness, 4-10 Nov Inverness Film Festival always puts on a remarkable show, bringing some of the bi est and best films from the international circuit (Venice, Cannes, Berlin…they’re all here) right to the heart of the Highlands. Some highlights from this year’s rich and exhilarating programme include Golden Lion-winner All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, Jafar Panahi’s No Bears, and the tender, instant queer British classic Blue Jean.
Eshe Kiama Zuri, panellist at Radical Book Fair
Aftersun The Skinny + MUBI: Aftersun
Cameo, Edinburgh; Glasgow Film Theatre, 16 Nov We’ve partnered with MUBI to bring you one of the year’s best films (this is not hyperbole, this is not a drill) for free. Head down to Glasgow Film Theatre or the Cameo for an advanced screening of Charlotte Wells’ extraordinary Aftersun, a heart-wrenching, sundrenched mediation on grief and memory starring Paul Mescal and newcomer Frankie Corio. You can reserve your free ticket on our website, and there will even be free (and very sturdy) MUBI tote bags on the evening.
Fair Saturday
Various venues, Edinburgh, 26 Nov
Image: courtesy of Fair Saturday GENERATORproects George Finlay Ramsay/ Image: courtesy Sigrid
Usher Hall, Edinburgh, 8 Nov, 7pm
Family Fugue by George Finlay Ramsay
George Finlay Ramsay: Family Fugue
Photo: Francesca Allan Photo: Maria Falconer
White and Givan, Worn
White and Givan: Worn
Culture House Launch
Summerhall, Edinburgh, 17 Nov, 7:30pm The Skinny faves EHFM and Nothing Ever Happens Here co-present the launch of Summerhall’s Culture House, a new exhibition of the art venue’s resident creatives. Headlining the evening are dreamy alt-rock Glasgow outfit Cloth, sound artist and musician Rudi Zygadlo, with films by the team behind EIFF darling A Cat Called Dom and DJ sessions from EHFM regulars.
We Are Here Scotland: Creators Showcase
Various venues, Glasgow, 18 Nov, 10:45am We Are Here Scotland, an organisation supporting and platforming creative voices by Black people and people of colour across the country, is hosting a gorgeous showcase featuring some of the rising stars in Scotland’s music scene. Following on from panels, performances and workshops at The Glad Cafe during the day, the evening features live music from ID, PAQUE and Lamaya, as well as DJ sets from hip-hop devotee Arusa Qureshi and Hiba.
Photo: Marilena Vlachopoulou
Arusa Qureshi, appearing at We Are Here Scotland
Ritualia & The Circle
Dundee Rep, Dundee, 3-5 Nov, 7:30pm Scottish Dance Theatre presents a double bill of two of their most acclaimed pieces in recent years by internationally renowned choreographers Colette Sadler and Emanuel Gat. Ritualia re-imagines Igor Stravinsky and Bronislava Nijinska’s 1923 masterpiece Les Noces, revealing the latent androgyny and gender queerness of the original, while The Circle offers a dynamic, visually striking exploration of electronic jazz by Squarepusher.
Photo: Justin Lockey Havana Glasgow Film Festival
Various venues, Glasgow, 8-13 Nov To mark 20 years of Glasgow being twinned with Cuba’s capital, Havana Glasgow Film Festival returns with a special focus on Black filmmakers across both classic and contemporary cinema. Highlights from the programme include the world premiere of Sara Gómez's restored 1960s Isle of Pines Trilogy, a family-friendly screening of the sweet and moving Crazy About Carol, and a late night party at CCA’s Saramago Cafe Bar, DJed by Cami Layé Okún.
Glasgow Film Festival Image: courtesy of Havana
Cloth for Culture House Launch
Image: courtesy of artist
Kojey Radical
Photo: Brian Hartley
The Circle at Dundee Rep Crazy for Carol
Nira Pereg: Patriarchs
Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh, until 18 Feb 2023 Israeli artist Nira Pereg’s video installations interrogate the performances of faith and religion that occur under difficult geopolitical and ideological conditions, considering the inherent tension between ceremony and territory. Patriarchs follows contested sites of worship in historic Palestine, examining how prayer and pilgrimage are structured both by religious temporalities and colonial and military control.
Image: courtesy Nira Pereg/Talbot Rice Gallery
Sarah Sarah, Nira Pereg
Kojey Radical
SWG3, Glasgow, 2 Nov, 7pm Blending grime, hip-hop, and spoken word, Kojey Radical has collaborated with the likes of Michaela Coel and Mahalia and opened for Young Fathers, making him one of the most exciting names in British rap. Following four EPs over the years, this year saw him release the Mercury Prize-nominated Reasons to Smile, a genre-defying, game-changing work of political and emotional acuteness.
All details were correct at the time of writing, but are subject to change. Please check organisers’ websites for up to date information.
French Film Festival
Various venues, various cities, 2 Nov-15 Dec
Film Festival UK Image: courtesy of French Photo: Diana Dumi Maria Stoian: Forgeries
Out of the Blue Drill Hall, Edinburgh, 3 Nov-1 Dec
Image: Maria Stoian Photo: Tal Imam
Frans Gender at Queer Theory Bee Asha, appearing at Push the Boat Out
What's On
All details correct at the time of writing
Photo: Douglas Robertson
Lizabett Russo
Tori and Lokita
Music
It’s November and there are still festivals going on. On 6 November, SIRENS is new from the team behind Stag & Da er. Taking over Glasgow’s Classic Grand and Audio venues, catch sets from Giant Swan (live), bdrmm, Stealing Sheep, Slim Wrist and more. On 12 November, The Great Western returns to Glasgow with Pussy Riot, Los Bitchos, Connie Constance, Scalping, The Bug Club and a whole host of local talent set to play, from Martha Ffion and Withered Hand to Dutch Wine, Bee Asha Singh and Rachel A s, while at the end of the month, Make-That-a-Take Records’ Book Yer Ane Fest returns to Conroy’s Basement for its 15th outing. Taking place over three days from 25-27 November, expect sets from Bratakus, Lou Mclean, James Liandu, Kaddish and more. Several local artists are celebrating releases this month too with shows. Lizabett Russo launches While I Sit and Watch This Tree, Vol 2 at The Hug & Pint (4 Nov), Hailey Beavis celebrates her debut album I’ll Put You Where the Trombone Slides at Summerhall, Edinburgh (5 Nov) and Mono, Glasgow (12 Nov), Russell Stewart brings his debut EP Into View to Glasgow’s King Tut’s (18 Nov), Aberdeen’s The Little Kicks take the Cairn String Quartet on the road for a trio of shows celebrating People Need Love – catch them in Edinburgh (Voodoo Rooms, 18 Nov), Glasgow (Drygate, 24 Nov) and Dundee (Hunter S. Thompson, 26 Nov) – and Glasgow’s Humour play Nice N Sleazy on 26 November, the day after releasing their electric debut EP Pure Misery. Elsewhere, a trio of 2022 Mercury Prize nominees roll into Glasgow this month, with Kojey Radical (2 Nov) and Wet Leg (17 Nov) playing SWG3, before Yard Act play QMU (22 Nov). Kendrick Lamar brings Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers to the OVO Hydro (2 Nov) for a massive show, before Aussie party band Confidence Man play Barrowlands (9 Nov); on the same night in Edinburgh catch Lime Garden at Sneaky Pete’s. Later in the month a run of shows could easily keep you busy every night of the week with Ezra Furman at QMU (20 Nov), Orlando Weeks at King Tut’s (21 Nov), Ibibio Sound Machine at St Luke’s (22 Nov), Amyl and the Sniffers at Barrowlands (23 Nov), Jesca Hoop at The Caves (24 Nov) and Whitney at QMU (25 Nov). And for a true hit of nostalgia, the first week of the month brings the OG Sugababes lineup to Edinburgh’s Usher Hall (5 Nov) and Glasgow’s O2 Academy (7 Nov). [Tallah Brash]
Film
The French Film Festival (2 Nov-15 Dec) has a fantastic lineup fitting of its 30th-anniversary milestone. It’s got new films from Michel Hazanavicius (Final Cut), the Dardennes (Tori and Lokita) and François Ozon (Peter von Kant) as well as classics like Marcel Carné’s Children of Paradise, Jacques Demy’s A Room in Town and Claude Chabrol’s Madame Bovary, which screen at Edinburgh’s Institut Français d’Ecosse. Also look out for the propulsive Full Time, blistering drama Rodeo and Hitchcockian whodunit The Green Perfume.
Africa in Motion (11-20 Nov) is smaller in scale this year but still remains one of the most vital events on Scotland’s festival calendar. The event kicks off with Tug of War, Amil Shivji’s political love story set in the final years of British colonial Zanzibar. Frequency Adjustment is a new strand celebrating the
Photo: Polydor Records
Kendrick Lamar
Photo: Jamie Macmillan
Yard Act
Devil in a Blue Dress
Photo: Poly Artists Agency
DJ Fauzia
Image: courtesy of the artist
Detail of June Bug, Kelvin Guy influence that African and Black diaspora artists have had on the punk and metal scenes. And there’s an unmissable double bill of Ousmane Sembène’s classic Mandabi with Nana Mensah’s debut feature film Queen of Glory.
Havana Glasgow Film Festival (8-13 Nov) returns with a spotlight on Black Cuban filmmaking with a particular focus on Black women directors. Highlights include a mini-retrospective dedicated to Sara Gòmez, an AfroCuban documentarian who explored the position of women and Afro-Cubans within Cuban society. On 12 November, the festival hosts a party at Saramago Café, where Cuban DJ Cami Layé Okún comes fresh from Havana. The popular Doc’n Roll (2-6 Nov, GFT; 5-12 Nov, Cameo, Edinburgh) is also back with a hand-picked selection of music documentaries. The festival kicks off with A Film about Studio Electrophonique, which is a warm tribute to the studio in a Sheffield council house that helped launch legendary bands like The Human League, Heaven 17 and Pulp. There’s also a rare screening of Rewind And Play: Thelonius Monk (GFT, 3 Nov), where the jazz genius takes down an arrogant journalist in an infamous 1969 French TV interview. Elsewhere, you’ll find Summerhall screening a stellar collection of cult LGBTQ films: But I’m a Cheerleader, Tomboy and Beautiful Thing. GFT bring their now annual Noirvember featuring a brace of silky neo-noir from the 90s. Also at GFT, there’s another unmissable Scorsese screening, with the Scotsman’s Alistair Harkness introducing The Last Waltz, the nearpeerless doc capturing the farewell tour from The Band, featuring electric and, let’s face it, often dru ed-fueled performances from Van Morrison, Bob Dylan, NNeil Young and Joni Mitchell. [Jamie Dunn]
Clubs
Starting November off, UK Nu-Garage DJ Oneman makes an appearance at The Berkeley Suite (3 Nov). Missing Persons Club celebrate their 10th birthday, with a B2B from Julian Muller and MRD – this is one for those who like big room techno (4 Nov). Civic House host their monthly party with Glasgow festival Counterflows, including contemporary Chilean music (4 Nov).
Sneaky Pete’s have a big weekend with Miss World presenting Londonbased hardcore and NRG selector mixtress (4 Nov), while Palidrone invites TVSI aka Anunaku, the co-founder of UK dance label Nervous Horizon (5 Nov). Edinburgh also hosts UK garage DJ Bluetoof (Keep Hush) at The Caves (5 Nov). Glasgow label Redstone Press celebrate their 5th Birthday at Civic House (12 Nov) with a line-up including Iona, Abena, Angel D’lite, Ira, Lewis Lowe and Pseudopolis. A huge day party – expect goody bags and party balloons. A new club night launches 17 November at the Poetry Club in Glasgow. Phlox focuses on DJs, VJs, and visual artists, creating a sensorial experience within a club environment. Glasgow’s Erosion invites FAUZIA (NTS) and Mi-El (Venue MOT) to Stereo (18 Nov). This is a night with fast-paced club music, bass, and breaks. Bringing some midweek excitement to La Cheetah, Glasgow techno podcast Frenetik gives HØLEIGH her Scottish debut (23 Nov). PRTY host their final party of 2022, with a sell-out night at SWG3. They invite Brutalismus 3000 (26 Nov) for a night with a contrast of 4x4, nu-gabber and post-punk. Pulse’s 14th birthday takes place at The Mash House, with queer techno duo Blasha and Allatt (26 Nov). [Heléna Stanton]
Art
Kelvin Guy opens their exhibition Nothing Yet on 12 November at iota in the West End of Glasgow. The solo show features dynamic and movementfilled paintings, reflecting the artist’s career as a set painter for Scottish Opera. The show is on public view until 26 November. Also in Glasgow, The Hunterian opens Turner Prize-winner Elizabeth Price’s first solo show in Scotland, opening to the public on 11 November. The exhibition, titled UNDERFOOT, focuses on Glasgow and Renfrewshire’s textile heritage, referencing and employing never-before-exhibited archival materials. Continuing until 25 January 2023, Hayley Tompkins’ exhibition at Fruitmarket titled Far features paintings and films made since 2007. Tompkins’ practice ‘looks at the way we look’ and questions what we pay attention to. The exhibition’s focus is a new installation that displays all of the artist’s films from the past 15 years of her career. Nearby, Stills’ annual exhibition FUTUREPROOF sees twelve recent graduates from Glasgow School of Art, Edinburgh Napier University, University of Highlands and Islands, Moray School of Art and Grays School of Art showcasing some of the most exciting contemporary photographic work in the country. For the first time,
ANUNAKU
Webster Ltd., Glasgow and Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York Image: courtesy of the Artist and The Modern Institute, Toby
Image courtesy of CCA
CCA
Photo: Marilena Vlachopoulou
Leyla Josephine
Image: courtesy of Lighthouse Books the exhibition also takes place across Stills and Street Level Photoworks in Glasgow. Both exhibitions open on 12 November. Over in Perth, Jupiter Artland presents an offsite installation of Rachel Mclean’s film work Mimi. First shown in 2021 at the sculpture park and now reconceived by the artist in an abandoned shop on Perth’s High Street, the exhibition continues throughout November. This month, Alberta Whittle’s film commission for this year’s Venice Biennale, Lagareh – The Last Born will continue its Scotland-wide tour, screening at Mareel Shetland Arts in Lerwick on 27 November. [Harvey Dimond]
Theatre
If you’re one of the people who get S.A.D. (Seasonal Affective Disorder) when November starts, cosying up in a warm theatre this winter might just be the remedy. And why not get a pie and a pint while you’re at it? Thankfully, A Play, a Pie and a Pint are touring again with five new plays from emerging Scottish playwrights. The season includes Joe McCanna’s Alföld, a play about a young interracial couple whose marriage is on the verge of collapse. It is a dark comedy that explores themes of language, misogyny, politics, racism and what it takes to survive in Viktor Orbán’s illiberal democracy (Traverse Theatre, 1-5 Nov). The CCA in Glasgow has two striking performances on this month. First up is Ci ie Stories: Twenty Tales of Love and Sorrow (3-4 Nov), a performative launch of a new collection of autobiographical writings by multi-disciplinary artist Emily Furneaux. Also on is Tricky Hat’s Don’t Stop Me Now (5 Nov), which challenges the taboos surrounding ageing. If you’re saving up for the holiday season, you might like these free events: The Citadel Arts Group’s new play Caring, based on playwright Rhona McAdam’s experience as a carer for her son, is staged at the Scottish Storytelling Centre (3-4 Nov). Queer Stories is a pop-up event by Shaper/ Caper that explores the impact of Section 28, a ban that once prohibited the ‘promotion of homosexuality’. Inspired by interviews with LGBTQ+ people who lived through the time, they’ll be performing in Dundee, West Lothian, and Inverness. Under the £1 Traverse Ticket scheme is Witch Hunt (16-17 Nov), a cautionary fairytale that celebrates the wisdom of the witch, unpacks the notion of the predator, and conjures a world of coven-ready weird sisters. Also playing this month are Stellar Quines’ Sister Radio in Aberdeen at The Lemon Tree (2 Nov) and in Edinburgh at the Traverse (10-12 Nov); Jordan & Skinner’s The Time Machine: A Radical Feminist Retelling at the Traverse (3-5 Nov); and NTS’s Enough of Him in New Galloway at CatStrand, Platform in Glasgow, Lanternhouse in Cumbernauld, Brunton Theatre in Musselburgh, and Perth Theatre. [Sophia Hembeck]
Poetry
This month, Edinburgh hosts its second annual international poetry festival, Push the Boat Out. A flock of the country’s best will take to the stage in Summerhall from 4-6 November, featuring poets such as Pascale Petite, Will Harris, Hannah Lavery, Alycia Pirmohamed and Nadine Aisha Jassat. The opening night mixes poetry, dance and music from artists including Janette Ayachi and Belle and Sebastian’s Stuart Murdoch. Lighthouse Bookshop’s Radical Book Fair takes place the following weekend at Edinburgh’s Roxy (10-13 Nov). Expect talks on climate change, borders, feminism and activism, and a captivating storytelling performance from Mara Menzies. A new cabaret evening will see its second month of performances at The Stand Comedy Club in both Edinburgh and Glasgow. Hosted by Glasgow’s Jim Monaghan, Word Up brings together poets, musicians and comedians. On the Glasgow (10 Nov) and Edinburgh (13 Nov) bills are Iona Lee, Michael Mullen, Bruce Morton, Robert Florence, Clarissa Woods, Phil Differ, Rachel Amey and Calum Bird. Up in Aberdeen, long-running spoken word night Speakin’ Weird will see a headline set from Jeda Pearl this month (9 Nov). Leyla Josephine’s debut collection In Public / In Private is published by Burning Eye Books on 16 Nov. To celebrate, the poet and screenwriter is going on tour. She’ll be at Push the Boat Out (6 Nov), in Galashiels (24 Nov), at King Tuts in Glasgow (26 Nov) – with support from Colin Bramwell, Ellen Renton, Empress, Iona Lee, Niki Rush and Kevin P. Gilday – and in Ayr (30 Nov).
Book Week Scotland takes place 14-20 Nov. Workshops, talks and community events are happening across the country, with highlights including a Debut Authors panel with Kenny Boyle, Heather Darwent, Caron McKinlay and Sarah Smith and a night of crime fiction with Denise Mina and Chris Brookmyre. [Nasim Rebecca Asl]
Image: courtesy of Neil Hanna
The Seeing Hands, Katie Schwab
Photo: Mihaela Bodlovic
Traverse Theatre
Photo: Hazel Mirsepasi November 2022 —
Events Guide
Hannah Lavery
5 Meet the Team – 6 Editorial – 7 Love Bites – 8 Heads Up – 11 What’s On – 16 Crossword 33 Intersections – 36 Poster by Angela Kirkwood – 51 Music – 57 Film & TV – 60 Design 61 Food & Drink – 62 Books – 63 Comedy – 65 Listings 70 The Skinny On… Garth Marenghi
19 24 25
26 28 30
40 42 43
44 46 49
Features
19 We speak to filmmakers and former employees of Filmhouse and EIFF to share their reactions to the venue’s closure, while looking to the future.
24 Double Palme d'Or-winning director Ruben Östlund on his cruise ship class satire Triangle of Sadness.
25 Scottish director Charlotte
Wells on her long-gestating debut Aftersun.
26 Big Joanie discuss the expansive sound of their second album, Back Home.
28 Amy Love and Georgia South, aka Nova Twins, on building community for Black and POC punk and heavy rockers.
30 Kode9 on Escapology,
Astro-Darien and
Scottish independence.
40 We take a walk through the Tramway retrospective of Norman Gilbert’s intimate paintings.
41 Unravelling Hannah Lim’s
Edinburgh Printmakers exhibition, Ornamental Mythologies.
43 We meet some of the poets from More Fiya, the Black-
British poetry collection being showcased at this year’s Push the Boat Out.
44 Redstone Press talk about their future, and notable memories, ahead of their fifth birthday party at Civic House.
46 Jessica Fostekew chats nuance, tackling complex issues in comedy and changing people’s opinions.
49 Director Laurie Sansom on racism and royalty in James IV:
Queen of the Fight on the eve of its Scottish tour.
On the website... More on Filmhouse and EIFF in The Cineskinny podcast, our weekly Spotlight On… series on new Scottish music, and gig reviews aplenty (Bon Iver, Japanese Breakfast, Rina Sawayama)
Shot of the month
Jockstrap @ Stereo, Glasgow, 30 Sept by Serena Milesi @serena_milesi
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Compiled by George Sully
29 30 Across
1. Clean – finish (3,2) 3. Baby milk – equation (7) 6. Buddy (3) 8. Guest appearance – Edinburgh cinema (5) 12. Belonging to us (3) 13. Conclude (3,2) 14. Where things are shot (3) 15. Infer (4,7,3,5) 19. Tavern (3) 22. In theatres (3) 23. Distress call (3) 24. Expected money back from investment (abbrev.) (3) 25. Record new dialogue in another language (3) 27. Help (3) 28. Give in (5) 29. They roll at the end (7) 30. Cry (3) Down
1. Screen – type of lizard (7) 2. How likely something is to make money (13) 3. Get dimmer (4,3) 4. Film cylinders – Instagram videos (5) 5. Performer (5) 6. De facto movie snack (7) 7. Jesus brought him back from the dead (7) 9. Clever computer brains (init.) (2) 10. Encountered (3) 11. We somehow voted to leave this in 2016 (2) 16. "Nouvelle vague" (3,4) 17. Fate (3) 18. An old episode of a TV show broadcast again (5) 19. Independent (movie company or record label) (5) 20. Famous – wrote down (5) 21. Long-suffering – I cost (anag) (5) 22. Been around a while (3) 23. Big names – performs (in) (5) 26. Off-set footage (abbrev.) – South
Korean boy band (3)
Winter Warmers
Get cosy in Edinburgh this winter, with charming bars, warming coffee, exciting nights out and unforgettable sights
Words by: The Skinny
Image courtesy of Forever Edinburgh
Edinburgh skyline at night
It’s winter. It’s cold outside, and it’s either raining right now or it will be shortly. The good news is that Edinburgh is full of memorable places to see and things to do, no matter what the weather throws at you.
Cosy pubs and bars
While you’re out exploring all that Edinburgh has to o er, you’ll need a few places to get warmed up, and where better to start than ‘in the pub by the re’. In the heart of the Old Town, The Bow Bar (80 Victoria St) o ers an excellent beer selection to enjoy while you warm up, and it’s a similar story at renowned Tollcross pub Bennets Bar (8 Leven St). In terms of historic pubs, they don’t get more historic than The Sheep Heid Inn (43 The Causeway) in Duddingston. There’s been a pub on this site since 1360, making it the city’s oldest watering hole; the recently-restored skittles alley alone makes it well worth a visit. Down in Leith, check out Nobles (44a Constitution St), originally opened in 1896 and still featuring some of its Victorian features including some delightful stained glass windows. For a quick winter warmer, head over to Gorgie and the much-loved Athletic Arms (1 Angle Park Ter). Their whisky list is incredibly extensive, and the back room is called ‘the Snug’ – doesn’t get much cosier than that. At the Bellfield Brewery (46 Stanley Pl) in Abbeyhill, the beer garden is equipped with patio heaters, booths, and regular kitchen pop-ups – you can get warmed up while still outside.
First-class co ee
Edinburgh has one of the UK’s best co ee scenes, with independent speciality co ee bars dotted all over the city. Fancy a at white in the shadow of Edinburgh Castle? Head to The Source Coffee Co (4 Spittal St), who serve exciting co ees sourced from around the world and roasted at their very own roastery. In the Old Town, The Milkman (7 Cockburn St) pair modern espresso with restored vintage signage that reveal the cafe’s former life as a newsagent. And if you want to take in Edinburgh’s evening ambience but don’t fancy a trip to the pub, there are also a host of great cafes that stay open a bit later. Thomas J Walls (35 Forrest Rd) is an excellent espresso bar in a former opticians’ and is open til 7pm, as are The Maytree chocolate cafe (123 Brunts eld Pl) and the cool Scandi-inspired Project Coffee (192 Brunts eld Pl) up in leafy Brunts eld.
A bite to eat
For dinner with an excellent view, head to The Outsider (15 George IV Bridge). The split-level bistro has a laid-back charm, and an excellent outlook across the Old Town to Edinburgh Castle. Up in Brunts eld, Leftfield (12 Barclay Ter) pairs excellent seafood with a view across the historic Brunts eld Links (one of the city’s oldest golf courses) all the way to Arthur’s Seat. In Leith, The King’s Wark (36 Shore) is a modern gastropub with a storied history. Since its inception in the 1400s it’s been a royal residence, a storehouse and an armory store – come for the history, stay for a hearty dinner. Heading along the coast, there are few Edinburgh landmarks as iconic as the Forth Bridges. The UNESCO World Heritage site is an incredible piece of Edinburgh history, and it looks spectacular at night. Just a 25-minute train journey from Edinburgh, head to the quaint seaside suburb of South Queensferry for dinner at the rustic Hawes Inn (7 Newhalls Rd) or the more modern Scotts Bar & Restaurant (Port Edgar Marina) and take in the unique nighttime view.
Live music and comedy
Nothing warms you up quite like a good sing-along (even if you’re not the one singing), and there are a host of lively music bars across Edinburgh to draw you in from the cold. Folk fans are served by two iconic institutions on the border of the Old Town and Newington. Sandy Bell’s (25 Forrest Rd) is a small but extremely cosy bar that o ers near-nightly folk sessions as well as a huge selection of whiskies, while the Royal Oak (1 In rmary St) hosts weekly folk gigs in the basement bar. Just around the corner is another very di erent basement music bar. The Jazz Bar (1a Chambers St) is the place to be for jazz fans, with multiple live gigs every night from bands and artists from around the world, and plenty of delicious cocktails to go around. Alternatively, spend an evening chuckling away in one of Edinburgh’s comedy clubs. Monkey Barrel (9 Blair St) plays host to regular touring shows from Fringe hits and alternative comedians from across the UK, and The Stand (5 York Pl) o ers a similar mix of new material nights, touring shows and mixed bills.
Out and about
For a fun winter night out, head to one of Edinburgh’s cinemas. Take your pick from Morningside’s art deco, family-run Dominion (18 Newbattle Ter), the century-old Cameo Cinema (38 Home St) in Tollcross, or the leather armchairs of The Scotsman Picturehouse (20 North Bridge). And of course, the longer the nights, the more opportunities for Edinburgh to light up and take on a magical glow. Castle of Light returns from 18 Nov, lighting up Edinburgh Castle with a kaleidoscope of illuminations and projections, while the Royal Botanic Garden’s Christmas light show begins on 17 Nov with more than a million lights twinkling away across the gardens.
Image courtesy of Forever Edinburgh
NOBLES
Discover more places to go and things to do in Edinburgh at edinburgh.org/blog/an-evening-in-edinburgh/
More than Bricks and Mortar
The brutal closure of Filmhouse and EIFF has left our film community bereft. We speak to filmmakers and programmers whose careers are indelibly intertwined with these institutions and ask about their hopes for the future of film exhibition in Scotland
Interview: Jamie Dunn Illustrations: Irina Selaru
No one will miss Scotland’s self-appointed Centre for the Moving Image, the charity that fell into administration on 6 October. But anyone who cares even an inkling for cinema will dearly lament the loss of the three institutions CMI took with it: two much-loved cinemas, Filmhouse in Edinburgh and the Belmont in Aberdeen, and the 75-year-old Edinburgh International Film Festival. Over 100 staff were laid off with zero notice and are now pursuing legal action. The CMI’s board claimed that the “perfect storm” of sharply-rising energy costs, together with both the lasting impacts of the pandemic and the rapidly emerging cost of living crisis were the reasons for their swift collapse, but it’s become increasingly evident that this organisation had issues long before COVID-19 or Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Ninian Doff
It’s hard to overstate the damage these closures have done to the Scottish capital’s film scene. The city is left without a venue dedicated to art house and repertory cinema. The lively schools’ programmes run by Filmhouse’s education wing have gone. Smaller festivals and independent programmers who used Filmhouse as a venue are now scrambling for alternatives. A crucial community space has vanished overnight and it’s hard to imagine how it will be replaced in the near future. The loss of the long-running festival similarly stings, especially as the 75th edition saw an artistic resurgence with new Creative Director Kristy Matheson delivering an edition full of thoughtful curation and much promise for the future. If there isn’t a 76th edition, it will be a crying shame. It feels like the Scottish film community has already cycled through most stages of grief by now – certainly ‘denial’, ‘depression’ and ‘anger’. They haven’t settled on ‘acceptance’ just yet though. A group quickly sprang up after the closure with ambitions of saving these institutions. It held an extremely positive meeting on 14 October between members of Creative Scotland, former employees of CMI and other members of the film community where it was su ested there is the political will and capital for these vital community assets to be salvaged. In this spirit of hope, we’ve invited some Edinburgh filmmakers and key figures in Filmhouse and EIFF’s storied history to reflect on the closures, share their memories of these possibly lost institutions and dream of what a Filmhouse and EIFF 2.0 could look like if they can be raised from the ashes.
Shock, Sadness, Anger
EIFF has had many great programmers over the years, but few can claim to have had the impact of Lynda Myles. She was invited to join the EIFF team in 1968 after writing a blistering open letter in The Scotsman about the festival’s tepid programming and quickly became the integral creative force during its glorious run in the 70s (acting as Artistic Director 1973-1980) when EIFF was among the most innovative, influential and well-respected film festivals on the planet. “The news of the closure was devastating, unimaginable and it’s critically important that both the film festival and Filmhouse are resurrected,” Myles says of her initial reaction to the closure. The news reminded Myles of an essay by Martin Scorsese in Harper’s magazine last year. “Scorsese wrote, ‘We can’t depend on the movie business, such as it is, to take care of cinema.’ We need independent cinemas like Filmhouse which offer a unique space to watch a wide range of films.” Another legendary figure at EIFF and Filmhouse is Jim Hickey. He was the Head Programmer when the Filmhouse first opened its doors on Lothian Road in 1979 and succeeded Myles as EIFF’s Artistic Director in 1980. “I was shocked that the staff were treated so badly and angry that there were no warnings or concerted efforts to attract financial support to even begin to deal with the emergency,” Hickey tells us. “Now there is a huge sadness about what was thrown away so quickly. I knew something of the background to the gathering storm over recent years but not the full extent of it. I get upset just talking about it now.” Filmmaker Mark Cousins was at the heart of an EIFF revolution in the mid-90s, when he was EIFF’s Artistic Director. And before it closed, he was very much part of the Filmhouse furniture, with his curly mop of hair often to be spotted in the cinema’s front row. “When I wake up at 6.30am, I always check what’s on at Filmhouse,” Cousins tells us. “I visit it as a reward to myself for hard work. I go there to refill. I used to say that you get vitamin D from a movie screen. Filmhouse Screen 1 is my vitamin D.”
Cousins isn’t the only filmmaker whose career and sense of cinema are interwoven with Filmhouse and EIFF. A few days after news of the CMI’s collapse broke, Limbo director Ben Sharrock was one of the most articulate voices to express his dismay at the situation. Sharrock grew up in Edinburgh and was a pupil at Boroughmuir High School, just five minutes up the road from Filmhouse. He didn’t hold back when we asked about his reaction. “I was frustrated,” says Sharrock. “Angry. Saddened but ultimately powerless. It’s that horrible feeling of thinking that… surely something can be done. Surely this isn’t it? But knowing that I can’t personally do anything to change it or fix it. I wish I could. I would love to be involved in figuring out how to revive these essential parts of our city as I’m sure lots of local filmmakers and cinephiles would be.” When we ask Edinburgh filmmaker Hope Dickson Leach how she felt when she heard the news of the closure, she talks of grief. “I feel like someone has died,” she says. “It’s especially painful after the global grief that I (as many) have experienced during the pandemic. There is so little resilience or hope to push back against the seeming inevitability of the loss of our film culture. As someone who has also been working with theatre in the last few years and engaging with Scottish culture at large, it feels like we are at the beginning of severe cultural loss that I don’t know how we will recover from as a country.”
A Place of Film Education
It’s hard to overstate how important Filmhouse and EIFF have been to film talent development in Scotland. Just look at the most exciting release of the autumn: Charlotte Wells’ Aftersun, which opened the 75th EIFF just a few months ago. While promoting the film at its English premiere at London Film Festival, Wells expressed her heartbreak at the news, explaining that Filmhouse is where she got her first taste of filmmaking as part of the cinema’s innovative scheme SKAMM (aka Scottish Kids are Making Movies). Another Edinburgh film kid turned good is Ninian Doff. His debut Get Duked!, a riotous class comedy about four working-class lads being hunted for sport by deranged members of the Highland gentry, opened the festival in 2019. “EIFF championed my little film and gave it the full red carpet treatment of a massive Hollywood blockbuster,” says Doff of that gala screening. “It was one of the greatest moments of my life and I’m forever grateful for it. It breaks my heart that it could even be possible that future filmmakers might not experience the magic of this festival.” Like Wells, Doff was an alumnus of SKAMM. “When I was 12 I went to the Filmhouse to the first meeting of a young person’s film club set up by Shiona Wood and Mark Cousins,” he recalls. “Once SKAMM was in my life, I never wanted to be anything other than a film director.” The scheme also bla ed Doff a press pass to EIFF. Every summer from the age of 13 to 16, he’d immerse himself in world cinema. “I’d watch about five films a day and still remember sta ering home with my mind full of images, crashing down asleep only to wake up to hit the first 9am screening the next day and do it all again. Through SKAMM’s projects and their generosity in letting me attend the festival, I honestly learned more than I ever did on any film course.” Sharrock wasn’t part of SKAMM (“I fancied myself as more of an actor in those days,” he says), but as an adult, he attended EIFF Talent Lab in 2014 and found it similarly galvanizing: “This was the best film development programme I ever did – better than Berlin Talents and BFI Network. I came away believing I could make films for a living.” The public programme was also invigorating. “That year at EIFF I saw Club Sandwich by Fernando Eimbcke,” Sharrock recalls, “and I was so inspired by it that I wanted to leave the cinema, pick up a camera and make my first feature immediately.” A year later, Sharrock had done just that. His wonderful debut Pikadero screened in competition at EIFF’s 2016 edition and walked off with the Michael Powell Award for Best British Feature. As co-founder of SKAMM, Cousins was a mentor to many of these talented filmmakers, but he describes Filmhouse and EIFF as being just as vital to his own career as an adult as it was to young film nuts like Wells and Doff. “Filmhouse and EIFF weren’t just things I did in my spare time,” he says. “They were what energised that spare time. I saw a Japanese documentary at Filmhouse – The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On – when I was planning my film about neo-Nazism [Another Journey by Train, 1993], and it completely changed my movie, which in turn really advanced my work and creative life.” He also cites EIFF’s retrospective of the Bengali director Ritwik Ghatak as another pivotal moment in his film education. “Thirty years later I’m still feeling the effect of those screenings. I now know Indian movie stars and directors and build Indian cinema into a lot of what I do specifically because of those ten days watching Ghatak films.” Like Cousins, the festival was where Dickson Leach’s career in film began. Throughout the late 90s and early 00s you’d have found her running around behind the scenes at Filmhouse in one of the many roles she held at EIFF. Over the years she was a submissions coordinator, head of screenings, jury coordinator and assistant to the Artistic Director. When we speak to her, many memories come tumbling out. “Managing a test screening with Béla Tarr as we set up the subtitles for Werckmeister Harmonies [2000] was one of the strangest things I’ve done, not to be outdone at the horror of having to show Liv Ullman the damaged print of her film Faithless [2000] following an accident at a press screening.” Dickson Leach adds: “The projectionists at the Filmhouse, incidentally, are some of the best people I’ve worked with in the film industry full stop, and the way they handled both things was with the height of professionalism and full of the love for cinema you could count on from everyone who worked there.”
Can Filmhouse and EIFF return?
It’s abundantly clear that Filmhouse and EIFF – and visionary programming by people like Lynda Myles and Jim Hickey – have touched countless lives. Without them, we might not have filmmakers of the calibre of Charlotte Wells, Ben Sharrock, Mark Cousins, Hope Dickson Leach and Ninian Doff. Their resurrections are essential for Scotland’s fragile cinema ecosystem. But it would be foolish to look back at Filmhouse and EIFF with rose-tinted glasses. As indispensable as these institutions were, they were not without their flaws
Hope Dickson Leach
too. If there is to be a rebirth of both, the shape and character of what emerges shouldn’t be carbon copies. We ask our interviewees what they hope for if there is to be a Filmhouse and EIFF 2.0. As much as he values Filmhouse and EIFF, Sharrock agrees that there are areas in which both institutions could improve. “In general, I think art-house cinemas need to lean into being creative hubs for film appreciation and community that have an appeal to young people while retaining a multi-generational pull,” he su ests. “The Filmhouse always had strong programming but, unfortunately, that’s just not enough these days. To put it simply, it needs to be a place where young creatives want to ‘hang out’ and spend money for there to be a future. It needs to feel like a bright, modern and exciting place to be. I think it needs to be a year-round refuge for a progressive filmgoing community. A meeting place. A workspace.” Myles’ feeling is that if the festival returns, it should build on the green shoots of this summer’s propitious new-look edition: “Kristy Matheson, the new Creative Director of EIFF, demonstrated this year that she has the imagination and energy to re-invigorate and reinvent the festival. Ways need to be found for her to be able to take her creative vision further for a 2023 event.” Cousins’ su estions are short and sweet. “Keep the great films. Employ more working-class people. Look at what other, similar places are doing, and do that even better.” He also throws the gauntlet down to the people of Edinburgh, who he feels took these institutions for granted. “Another question isn’t what Filmhouse and EIFF should do, it’s what the audience should do,” he says. “Use it or lose it.” As much as Dickson Leach adored Filmhouse, she wasn’t attached to its bricks and mortar on Lothian Road. “Filmhouse has lived in other buildings and I would love it if it could return somewhere more accessible,” she says, “bespoke and fit for purpose in a venue that will last into the 21st century.” But before any more ambitious plans are thought up, she reckons there needs to be some deep thinking about the future of exhibition in this country. “We need to look at Scottish cinema’s relationship with the other arts organisations and institutions in Scotland if we are to retain building spaces that can deliver not just the art that we crave and need, but also the community engagements that these spaces offer so well. We need to engage with exhibition more broadly before any money is spent on a space.” We’ll leave the final word to Doff, who simply thinks these institutions are too important to be snuffed out. They need to be supported and saved at all costs. “This is so much more than a cinema closing down,” he says. “This is about Edinburgh’s creativity and artistic soul. I’m literally an Edinburgh kid who walked in as a child and then stepped out as the director of the opening gala festival film. That says everything about how powerful and magical these places are.”
The next Save the Filmhouse public meeting takes place 1 Nov, Grassmarket Community Centre, 5.15pm. To join this meeting and future meetings, sign up to savethefilmhouse@googlegroups.com
Rip It Up
Long before CMI’s collapse, life was far from rosy for arts workers in Scotland. Glasgow Short Film Festival’s Sanne Jehoul argues that we need to build a radical new model free from neoliberal thinking that’s fair, diverse and full of passion
The shocking and seemingly sudden collapse of an institution as established as the Centre for the Moving Image, and cherished cinema spaces and platforms like Filmhouse, Belmont and EIFF disappearing overnight, was unthinkable and difficult to process for anyone in Scotland with a heart for independent cinema. But amid the immediate responses of hurt, outrage and solidarity, and necessary calls to save the venues and festival, it also demands we question the multiple layers of why this is such an immense loss, and look at not just this bi est of Scottish film institutions, but at the wider exhibition sector and its fragility. Independent cinema spaces should be cherished – as hubs for community, social engagement, art form progression and resistance against a screen monoculture. In a country that is coming off years of austerity politics, severe underfunding and unstable working conditions in the arts, and neoliberal cultural policies driven by growth and commercialism, we have fewer of these hubs to cherish than in most of our European counterparts, and alternative screen culture has substantially eroded. The loss of a cinema like Filmhouse in the nation’s capital is particularly painful because it’s the only of its kind in the city. Take it away and the entire local sector suffers along with it: non-venue organisations, film festivals and community initiatives have few other avenues to turn to; the nurturing of and opportunities for local talent reduce even further; and the exhibition sector workforce finds itself in even shakier conditions than was already the case. Because long before the shocking treatment that CMI’s staff just went
through, workers across our sector – particularly those outside of the big institutions – have not been OK. So in our calls to save these spaces, we should ask for more than just that. We should ask for more properly funded spaces and platforms, well beyond our city centres, especially as many of them have suffered from the COVID pandemic and our relationship to locality has changed. Plenty of other major cities across Europe provide an alternative to our model: a more diverse and spread out independent cinema eco-system, sustained through wider investment in infrastructure, multiple key independent venues, organisations and festivals, and therefore a more diverse programme offer and more opportunities for career paths in the field. It would increase the sustainability for non-venue organisations and freelance practitioners, and allow more space for niche programming, experimentation and risk-taking, all of which help nurture local talent and develop audiences’ hunger for a genuinely exciting and innovative screen landscape. Of course, such investment requires longterm thinking, but as we’ve seen with CMI, the current approach isn’t sustainable. Because it isn’t just fuelled by the recent crises we find ourselves in. It is because leadership in our bi est institutions have been prioritising monolithic thinking and expansion – not in the least over fair staff treatment – and have been allowed to do so, in many cases against a backdrop of unacceptable pay discrepancies. It is because funding priorities are dominated by commercial, growth and status interests and lack focus on art form innovation or community investment, or on how the grassroots can benefit the institutions and vice versa. It is because outside of the few (clearly not so) stable institutions we have, the top of our industry is turning a blind eye to the underfunding and self-exploitation at the core of the exhibition sector, causing burnouts, talent drains, and neglect of genuinely radical and socially engaged initiatives that surely should be at the core of the arts. It can be defeating to dare rethink these structures. Like the rest of the UK’s public services, any healthy buffer for sustainability has eroded over the years, and in this time of immense crisis, it feels impossible to dream beyond tomorrow. But in what is still one of the wealthiest economies in the world, how can we not at least have the structures of some of our European counterparts? The multiple and substantial levels of arts funding – national, regional, council – in countries like Germany, France and Austria allow for a much richer cinema landscape where anything from the mainstream to the experimental can co-exist and feed into each other. Valuing and developing that diversity would create more sustainable routes for careers and talent across the industry too. And in reconsidering how we build and rebuild, we need to move towards a culture of solidarity and collaboration that doesn’t allow for the egos, gatekeeping and disingenuity that are rampant in our sector as it is now. Our arts institutions often still like to pretend that they are a beacon for progressive thought, that the social engagement that should be at the heart of the arts is still a key priority, but everything about our structures and priorities is being determined by the same neoliberal thinking that we purport to resist. What we need is the space and investment in more people and platforms that genuinely care about cinema beyond commercial outlooks and prestige, to treat them as the spaces for radicalism in form, ideas and activism that the arts should stand for. We need a sector led by those who care about workers, let them progress, and allow for other people’s visions, for collective approaches. Especially now, when we are living in a time of intense crisis. If we’re to save what’s lost, then surely at the forefront should be notions of urgency, necessity, community and social action.
Sanne Jehoul is the programme director at Glasgow Short Film Festival and works across the short film slate of festival distribution agency Square Eyes
t: @sanne_jehoul
Vom-Com
Ruben Östlund, the director of Force Majeure and The Square, takes a sledgehammer to the global elite with his latest satire Triangle of Sadness. He talks to us about the film’s inspiration, its critical reaction and keeping his audience entertained
Interview: Jamie Dunn
Triangle of Sadness, the caustic new comedy from Swedish filmmaker Ruben Östlund, sees a motley crew of uber-wealthy people get put through the wringer during a luxury cruise. Its sledgehammer approach to satire should prove more than a little cathartic, especially given that its arrival in UK cinemas coincides with a rightwing hedge fund bro with an estimated net worth of £730 million becoming Prime Minister in the middle of a miserable cost of living crisis. Triangle of Sadness didn’t begin with the idea of taking those with obscene amounts of money down a peg or two, however. The currency Östlund was initially interested in exploring was physical beauty, which he became fascinated by eight years ago when he met his wife, who’s a fashion photographer. “I got very curious about her profession and wanted to hear what it would be like to work in her industry,” Östlund tells us over Zoom. His interest was particularly piqued by his wife’s stories about male models. “She explained that the male models earn one-quarter, or less sometimes, of their female counterparts and that they constantly have to manoeuvre powerful homosexual men in the industry that want to sleep with them. They’re basically dealing with the same thing as women in other professions. So I thought it was interesting to see that flipped around and maybe it would make it easier to actually talk about these issues because a male character wouldn’t be seen as a victim in the same way.” The film centres on two bickering models, Yaya (Charlbi Dean) and Carl (Harris Dickinson), who are a couple but Yaya holds all of the cards. It’s her social media clout that pays for their tickets aboard a luxury yacht, where they find themselves rubbing shoulders with obnoxious Russian oligarchs, a lonely tech billionaire and a sweet old English couple taking a break from arms dealing. These characters are all caricatures but they’re also sharply drawn. To make great satire you need to know your subjects well, and Östlund has spent time observing similar circles. “Of course, I’ve been in these situations where I’m surrounded by [the mega-rich], like at Cannes and the Oscars and so on, and we actually had some billionaire that was putting money into The Square [Östlund’s similarly scathing satire skewering the modern art world]. So I had some experience.” Talking of Cannes, that’s where Triangle of Sadness made its world premiere and it’s fair to say Östlund got something of a perverse pleasure screening this delicious takedown of the global elite to that same global elite. “I loved the idea that it was going to be screened in Cannes,” he says. “I wanted a tuxedo-dressed audience to take a look at another tuxedo-dressed audience that is dealing with something horrific. I think I’ve always been interested in trying to control the social group that I’m connected to myself.” The Cannes jury clearly appreciated Östlund’s manipulation. The film won the festival’s top prize, the Palme d’Or, making Östlund among a handful of filmmakers who’ve won the award twice (The Square won in 2017). Critics have been more divided over its qualities, however. Many found this film sidesplittingly hilarious, while others have complained Östlund’s targets of tech billionaires and beauty influencers are low-hanging fruit. The Swedish director doesn’t have much truck with these grumbles, though. “There are certain critics who have a stick up their own arse,” he says. ”They are only interested in what other people think about them. When they write their reviews they are thinking, ‘Okay, how should I position myself with my reactions?’ They want to be seen to be smarter than the film they are watching.” He reckons this critical reaction is in some way connected to the traditions of European arthouse cinema, which have tended to be suspicious of films with mass appeal. “If I, as a director, get the money from the Swedish Film Institute, I don’t have to reach an audience because I’m already economically safe,” he explains. “But if you look at American filmmakers, they have to punch the whole way through and reach the audience, otherwise they will lose their job. Therefore there’s a certain kind of cinema in Europe that is posing as if they’re dealing with important topics in a very elitist way.” He recalls taking a flight from Venice Film Festival to Toronto Film Festival that illustrates his point. “The whole film industry was on this flight, and they are all watching films on their screens. But they were not watching their own films, their important arthouse films, they are watching Adam Sandler. Our aspirational selves want to say, ‘These worthy, important films are the films we like.’ But what we’re actually watching is something else. I wanted to break that contradiction with my films.” With that, he’s surely succeeded. Critics can argue the merits of Force Majeure, The Square and Triangle of Sadness till the cows come home, but one thing can surely be agreed upon: Östlund’s films are never boring. And for what it’s worth, I can’t remember the last time I laughed as hard in the cinema as I did watching Triangle of Sadness.
Triangle of Sadness is in cinemas now via Curzon
Memory Box
Is Aftersun, the debut from Scottish director Charlotte Wells, the finest film of 2022? Very possibly. We speak to this talented filmmaker about Aftersun’s long gestation period, visual storytelling and the difficulty of understanding your parents
Interview: Jamie Dunn
In Aftersun, not very much happens on screen, but everything happens. This debut film from 35-year-old Edinburgh-born filmmaker Charlotte Wells initially presents as a relatively simple drama. Set in the late 90s, it follows an 11-year-old Scottish girl, Sophie (Frankie Corio), and her young-at-30 father, Calum (Paul Mescal), on holiday at a low-rent Turkish resort. The trip itself is rather short on incident. They do fall out a bit – these’s a tiff involving a karaoke performance of REM’s Losing My Religion – but otherwise, they spend lazy days idling by the pool or suffering through the cheesy entertainment put on in the evenings by the hotel’s holiday reps. Inside, however, both Calum and Sophie are going through life-altering emotions, although each is oblivious to the true nature and magnitude of the other’s inner experience. As a film-daft youngster, Wells harboured aspirations to be a director. An early taster of filmmaking came at the recently-boarded-up Filmhouse. “That’s a space that means a great deal to me,” Wells said recently at the London Film Festival. “When I was younger, I was part of Filmhouse’s movie-making group SKAMM (Scottish Kids are Making Movies), where precocious 12-year-olds were programming Ozu films when I had absolutely no idea what that was and frankly wouldn’t for decades.” By the time she won a place studying film at NYU in her mid-20s, it was the business side of filmmaking she was more interested in. “Producing felt like the thing that would allow me to tie together a lot of different interests,” Wells tells us on a video call from her flat in New York, “and work on a variety of projects and subjects.” The course required that she direct some short films, however, and once she tried out the director’s chair there was no turning back. “It was just clear that with directing I had found this thing I really, really loved. I wanted to experience that feeling more.” Wells began sowing the seeds that would become Aftersun around 2015 while still at NYU. She shared her vague idea of a feature about a father and daughter on holiday with her professor, who assigned her some movies to watch: Wim Wenders’ Alice in the Cities, Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere and Peter Bogdanovich’s Paper Moon were among them. And then, she mulled it over. “I spent that summer flipping through old holiday albums and just seeing if this was a world I was interested in exploring on screen. I was thinking about it for a long time, but I didn’t realise I would be sitting and thinking about it for quite that long.” It was worth the wait. Earlier this year, Aftersun made its splash in Cannes and looks to be the break-out hit of the festival. If Aftersun was simply the naturalistic drama it first appears to be, it would be a very fine film. What makes it extraordinary are the increasingly impressionistic elements that Wells filters in. Between naturalistic scenes, we get haunting ellipses and mysterious glimpses of a young woman on a nightclub dancefloor. These images initially appear to be a flashback to Calum meeting Sophie’s mother for the first time, but eventually reveal themselves to be more complex – Nic Roeg-like, even – in their colliding of time and space. The results are lucid and powerfully emotional, but Wells doesn’t seem too worried if audiences don’t follow every nuance. “I’m crystal clear on what is happening in my films and why,” she explains, “but I learned through my short films that there was a gap between my understanding and the audience’s understanding, and I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. It allows a degree of interpretation; you can bring your own experiences to the film. My films are all ultimately about feeling, so I think that space to interpret is good.” Gaps in understanding also exist between Aftersun’s protagonists. The film is extremely wise about the fact that, as children, we understand little about our parents’ inner lives. “I think for kids, up until a certain point, our parents, and all adults in our lives really – teachers, football
Charlotte Wells
coaches – they just seem to perform a certain function in our life. It’s only when we’re older that the door creaks ever so slightly open and we start to perceive them as people who have these different interests and have their own path, their own life outside of the role they were to us.” As mentioned above, Aftersun was seven years in the making. We won’t have to wait so long for Wells’s next film, will we? “Probably,” she says. We hope not. “I hope not too, but I am also not going to put too much pressure on myself. I’m very much all in when I work and I want to make sure that whatever is next is something I’m willing to commit to as much as I have this. So no, I’m not writing yet, I’m trying to enjoy the moment and enjoy sharing the experience of sharing the film with the team who made it. I hope it’s not seven years, but I wouldn’t count it out either.”
Aftersun is released 18 Nov by MUBI
The Skinny has teamed up with MUBI to screen some free previews of Aftersun: 16 Nov, Glasgow Film Theatre, 8.35pm; 16 Nov, Cameo, Edinburgh, 7pm
Homecoming
Big Joanie talk about the expansive sound of their second album Back Home, the many meanings of home and the ongoing challenges faced by the music industry
Interview: Max Pilley
Photo: Dale Harvey
Big Joanie live at Usher Hall
Photo: Dale Harvey It should come as no surprise that on their second album Back Home, Big Joanie’s sound has expanded well beyond the perimeters of their 2018 debut Sistahs. The intervening years have seen the London DIY punk group sharing major stages around Europe with the likes of St. Vincent, Sleater-Kinney, Gossip and Bikini Kill, and that increase in scale can now be heard reflected in their increase in ambition. “We wanted to take what we’ve learned from them and bring it into this next era of Big Joanie,” says singer/guitarist Stephanie Phillips. “It’s definitely something we were thinking about, we wanted to be a bi er Big Joanie and to sound more rounded out and to have it sound like it’s not just us playing our three instruments, but to almost sound like an orchestra.” The trio, born from the self-starting underground punk scene in the UK’s capital, first started making waves in the mid-2010s with their fearless Black feminist ethos and their tight, riot grrrl-inflected post-punk rhythms, but on Back Home, they appear to come of age. The album builds on all of their musical influences, but sees them take confident strides into their own space, producing a group of songs that cut sharply with infectious melodies, trenchant attitude and more than a dash of sonic experimentation. “Yeah, I think a lot has changed, really,” says Phillips. “You can hear a development in our band in terms of us learning and becoming more confident in our instruments and our abilities.” One of the developments has come in Big Joanie’s in-studio process. Songs started coming together more naturally this time around, with the group less rigidly sticking to their instrumental lineup, allowing more room for invention. Sainted, for example, one of the album’s advance singles, saw Phillips moving to synths and regular bassist Estella Adeyeri taking guitar lead; elsewhere, songs started acquiring extra musicians, such as violinist Charlotte Valentine, or building guitar parts that would require multiple players. The sum total is an album charged with the spirit of liberation. “For the first album,” says drummer Chardine Taylor-Stone, “it was very much just getting a recording of us with some overlaid instruments. This time, we were looking at the studio almost as an instrument in itself. It’s about thinking as an album band when we’re making music. It’s always the record that is the legacy, that’s the thing that people are hopefully going to listen to in ten, 15 years’ time, so it’s about making that a piece of work in and of itself.” The band pinpoint one sea change moment as having come when they recorded a fuzzed-out cover of Solange’s Cranes in the Sky for Jack White’s Third Man Records in 2020. “Sonically, that is the beginning of the Back Home album, in terms of the visual imagery in music that we want to create,” says Taylor-Stone. “I don’t really like using the word sophisticated, because it’s naff, but it’s just being stronger in our vision and aesthetic. The depth of sound on that single is reflected throughout the new album.” That depth is heard on the track Today, for example, with its stoner, Mojave Desert languidness, or in the art-rock sensibility of Cactus Tree, the rolling feedback of which opens the album with a boldly adventurous salvo. “I never thought of it as leftfield until Margo [Broom, Back Home producer] asked if we were sure we wanted to open with it,” says Phillips. “It’s in the mould of bands like Throwing Muses or Pixies, building around a particular weird sound and making something experimental and poppy out of it. We always wanted to open with it, it’s quite definitive.”
Stephanie Phillips, Big Joanie
The title Back Home is designed to carry multiple meanings. The band members grew up in different parts of England, and while for Phillips and Taylor-Stone, moving to live in London might have helped for professional reasons, making a home there did not prove an easy task. “We felt really precarious in London, like we never had anywhere there that we could call home,” explains Phillips. “You’re always feeling on edge. “But also, the use of the phrase ‘back home’ has a different meaning for us as the descendants of migrants and people who’ve come here from the
Photo: Ajamu X
diasporic community. What home means to that community is not necessarily England, but somewhere else. And even then, since we were all born here in the UK, that home isn’t necessarily our home either. So it’s about thinking about where we can find home and find peace and space.” References to this topic are littered throughout the album, and they breathe life into the record’s cover art, too. Designed by multidisciplinary artist Angelica Ellis, the image depicts Ellis’ embroidery of a photograph of Taylor-Stone’s fouryear-old nephew at the barbers, surrounded by ackee flowers, an image intended to invoke the embroideries often found in post-Windrush Caribbean family homes in the UK. “The barber shop is quite a central point in diaspora cultures, it’s where people hang out and have conversation,” says Taylor-Stone. “Hair is quite an important thing in Black culture too, obviously. But we could be talking about any diaspora actually, whether it’s from Ireland or anywhere. But it started with that image, and then it expanded to attempt to include traditional crafts and women’s quilting in African America and the Caribbean, the diaspora of enslaved peoples and those amazing crafts.” These passions extend well beyond the trio’s work with Big Joanie. Adeyeri and Phillips, for example, are both part of the collective behind Decolonise Fest, an annual, not-for-profit DIY punk festival organised by and for POC punk bands, while Taylor-Stone was recently the vice chair of the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Committee at the Musician’s Union in 2021. Further to the Cranes in the Sky cover, Phillips also recently finished writing a book about Solange, “to put her in her context and to make sure that she’s celebrated properly,” as she puts it. There is no doubting that Big Joanie strive to represent the change they wish to see in the music industry and in society at large. For a band so immersed in the workings of their own industry, their observations ought to serve as a wake-up call. “Post-pandemic, people are trying to push themselves through these crazy tours,” says Taylor-Stone. “Everyone is making money except for the artists and something needs to be done, particularly around streaming. “There are bands playing Brixton Academy for five nights in a row, 20,000 people – they should be zillionaires by now, but most of them have only just given up their jobs. The losses we’ve made because of streaming as artists have been catastrophic for us. I have a full-time job, we all do, and we’re trying to tour on the side. And because of the cost-of-living crisis and Brexit, the costs have gone up even more. We do it because we love it, we don’t do it for money, because you just wouldn’t do it.” “There is no real commitment to shifting power in that industry,” adds Adeyeri. “When you go and see who’s managing those big booking agencies and those labels, it’s still just the same older, more privileged white men basically. We’re lucky enough to be with a booking agency that was founded by four women, but I haven’t seen any other agencies with that structure.” Despite the continuing intransigence of the business they love, they remain optimistic about the fact that young and talented new artists are still emerging all the time. Indeed, it is in no small part thanks to the visibility of diverse, outspoken groups like Big Joanie and their unwavering commitment and support for the cause that the music industry is finally starting to see the benefits of broader representation at a grassroots level. “There have been many more POC bands starting in the punk scene and young people don’t even notice that it might’ve been an issue ten years ago,” says Phillips. “When we started, it was seen as a bit odd that we wanted to be a Black punk band, our messaging was seen as a bit weird. But now that wouldn’t be looked at twice – it would actually be celebrated in a lot of ways.”
Big Joanie
Big Joanie release Back Home on 4 Nov via Daydream Library Series; Big Joanie play Mono, Glasgow, 14 Jan 2023'
Boss Bitches!
We catch up with Nova Twins about their DIY ethic and how they’ve helped foster a community for Black and POC punk and heavy rockers
Interview: Rho Chung
Amy Love and Georgia South – known as Nova Twins – crouch over a laptop to talk to me between tour stops. Nova Twins are currently wrapping up their North American tour, which they say has been amazing all the way through. The London-based pair span nu-metal, R’n’B, punk, and more in their music, and the crowds at their gigs reflect it. The pair stress that their music offers something beyond the usual punk-rock fare. This month, Love and South embark as headliners on their own European tour, which will see Nova Twins play St Luke's in Glasgow on 10 November before moving on to Manchester and London, which Love says will be their bi est headline gig so far. “It’s nice to see how the project continuously grows, and our audience gets more diverse, more beautiful in that respect,” South says. “We’ve got mosh- and twerk-offs happening in our pits, and that’s what we want. It’s not just for one type of person. The music’s for anyone who wants to listen to it.” From the start, Nova Twins have been determined to do things their way. They call themselves DIY. There are usually just three instruments – guitar (Love), bass (South), and drums – accompanying their vocals. Love says that they enjoy keeping up with their fans on Discord. They even make their own clothes. Their work looks backwards at trends in Black music and culture, but it also looks forward to a more equal
Amy Love, Nova Twins
Georgia South, Nova Twins
space. More than anything, Nova Twins offer a space to be many things at once; they create an environment where joy can merely exist. There’s something about Nova Twins, especially live, that is uniquely electric. Their most recent album, Supernova, is ecstatically high-energy. The subject matter ranges from radical self-love to killing (ex-) boyfriends – it’s the ideal soundtrack for stomping to work through the rain. The album foregrounds Nova Twins’ signature blend of rap, metal, and punk. Coupled with lean instrumentals, the pair have a clear, powerful, and instantly recognisable sound. Love and South, who have been playing together as a band since 2014, are both formidable musicians. Footage from their North American tour looks euphoric. They are captivating as they weave in and out of the audience, commanding enormous, roiling crowds. Even through earbuds, Supernova unlocks something deeply powerful. It feels like a primal scream in leather pants and a chrome corset. South says that she wants fans to leave their shows feeling “like they’ve released everything, and like they feel seen in the room.” The cathartic nature of Nova Twins’ music may be partially behind the pair’s meteoric rise over the past year. We are in a stressful time, to say the least. The rise of punk and heavy rock movements is a logical follow-on from the fucked-over feeling we’ve all been having these days. Prior to the rise of Nova Twins and a handful of other groups, it was difficult for a lot of people to feel welcome in the punk scene. “It was known that women didn’t get into the mosh pit,” Love says. “We’d stay way at the back at a rock show, because [otherwise] you’d get fully pushed over, or a black eye.” It’s not that women can’t mosh – sometimes you just want to feel something – but, especially for anyone in a marginalised body, the pit can be notoriously risky. Love assures me that this isn’t the case at their shows. She says: “We also have women with big afros in the mosh pit, taking up the same space and feeling safe in it…This is a safe space for everyone, and everyone’s gonna be respectful in it, and everyone should have a good time. You shouldn’t feel like you could leave there with a black eye.” Love and South are serious about representing their communities in the punk scene. To them, visibility is a key part of opening the door for other Black punk acts. Supernova was shortlisted for the 2022 Mercury Prize this year. South says: “It was such a big thing for us, because people are saying that we’re the first Black, female, heavy rock band to do it. So it just feels nice. It’s like a win for a wider space.” Love and South recount feeling alienated from the scene when they were starting out. Punk aesthetics are simultaneously out-of-the-box and startlingly strict. Though the movement is often linked with anti-racism and leftist political dissent, the pervasive image of the ‘rocker’ is pretty specific (and pretty white, cis, and male). “People didn’t know where to put you on the playlist,” Love says, “or people wouldn’t have you play here because you didn’t ‘look rock’.” It’s an experience that Love and South found they had in common with other non-white rock musicians. It was this deficit, alongside the BLM movement, that led Nova Twins to start their Voices for the Unheard Instagram series and Spotify playlist. The series of live videos features Connie Constance, Sophie K, Shingai, Loathe, Death Tour, and many others. In it, the band interview other artists about liberation, anti-racism, personal style, and DIY punk – the list goes on. Through each interview, there is an underlying current of mutual reverence. The band fosters a community for its own sake. The series unapologetically rejects the gaze of a white, male-dominated industry. In Episode 2, South points out that the deficit of Black voices in contemporary punk begets originality. Nova Twins weave influences into their sound seamlessly – but, as South says, there wasn’t always a lot of Black punk out there to be influenced by. The result is a creative, one-of-a-kind sound. It goes beyond innovation and speaks directly to survival, especially on the fringes of normativity. The project culminated in a vinyl compilation and a live show on Dr. Martens’ Instagram. The artwork for the show features the motto: ‘When they don’t give us a stage, we build our own!’ Love and South carry this quintessentially punk spirit into everything they do. Voices for the Unheard
Photo: Federica Burelli acts as a living manifesto highlighting the incredible range of talent among Black and POC rockers. It feels like there’s no end to Nova Twins’ creativity. They make everything they wear, from music video to festival stage. Their clothing line, Bad Stitches, isn’t available to buy (yet). South says that the name was apt when they first got started, but now they’ve gotten quite good. “We’ve always been so interested in fashion,” South says. “We loved talking about clothes when we were younger. We used to put safety pins on our clothes, or a little patch here and there. When the band started, we just thought, we want to wear [clothes that look] how we feel when we write music and play onstage. So we went super DIY with it.” Nova Twins really encapsulate DIY punk – born partly out of necessity, partly out of unbridled artistry. They have a hand – often the only hands – in creating every detail of their work. Nova Twins seem to be at the epicentre of a rising aesthetic movement. Love says that punk is “having its heyday again.” Nova Twins remind us that punk is all encompassing – it’s the way they dress themselves, the way they interact with their fans, and the way they liberate themselves through the music that, I think, will define them as one of the most influential bands of this particular era. Love and South have a touching amount of love and respect for their fans. For them, playing live is a collaborative experience with the audience. As Love says, “It’s just a really good vibe.” Talking over – and with – each other, Nova Twins weave together a few words on how they want their audiences to feel when they leave the show: “Empowered,” they say. “Like a boss bitch.”
Nova Twins play St Luke’s, Glasgow, 10 Nov
novatwins.co.uk
Speaking in Kode
The soundtrack to a sonic fiction film exploring the breakup of the UK through the lens of a video game, Hyperdub label boss Kode9’s latest releases are his most ambitious yet
Interview: Michael Lawson
It’s no exa eration to describe Steve Goodman as one of 21st century dance music’s most important figures. Operating as Kode9, Goodman is the founder and driving force behind the era-defining Hyperdub label, a former member of The Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (an experimental cultural theorist collective he describes as “bringing together philosophy and rave in quite a unique way”), and a visionary electronic artist in his own right. A typically adventurous affair, his latest album Escapology provides the soundtrack to Astro-Darien, a sonic fiction film critiquing Scottish independence amongst other things. We catch up with him to find out more.
You grew up on the west coast of Scotland. What was your gateway into electronic music and club culture? Probably taking ecstasy for the first time at a psychedelic jazz and funk club called Chocolate City at The Venue in Edinburgh around 1992. They played everything from Parliament to James Brown instrumentals to Herbie Hancock and loads of rare groove stuff I’d never heard before... I went out and bought decks the next day. I also used to go to a more hardcore techno club called Pure around that period. What would you say to people who view dance music as little more than an escapist pastime? I would say “fine, use it as that if you want.” But that’s also like saying that a car is a group of seats under a roof. But a car can also transport you from one place to another. I suppose dance music, right from the beginning, plu ed into cultures that needed to fabricate and imagine escape capsules to live in, offered a potential to envisage alternate realities. Getting off your face is like level one of a game. What you then do with that determines whether you stay at level one, or progress any further.
You’re best known as the founder and label head of Hyperdub. What came before that? I ran clubs for a bit in Edinburgh between 1992 and 1994, and then spent a summer in London and got addicted to jungle and early drum’n’bass and bought a sampler and started... messing around with production. I moved to the Midlands around 1996 to study with the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit... By the time I finished [my PhD] in 1999, I felt like I’d had enough of academia, and Hyperdub emerged initially as a web magazine which channelled some of the ideas we’d been developing alongside writers such as Kodwo Eshun.
In your opinion, what is the most interesting and forward-thinking type of club music at the moment? I’m not 100% sure what that means anymore. ‘Forward thinking’ implies things are moving in a linear direction and all I know is that things evolve in much more complex ways, at different speeds simultaneously, and all criss-crossed and influenced by new technologies. Astro-Darien is far from the average music release. How would you describe the concept behind it to someone unfamiliar with your music? To avoid any confusion, it’s got literally nothing to do with dance music at all. Astro-Darien is a 26-minute sonic fiction, a science fiction audio essay, or a documentary fiction in sound narrated by Scottish AI voices. It revolves around a video game simulating the breakup of the UK, developed by a games company called Trancestar North. Its loose story spans a historical period ranging from the disastrous Darien scheme in the late 17th century [...] through Scotland’s subsequent involvement in colonialism, imperialism and slavery right up to the contemporary movement for independence. This is all told through a somewhat wild extrapolation of the actual space race going on in the Highlands and Islands to build vertical launch spaceports, which becomes, in the game, the exit portal to a quasi-utopian orbital space habitat called Astro-Darien. That it’s not really set in the future, but is rather an alternate version of what’s going on right now, is the sense in which I call it a documentary fiction.
What are your own feelings on Scottish independence? How did they inform the project? I don’t live in Scotland, and “Independence should be therefore can’t vote, but I’m 100% sure that independence should be a decision for people living a decision for people living in the country, and not a bunch of in the country, and not incompetent muppets in London, a bunch of incompetent of any political persuasion. If I was in Scotland, I would vote for muppets in London” independence [...] Aside from the positive potential of not being Steve Goodman, Kode9 ruled by Westminster, I think being in London during the first independence referendum and watching all mainstream British media and politics be so pro-unionist was such a massive turn off. Similarly, Brexit massively turned me off the idea of the UK, and so this Astro-Darien project is really channelling those two frustrations. On the one hand the sheer reactionary inertia in the British establishment that would have to be overcome to make it happen, and secondly the idea of turning Brexit against itself (or its supporters) so it becomes the final nail in the coffin of the British Empire and forces England to confront itself in a way it currently can’t do while it thinks it’s still an imperial nation of global significance. So Astro-Darien is an escape pod, which even if independence doesn’t happen for a while, can happen virtually, and gather momentum in this alternate reality.
Escapology is out now on Hyperdub; Astro-Darien is out on 11 Nov via Flatlines
Read a more extensive version of the interview online at theskinny.co.uk/music
Fife Finds a Way
We take a look at what the Kingdom of Fife has in store this winter, from poetry and whisky festivals, to pantos, Christmas markets and more
Words by: Tallah Brash
Bowhouse
In the words of Dr Ian Malcolm, “Fife nds a way.”
Okay, so Je Goldblum’s character in Jurassic Park didn’t say that, but what he did say wasn’t far o , and we reckon if he knew what Fife had on o er in the coming months, that’s exactly what the ctitious character would say, as the Kingdom has found a way to get us excited for winter, with a whole host of Christmas markets, panto, art, music, poetry and whisky events taking us right through until the rst whispers of spring. And what better way to kick o the festive season than by heading for a bit of family fun at the theatre? There are takes on two classic fairytales coming to Fife this winter, one with a glass slipper, the other a poisoned apple. Can you guess what they are yet? Oh yes you can! First up, Cinderella: The Magical Family Pantomime! will be lighting up the stage of the Rothes Halls in Glenrothes’ Kingdom Shopping Centre from 3 to 24 December, with a special BSL performance on the 15th and a relaxed performance on the 22nd. Meanwhile, at The Kings Theatre in Kirkcaldy, Ya Wee Sleeping Beauty runs from 8 December right through to 15 January, giving you plenty of time to take the kids before they head back to school. Ya Wee Sleeping Beauty also has adult only performances available, so if you fancy a night out without kids being in the mix, this could be just the ticket. Oh yes it could! As well as a night out at the theatre, what would the lead up to Christmas be without visiting a local makers market or two, ambling from stall to stall and excitedly chatting to vendors about their wares, slowly but surely ticking relatives o your Christmas shopping list. At the start of the month, Largo Arts Week is hosting Largo Arts Winter Weekend (3-4 Dec), giving you the opportunity to visit local artist studios where you’ll be able to buy works directly from their creators. As soon as the full studio lineup has been announced, Largo Arts will detail all those taking part with a handy studio map making planning your visit even easier. The following weekend (10-11 Dec) will see two more markets take place in the area, with the Bowhouse Christmas Market, unsurprisingly, taking place at the Bowhouse in St Monans. Found in Anstruther’s quaint East Neuk, the market will play host to several local food, drinks and craft vendors, while a short 20-minute car ride away, in St Andrews you’ll nd Exclusively Highlands Kinkell Byre Christmas Market at, well, Kinkell Byre. A beautifully converted farm building, classy Christmas decor and fairy lights aplenty will get you in the mood for the season as you shop all manner of local goods, from glassware and wire creations, to tweed, jewellery, ceramics, soaps, cheese, seafood, preserves and more. Moving into 2023, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra have an event that is sure to help blow away the cobwebs of 2022 (a year that will surely go down in history for too many reasons not worth lowering the tone with here.) Catch the RSNO making things right on 7 January at Dunfermline’s Carnegie Hall for Vienna. Led by conductor David Niemann, on the night the RSNO will celebrate and play the music of Johann Strauss as they perform pieces like Die Fledermaus, On the Beautiful Blue Danube and the Thunder and Lightning Polka. Also in January and throughout much of February, the Cambo Estate in Kingsbarns, St Andrews, will be hosting their Snowdrops Festival with events, plant sales and daily tours around the estate welcoming the rst signs of spring. Moving further into a new season, something that’s sure to warm the cockles is the Fife Whisky Festival, taking place across various locations from 3-5 March. The festival will include an opening meal at the Lindores Abbey Distillery on the 3rd, 35 distilleries and independent bottlers will exhibit in The Corn Exchange in Cupar on the 4th, with exclusive events at the InchDairnie Distillery in Glenrothes on the 5th. Whether you’re a fan of Scotland’s most prized nectar or not, you’re sure to discover something to tantalise the taste buds.
Finally, a few days later, be sure to head to Scotland’s International Poetry Festival StAnza in St Andrews from 9 to 12 March where this year’s theme is WILD! Forms of Resistance. The full lineup is due to be announced soon, so keep an eye on their website and socials for latest news and updates. Names so far include Hollie McNish, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Elizabeth-Jane Burnett and Craig Santos Perez. So whether you live in the Kingdom of Fife or not, there’s plenty going on that would warrant a day trip or overnight stay in the coming months. As Dr Malcolm said, “Fife nds a way”, so why don’t you?
Hollie McNish, Stanza
