The Skinny September 2020

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September 2020 Issue 176

Hit Refresh Scotland’s creative communities demand change

January 2020

Books

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Art January 2020

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The Skinny's [socially distanced] playlist The Wheels on the Bus — Gecko's Garage version Rain on Me — Lady Gaga & Ariana Grande I Bet on Losing Dogs — Mitski Pretty Please — Dua Lipa Think About Things — Daði Freyr I Said, 'Hey You, Riot Policeman' — Frank Sidebottom Toxic — Britney Spears Us V Them — LCD Soundsystem This Year — The Mountain Goats The Difference — Flume feat. Toro y Moi House Music All Night Long — JARV IS...

I Know the End — Phoebe Bridgers The entire Hamilton soundtrack

Listen to this playlist on Spotify – search for 'The Skinny Office Playlist' or scan the below code

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Championing creativity in Scotland

Meet the team We asked – what are your new hopes for 2020?

Editorial

Rosamund West Editor-in-Chief "Utopia over dystopia."

Peter Simpson Digital Editor, Food & Drink Editor "Things get better, or don't get too much worse."

Anahit Behrooz Events Editor "I'm sorry I can't stop laughing."

Jamie Dunn Film Editor, Online Journalist "That people work out how to wear face masks.

Hint: they go on your face, not your chin."

Tallah Brash Music Editor "Besides the obvious, I'd like my cat to stop trying to kill me."

Nadia Younes Clubs Editor "Hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have."

Polly Glynn Comedy Editor "Live comedy gets saved."

Katie Goh Intersections Editor, "Tbc."

Eliza Gearty Theatre Editor "n/a"

Heather McDaid Books Editor "Meh."

Sales & Business

Production

Rachael Hood Art Director, Production Manager "To see Donald Trump not get re-elected."

Adam Benmakhlouf Art Editor "To dance in a club to loud music with a room of people"

Fiona Hunter Designer "A crisp, mild winter."

Sandy Park Commercial Director "n/a"

Tom McCarthy Creative Projects Manager **Screams into pillow**

George Sully Sales and Brand Strategist "'Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man' - Friedrich Nietzsche"

Laurie Presswood General Manager "The low point of my lockdown was watching a Morrissey concert filmed in 2005, so if I could go the rest of the year without watching Morrissey: Who Put The 'm' in Manchester again I'd count that as a win"

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Editorial Words: Rosamund West

O

ur September issue is usually assembled in the furious chaos of August, the last gasp of effort from a team working beyond their limits after the mega Edinburgh festivals edition, preview and review issues of Fest, our student guide either inside or alongside the main magazine, and literally hundreds of reviews of live performance published online.

2020 is, of course, entirely different. For September, we cautiously return with our first magazine since April, thankful that we have been allowed to do so in large part by our readers.

We are eternally grateful for the support you showed us through our crowdfunder and can truly say that this issue wouldn’t be here without you.

As the world settles into this strange in-between of half-opened but still distant, we have taken a look around – this has been a period of intense reflection in all areas of life, and we aim to document some elements of that great stocktake here. In Scottish music and comedy, behaviours that have previously been swept under the carpet in the great rush to get on have been spotlit and challenged. Better is demanded – no more will we tolerate womxn having to tolerate abuse just to exist within a creative space.

The shuttering of the physical world has led to dynamic shifts in ways of working. Individual creatives, businesses, and entire sectors have had to think on their feet to come up with new approaches to making, performing, communicating. We take a look at some of these new modes, from a performance artist working online in our first Showcase, Tamara Macarthur, to theatres adjusting to safely present live shows, cinemas creating safe screenings, film festivals presenting entirely online, to the apparel companies who have pivoted to face mask production with at-times overwhelming success.

The food & drink industry has seen some of the most stringent restrictions and also some of the most nimble adaptations. Our Food & Drink editor Peter Simpson takes a long hard look at where things stand, from embattled workers’ rights to

premature easing leading to freshly curtailed liberties. He makes a case for supporting small business, cafes as community hubs, and food as a home for the collective spirit we all need in these difficult times.

Our second Showcase presents Marilena Vlachopoulou’s documentary photography of lockdown, a visual record of this strange time we are living through. In Intersections, Anahit Behrooz writes a paean to platonic intimacy, while Katie Goh pens a blistering reflection on all the shit that’s happened this year inc. performative activism, political disdain and the possibilty of hope.

During lockdown, Scottish musicians have continued to write, record and release new albums, so many in fact that we have had to completely adjust our reviewing format to accommodate even a sample on the printed page. We’ve got a roundup of those releases, followed by an overview of some of the books that have similarly come out during this period. Film already had the reviews for this month lined up because it turns out film festivals still existed in early 2020, a fact so startling it is almost impossible to accept.

As the film release calendar ramps up, we (distantly) meet a pair of directors to discuss their new works. Hong Khaou introduces his graceful second feature Monsoon while Sarah Gavron talks working collaboratively on East London-set drama Rocks. Local Heroes continue their quest to map the Scottish design world, interviewing Too Gallus’s Barrington Reeves about his creative studio’s multi-platform practice.

We close the magazine with a Q&A with Anna Meredith, who has received an eminently deserved Mercury nomination while we’ve been away. Turns out she last vomited after drinking Dragon Soop, a disturbing booze and energy drink combo that surely must be in the running for the accolade of Drink of the Pandemic.

And that’s a wrap on our first issue since April. We’re so happy to be here – as always, keep an eye on our site and socials for a slower than usual but still steady stream of fresh features and events news.

September 2020 — Chat

Cover Artist RISOTTO RISOTTO is Scotland’s leading risograph print specialist and stationery company.

Best-known for their vibrant calendars and graphic T-shirts, the studio has recently accelerated their product lines with worldwide stockists that include Liberty London and Selfridges.

Set up in 2012 by designer Gabriella Marcella, RISOTTO has grown to deliver design-led products and commissions which can be seen locally and internationally. Projects range from murals and installations for Apple, to swimwear and interiors, where the notoriously bold and playful house style can be seen at its fullest.

RISOTTO’s vision is to produce vibrant and accessible design, building an environmentally conscious and community-focused business along the way. Take part in a workshop, sign up to their print subscription, purchase fluorescent stationery, or get your own work printed! risottostudio.com / gabriellamarcella.com @risottostudio — 6 —

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THANK YOU! We were overwhelmed by the support you showed us when we launched our crowdfunder back in July. Like so many, the current crisis has hit us hard as a business – we rely on advertising revenue to function, so when all of the organisations we work with were forced to close their doors, so were we. Uncertainty continues to hang over everything we do, but the support shown by you, our readers, has given us the means to make this magazine. As promised, here are the names of the friends and supporters who helped make this issue a reality.

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September 2020 — Chat

ABBIE DOBSON — ADAM COLLINS — ANNY DEERY — ADITI JEHANGIR — AIDAN WEST — AILIE-CRERAR — ALAN TROTTER — ALAPIGEON — ALASDAIR BURNS — ALASTAIR CHIVERS — ALASTAIR LIDDELL — ALEX HARWOOD — ALEX SMAIL — ALEXANDRA FIDDES — ALICE DOYLE — ALICE STEWART — ALISON GRIEVE — ALLAN HUTCHEON — ALLAN RONALD — ALYSON ORME — AMY — AMY MCILHENNY — AMY MURRAY — AMY SHIMMIN — ANASTASIA CONNOR — ANDREA MEISTER — ANDREW — ANDREW ARNOLD — ANDREW BARNETT — ANDREW CAIRNS — ANDREW GORDON — ANDREW LUNDY — ANDREW MACLEAN — ANDY COYLE — ANGELA TARBERT — ANGUS — ANGUS BROWN — ANNA — ANNA DEVEREUX — ANNA MIKELSONE — ANNA WHEALING — ANNE MCMEEKIN — ANNETTE FERGUSON — ANTHONY SULLY — ARTHUR SHEARER — ASHLEY — ASHLEY STEIN — AYEWALTERS — BECCA CLARK — BECCA INGLIS — BEN HARRIS — BENABLES — BETHANY DAVISON — BIKINI BODY — BILYANA PALANKASOVA — BOB MCLEAN — BOBBY DICKSON — BOSSY LOVE — BRENDAN WATERS — BRIAN POKORA — BROOKE ALLAN — CAITLIN MACCOLL — CAITLIN QUINLAN — CAITLIN SEREY — CAITLIN WALKER — CALLUM SMITH — CALLUM SUMMERS — CALLUM TYLER — CALUM STEWART — CAMERON FOSTER — CAMMY MACFARLANE — CANDICE PURWIN — CARLA EASTON — CAROLINE CLOUGHLEY — CAROLINE RING — CARSTEN DOIG — CAT ACHESON — CATH KEAY — CATHAL HONE — CATRIONA FIRTH — CATRIONA FRASER — CECILIA STAMP — CHARLEY BUCHAN — CHARLOTTE RIORDAN — CHARLOTTE RODENSTEDT — CHERI PERCY — CHLOE BELLAMY — CHRIS GILLIES — CHRIS KENNEDY — CHRIS OGDEN — CHRIS SHORTT — CHRISTINA WEBBER — CHRISTOPHER BEHR — CLAIR HOTGEM — CLAUS SCHÜTZENHÖFER — COLIN PICKUP — COLIN WRIGHT — CONNEL SOUTAR — CONNIE AB — CORRIE CAMPBELL — CRAIG BULLIONS — DAN SHAY — DAN SULLY — DANIEL BROWN — DANIELLE HOWARTH — DANNI GORDON — DAVE ROWLINSON — DAVID ACHESON — DAVID BLAIR — DAVID BRAKE — DAVID GILLEN — DAVID HUNTER — DAVID LEMM — DAVID LIVEY — DAVID MACPHERSON — DAVID MCGINTY — DAVID MCLACHLAN — DAVID MILLER — DAVID SCOTT — DAVID.CALLAGHAN — DEBBIE ATTWELL — DEBBIE BALL — DEBORAH CHU — DELILAH NIEL — DERICK MACKINNON — DOUGIE CAMERON — DOUGLAS AND TOM — DOUGLAS FORSYTH — DREW DEVINE — DUNCAN BUCHANAN — DUNCAN COLLINS-ADAMS — DUNCAN COWLES — DUNCAN FISHER — EAMONN JONES — EAMONN LAWLOR — EBBA GORING — ED SIMPSON — EDITH GRAS — EDWARD JAMES — ELENA SOPER — ELINOR O'DONOVAN — ELISABETH ELEKTRA — ELLEN ORMESHER — ELLIE MEECHAN — ELLY GRAYSON — EMILY HAY — EMMA — EMMA AINLEY-WALKER — EMMA ANGELA GARCIA — EMMA DUNCAN — EMMA WALKER — EUAN ANDERSON — EUAN LLOYD — EVAN MORDEN OSBORNE — EVE SOMERVILLE — FATIMA SHERIFF — FERGUS LINEHAN — FINBARR BERMINGHAM — FIONA MACKENZIE — FIONA MCCARTNEY — FIONA SKINNER — FIONA WRIGHT — FIONN PETCH — FLORENCE FINDLAY WHITE — FRAN HUTCHINSON — FRANCES FOX — FRASER COLQUHOUN DOUGLAS — FRINGE DOG — GARETH PHILLIPS — GARY CLINTON — GARY DUNION — GARY JOSLIN — GAVIN ANDERSON — GAVIN SPEIRS — GEORGIA DODSWORTH — GERALDINE HARVEY — GERALDINE MCKAY — GILLIAN EASSON­— GINA HAWTHORNE — GORDON BARR — GORDON HAYDEN — GORDON MCINTYRE — GORDON SHAW — GRAHAM BERNDT — GRAHAM LESSLIE — GRAHAM THOM — GRANT MACKENZIE — GREGOR MCMILLAN — H JOHNSON — HAMISH MORROW — HANCE MCPHERSON — HANNAH FORTIN — HANNAH KILLOH — HANNAH ROBINSON — HARRY DOCHERTY — HATTIE AJDERIAN — HELEEN DB — HELEN AUSTIN — HELEN BLACKBURN — HELEN BLACKBURN — HELEN MARNIE — HP NEILSON — IAIN MACLELLAN — IAIN SUTHERLAND — IAIN WALLACE — IAN MACDONALD — IAN RANKIN — IAN THOMSON — IANA MURRAY — IEVA ROTOMSKYTE — IN HOUSE PRESS — INNE WITHOUCK — INNES MACIVER — IONA BLAIR — IVAN HALL BARRIENTOS — IVETA SMIDTAITE — J BARTLETT — JACK MCKAY — JACK TUCKER SLAM DUNK ROB YOUNG — JAMES — JAMES O'MALLEY — JAMES STEVENSON — JAMIE COWAN — JAMIE SUTHERLAND — JAMIE WILDE — JANE FENTON — JANEA — JANET FENTON — JANET MUNDY — JANET STOREY — JASON RAMSEY — JEFF YATES — JEN COLLINS — JEN SUTTIE — JENNI MCCANDLESS — JENNIFER HARRIS — JENNY PATTON — JENS LAURITS REIMER — JESSICA HARRISON — JILL BLAIR — JILLIAN SOMERVILLE — JIM COWAN — JOANNA TWAITES — JOANNE MCGILWAY — JOB DE ROIJ — JOE CORMACK — JOE HEPBURN — JOHANNA BRYSON — JOHN BLEASDALE — JOHN CARSON — JOHN CLARK — JOHN FLANAGAN — JOHN GARETH WATSON — JOHN GRIFFITHS — JOHN MACKAY — JOHN WILSON — JOHNNY LAPSLEY — JOHNNY LYNCH — JON KNELLER — JONATHAN MOSES — JONATHAN PATERSON — JORDAN THOMAS — JULIA DOOGAN — JULIE CATHCART — JULIE VAN DEN DRIESCHE — JULIET RAMAGE — JULIET TWEEDIE — JUSTIN B — JUSTIN BODEN — KAREN MACFARLANE — KARINE POLWART — KARL GUNSON — KAT GRIMLEY — KATE DOWLING — KATE LAZDA — KATE MACIVER — KATE PASOLA — KATE TROUW — KATHERINE WARREN — KATHLEEN DOUGLAS — KATHRYN MCDIARMID — KATIE HAWTHORNE — KATRINA BROWN — KEITH MCIVOR — KELLY RAE SMITH — KENNY SCOTT — KEVIN FISHER — KEVIN MCLUSKEY — KEVIN ROBERTSON — KEVIN WILSON — KIERAN SMYTH — KIRI HUDDLESTON — KIRSTEN PROVAN — KIRSTIN MECHAN — KITTY ANDERSON — KOHLA — KRISTIAN PURCHASE — KRISTY DIAZ — KYLE PETERSON — KYLE ROGERS — LAFRANCI — LAURA DARLING — LAURA FOSTER — LAURA GAVIN — LAURA KELLY — LAURA MARIE SCOTT — LAUREN GLASS — LEE BEE — LEE HUTCHISON — LESLEY NEILAN — LEW IS — LIAM ROTHERAM — LIBBY SHAW — LISA-MARIE FERLA — LIV MCMAHON — LIZ BROWN — LIZ JAMIESON — LLOYD MEREDITH — LOIS MURPHY — LOTTE THOMAS — LOUIS CAMMELL — LOUISE ANDERSON — LOUISE MACFADYEN — LOUISE MCFARLANE — LUCY CARDWELL — LUCY GRAINGE — LUCY LOGAN — LUCY MULLAN — LUCY SIMPSON — LUCY SMITH — LYNN ANDERSON — LYNN RUSK — MAGNUS KIDD — MALCOLM INGLIS — MARGOT MEYER — MARILENA VLACHOPOULOU — MARK BALNEAVES — MARK JONES — MARK N COUSINS — MARK SCANLAN — MARK TOLSON — MARTIN BAILLIE — MARTIN MCCOMB — MARTIN PENMAN — MARTIN TODD — MATHILDE LOPES JUSTINO — MATT LYGATE — MATTHEW HALL — MATTHEW WILSON — MAX SEFTON — MAYANNE — MELISSA WALDEN — MHAIRI ALLAN — MICHAEL GORMLEY — MICHAEL HOLDER — MICHAEL HORNE — MICHAEL LAWSON — MICHAEL MCILROY — MICHAEL MORRISON — MICHAEL PRICE — MICHAEL QUEEN — MICHAEL QUEEN — MICHAEL TIMMONS — MICHAELA V TURNER — MICK DONNELLY — MILES WELSTEAD — MILO — MIM SARRE — MIRIAM — MORAG MACDONALD — MORVEN REID — NABIL YOUNES — NAOMI CLARKE — NATHALIE LODHI — NATHAN FULWOOD — NEIL MACALLISTER — NEIL OLIVER — NELL SULLY — NEVILLE E LAWTHER — NICKY BURN — NICOLAS VALEYRIE — NICOLE NOBLE — NINA DIVORTY — NMARRA DESIGN — OLIVIA PHIPPS — PATRICK BERRY — PATRICK KANE — PAUL AITKEN — PAUL CICLITIRA — PAUL CURRIE — PAUL HOULIHAN — PAUL VIRIDES — PETE LANG — PETER BREARLEY — PETER MCKENZIE — PETER WALKER — PHILIP BLACKWOOD — PHOEBE — PONCHO MORENO — PUAL NORTHCOTT — RAB NOAKES — RAB WALKER — RACHEL — RACHEL CHUNG — RACHEL JACK — RACHEL OSTROM — RAJ DHUNNA — REBECCA MCALLISTER — RHIANNON LAW — RICHARD DUFFY — RICHARD HORSMAN — RICHARD YOUNG — RITI PATEL — ROBERT BATSON — ROISIN FITZGERALD — RORY WARES — ROS CADOUX — ROS FORD — ROSHEEN MURRAY — ROSS MCINDOE — ROSS SAYERS — RUAIRI MACKENZIE — RUARIDH ELLERY — RUBEN SANCHEZ-JANSSEN — RUTH DOUGALL — RYAN RUSHTON — SADIE MCKINLAY — SALLY DELAHOOKE — SALLY GALL — SALLY HAMPTON — SALLY PRICE — SAM BRADLEY — SAM IRVING — SAM NOTCUTT — SAM PECKHAM — SAMUEL ROWE — SANNE LLOYD — SARAH & JAMES — SARAH EMERY — SARAH EVERITT — SARAH O'DONNELL — SARAH SARTI — SEB FOOSBALL — SELENA RAMSEY — SELENE BROWN — SHARON PLATT KAMPFF — SILVIA & DAN — SIM BAJWA — SIMON EILBECK — SINEAD THOMAS — SKINNYMALINKY LONGLEGS — SLAMB87 — SLOW SMILE — SOPHIE BAMBROUGH — SOPHIE GRACI — SOPHIE HAMILTON — SOPHIE MORRISON — STEPHEN BELL — STEPHEN DONKIN — STEPHEN SHERIDAN — STEVE MCMAHON — STEVEN MCDADE — STEVEN NORRIS — STEVEN WHITTAKER — STU BLACK — STUART BISHOP — SUSAN ANDERSON — SUSAN MCIVOR — SUZI CUNNINGHAM — SVEA MIESCH — T BRINKHURST — TAMARA SCHLESINGER — TARA ALEXANDRA — TAS — TATE SIMPSON — TAYLOR WAGGONER — THOM DENT — THOMAS DAWSON — THOMAS OAKLEY CORNWALLIS — TIM RICE — TINA KOENIG — TOM FARRINGTON — TOM HARTLEY — TOM WICKER — TOM YOULL — TONY INGLIS — VANESSA BISMUTH — VANESSA COTTON — YASMIN SULAIMAN — And many more anonymous supporters too —

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Heads Up

Events are back baby! With Scotland slowly reopening its doors, we take a look at the wealth of both digital and inperson (!!) events on September’s horizon

Compiled by Anahit Behrooz

Photo: Mihaela Bodlovic

Take One Action Film Festival Online, 16 - 27 Sep

Heads Up

Take One Action is back with another unmissable programme of films and talks that explore how to create radical social change in this difficult world. This year they’ve taken their programme entirely online: highlights include The Ground Beneath their Feet shorts, depicting various sustainable relationships with land, and Pier Kids, an intimate portrayal of young queer people of colour experiencing homelessness in New York.

Pier Kids

Portal Photo: Ronald Dumont, 1964

Glasgow Women's Library, Glasgow, until 17 Dec GWL is reopening its doors to the public from 1 September. Although its usual programme of events will still be limited to allow for a safely phased return, the library is showcasing a new exhibition Collecting in the Time of Coronavirus, which will reveal some of the library’s “lockdown” acquisitions, including handmade face masks, feminist perfumes, and items supporting the Black Lives Matter movement.

Photo: Glasgow Women's Library

Collecting in the Time of Coronavirus

Photo: Courtesy of the artist

This series of socially distanced outdoor art events, curated by Art Walk Porty, takes place over three weekends: 5-6 and 26-27 September, and 17-18 October. Set against the beachy backdrop of Edinburgh’s Portobello, the programme includes beach installations, live art and projections responding to the turbulence of the past few months, exploring themes of place, safety, and community.

Mary Quant with Vidal Sassoon

Taiwan Film Festival Edinburgh Online, 18 - 27 Sep The very first, free to access Taiwan Film Festival Edinburgh is hitting screens this September. Initially planned as a physical event, the film festival will now be released digitally, with a programme of 20 films, including ten UK premieres. From classic films made in the 1960s to contemporary documentaries exploring immigration, the programme offers a striking glimpse into Taiwanese film making and society.

Stuart Whipps: If Wishes Were Thrushes, Beggars Would Eat Birds

Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival

Ancient Deities Arusha Gallery, Edinburgh, 10 Sep - 10 Oct Photo: Mike Massaro

DCA, Dundee, 12 Sep - 15 Nov Photo: Courtesy of the artist

Photo: Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival

The first international retrospective on one of Britain’s most seminal designers, this exhibition celebrates the vital influence of Mary Quant on the British fashion scene.

Quant is best known for popularising the mini skirt, starting a fashion revolution that responded to the radical zeitgeist of the 1960s. This exhibition pulls together some of her most important pieces for a colourful look at a style legend.

Toward the Sun

Iman Tajik, Where the Body Meets the Land

The Unseen River

Edinburgh International Festival’s final offering of its 2020 season, The Portal is an innovative podcast series that fills the theatre gap that we’ve all been missing these past few months.

A tale of star-struck lovers who never meet, the narrative podcast follows two obsessive recordists, Etteridge and Angela, who document the sounds of London’s nightlife from 1947-1988, leaving each other messages in their work.

V&A Dundee, Dundee, until 17 Jan

Photo: Lloyd Smith

September 2020 — Chat

Edinburgh, until 18 Oct

Portal, Edinburgh International Festival Online, from 25 Sep

Mary Quant

Collecting in the Time of Coronavirus

All At Sea

The Portal,

EIFF Drive in Movies

EIFF Drive In Movies Edinburgh Airport, Edinburgh, 24 - 27 Sep

Online, 17 Sep - 11 Oct Stuart Whipps

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Ancient Deities

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Princes Mall, Edinburgh A brand new exhibition and venue space celebrating the best of Scottish music, Shout! The Scottish Music Experience is the perfect way to get your fix while gigs are still shut down. From Lulu to Young Fathers via Lewis Capaldi and Bow Anderson, the exhibition spans the history of Scottish music from the 1950s through to the present day.

Shout! The Scottish Music Experience

Wigtown Book Festival Photo: Troy Holt/Subcity Radio

Subcity Radio

Glasgow Doors Open Days Festival Online, 14 - 20 Sep Every year, Glasgow celebrates its city’s architecture and culture by opening the doors of its major heritage sites to the public. Although there are no onsite events this year, the festival have put together a series of webinars, online photo galleries and podcasts that delve deep into marginalised histories and the reality of Glasgow’s colonial past to tell the alternate history we never hear.

Elementary Blueprints

Elementary Blueprints Stills, Edinburgh, 8 Sep - 24 Oct Stills are reopening their doors in September, with a brand new exhibition of work produced during lockdown. Elementary Blueprint is a collection of cyanotypes produced using natural elements, and sent in by individuals and groups from all over Scotland, the UK and further abroad. Entry is free and unticketed, although there may be a small wait to limit visitor numbers.

Light Up Leith History Mural

Light Up Leith History Mural Edinburgh, 25 Sep - 4 Oct, 7pm

Glasgow Science Festival

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John Byrne Glasgow Print Studio Glasgow, 8 Sep - 31 Oct

Photo: Glasgow Print Studio

Photo: Chris Scott

Online, 9 Sep - 9 Nov Credit: Glasgow Science Festival, Allan Deas

Photo: Ryan Buchanan

Glasgow Science Festival: Science on the Sofa

John Byrne, wee man, 2020

September 2020 — Chat

Subcity Radio

Night Walk for Edinburgh

Glasow

Street Level Photoworks, Glasgow, until 20 Dec Futureproof, Street Level Photowork’s annual exhibition of upcoming photographic talent, is also moving online, with over three months showcasing Scotland’s most cutting edge photography. Drawing from a pool of emerging graduates from the country’s leading arts programmes, the exhibition will be split into three parts and supplemented by a series of digital events and talks.

Photo: Alan Hockett

Online, 14 - 20 Sep It’s definitely a tough time to be starting university, but for those missing out on the usual hustle and bustle that Freshers' Week offers, independent station Subcity Radio (subcity.org) have put together a week’s worth of 24-hour broadcasts from over 60 of Glasgow’s biggest creative names, including club promoters Hawkchild DIY, skateboarding collective Doyenne and the Glasgow Zine Library.

Futureproof

Heads Up

Photo: Fran Caballero

Online, 25 Sep - 4 Oct Normally staged in Scotland’s officially recognised national book town, the Wigtown Book Festival is moving online this year, with a wealth of literary events to suit all tastes and ages. The programme will feature big literary names, from Sue Black to Rosemary Goring, as well as book chats with some of Wigtown's most iconic cultural institutes.

Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, until 27 Sep

Aayushi Gupta as part of Futureproof 2020

Photo: Colin Hattersley

Wigtown Book Festival

Nightwalk for Edinburgh

Photo: Courtesy of Street Level Photoworks

Photo: Ian Schofield

Shout! The Scottish Music Experience

Love Bites

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Love Bites: Goodbye to the city that made me In this month’s column, an Edinburgh gal writes a farewell love letter to the city Words: Tomiwa Folorunso

I

September 2020 — Chat

was born, raised and have grown up in Edinburgh. Mainly in the north of the city, but it’s built in a way that walking from one side to another, a scattered montage of sepia-toned memories of my childhood, teens and twenties play in my head. This city raised me.

Through cobbled streets and Saturdays sitting in the car outside the Nigerian food store on Great Junction Street, keeping a lookout for the traffic warden. Afternoons swimming at Ainslie Park Leisure Centre, the number 29 bus and tenement flats, at a time when the trams were just talk and before Leith was a millennial paradise. With an “eh” punctuating every sentence, a distinguishing factor that I was – I am – an Edinburgh gal.

But it’s time for this Edinburgh gal to go, we’re breaking up. At a time when goodbyes and lasts feel like hellos and firsts. And although right now feels strange, I’m so grateful for the moments we have shared in non-unprecedented times. Thank you for always being there, for gifting me with moments of clarity and joy and some truly beautiful sunsets. Thank you for keeping me safe all these years, and for the memories and friends that will forever exist, in my camera roll and my heart.

Thank you, for my favourite view. Standing where Hanover and George Street meet, looking out towards the north of the city; over the roofs and spires of the New Town and beyond, to the Firth of Forth and Kingdom of Fife. That view feels like a hug from all the people I love. I love you Edinburgh, I love you so much.

Crossword Solutions Across 1. RETURN OF THE JEDI 8. FEEL GOOD 9. HIATUS 11. RENAISSANCE 12. NME 14. IBEYI 15. GASTROPUB 20. HANGGLIDE 23. ALPRO 24. SEE 26. POLYSTYRENE 28. EXEMPT 29. PARABOLA 30. RETURN OF THE KING Down 1. REFURBISH 2. THE INTERN 3. REGAINING 4. OBOES 5. EXILE 6. EATEN 7. ISSUE 10. ONUS 13. MCU 16. AID 17. READYMADE 18. PEPPERONI 19. BOOMERANG 21. AYE 22. IDLE 24. SWEAR 25. EVENT 26. PAPER 27. START

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5 Meet the Team — 6 Editorial — 7 Thank You to our supporters — 8 Heads Up 10 Love Bites — 12 Crossword — 39 Albums — 41 Film 42 Books — 43 Comedy — 44 Design — 46 The Skinny On… Anna Meredith

Features 15 The world has changed in lockdown. We survey the redrawn cultural landscape, and meet some of the people working to make things better 16 We speak to Glasgow Accountability Network and SWIM, two organisations aiming to make the music scene safer and more inclusive for all 19 Scottish comedy has been having its own #metoo moment

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22 Ahead of SQIFF and Take One Action, we look at how film festivals have adapted to a world without public gatherings 24 Artist Tamara Macarthur shares her archive of performance 28 A record of life during the pandemic by photographer Marilena Vlachopoulou 31 How can theatre adapt to staging performance with social distancing?

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32 Lockdown confirms why we need to embrace physical intimacy among friends 33 Our Intersections Editor takes stock of the last few months and wrestles with how to move on 34 We look at the whirlwind of adaptation that’s hit the food and drink industry

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38 Hong Khaou discusses his graceful second feature Monsoon On the website...

A look at the LGBTQ+ club nights bringing the party to your home, Barrington Reeves on the Black Scottish Business Fund, Morvern Cunningham on the cultural crisis facing Edinburgh and how it can be overcome

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Image Credits: (Left to right, top to bottom) RISOTTO; Josie Sommer; Ruth Hunter, photo: Cherry Comedy, Dublin; Filmhouse Archive; Lizzie Urquhart; Marilena Vlachopoulou; Delilah Rose Niel; Sarah Wilson; Lotte Schuengel; Ross Sneddon on Unsplash; Rocks; Monsoon

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September 2020 — Contents

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36 Sarah Gavron and Anu Henriques speak to us about Rocks' uniquely collaborative production

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Mask Masters Our picks of the local makers who have adapted their businesses to offer reusable face masks that are ethical, environmentally sound and beautifully designed

Nephtali Couture Two layer cotton African fabric face masks, £10 Available at Hatch Glasgow, 340 West Prince’s St, Glasgow G4 9HF nephtali-couture.com/shop I: @nephtali.couture

Leith Collective A wide variety of designs produced by and supporting local makers Adult £10 kids £6 theleithcollective.co.uk I: @the_leith_collective

Emily Millichip

Emily Millichip Zero waste face masks, available in a variety of tropical, leopard and camouflage prints Adult £25, kids £20 emilymillichip.com I: @EmilyMillichip

Rejean Denim

Nephtali Couture

Rejean Denim Reclaimed denim face masks, £15 rejeandenim.com I: @rejeandenim

Leith Collective

Anna Hepburn Studio Natural 100% cotton canvas in Mustard, Grey or Green stitch & ties (check the website for colour changes), £15

Chloe Charlett Zero waste printed face masks, £10 etsy.com/uk/shop/ChloeCharlettPrint I: @chloecharlettprint Anna Hepburn

Trakke

Trakke Face mask in Olive, Black or Cumin, £18 trakke.co.uk I: @trakkebags

September 2020 — Chat

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Across 1. Epic space fantasy threequel (6,2,3,4) 8. Be content; also the title of comedian Mae Martin's Netflix series (4,4) 9. Pause or break (6) 11. Massive cultural rebirth, 15th-16th centuries (11) 12. UK music magazine, ceased printing 2018 (3) 14. Afro-French Cuban musical twin sisters (5) 15. Portmanteau name for a hybrid bar/ restaurant (9) 20. Be a human kite (4-5) 23. European company that makes plant-based food and drink, such as yoghurts (5) 24. Witness (3) 26. One of the most widely used plastics (11) 28. Left out, not counted (6) 29. Symmetrical curve (8) 30. Epic fantasy adventure threequel (6,2,3,4)

Anna Hepburn & Alice DanseyWright Collaboration Face Masks Natural 100% cotton canvas painted by hand, in Yellow, Grey or Navy stitch & ties Batch no.2, £25 annahepburnstudio.co.uk I: @annahepburnstudio

Down 1. Renovate – spruce up (9) 2. Robert De Niro struggles returning to work (3,6) 3. Getting back (9) 4. Woodwind instruments with a doublereed mouthpiece (5) 5. Banishment (5) 6. Consumed (5) 7. Edition – distribute (5) 10. Responsibility (4) 13. Name of the shared movie canon between Thor, Captain Marvel et al (3) 16. Help (3) 17. Prefabricated (5-4) 18. Common pizza topping (9) 19. It'll come back if you throw it (9) 21. Yes (Scots) (3) 22. Inactive (4) 24. Promise (5) 25. A thing that happens (used to happen?) (5) 26. Smushed tree bits you can write on (5) 27. Begin (5) Turn to page 10 for the solutions

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Compiled by George Sully — 12 —

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Demand a Better World M

uch has changed in the time we’ve been quiet. Everything closed; people adjusted their lives to the ever-changing ‘new normal’; traumatic events echoed around the globe leading to loud protest and quiet reflection on the massive, systemic, global inequities we have long been in the habit of pretending not to see.

It has been a period of contemplation, adjustment and justified rage. Here we highlight some of the reappraisals which have been happening here in Scotland, looking back to document this weird time we are living through while gathering together some of the voices demanding that the world we return to takes the difficult and necessary steps to be fair, equal, and safe.

Illustration: RISOTTO — 15 —

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Flip the Script Music

In a post-COVID world, could Scotland’s music scene become safer and more inclusive for all? We speak to the Glasgow Accountability Network and Scottish Women Inventing Music who are working towards exactly that Interview: Tallah Brash Illustration: Josie Sommer

September 2020 — Feature

F

rom Aretha Franklin and Lesley Gore in the 60s via Bikini Kill, X-Ray Spex, Salt-N-Pepa and No Doubt in the 90s to more recent artists like Dream Wife, Janelle Monáe and Cardi B, women in music have been tackling feminist issues, challenging stereotypes and sticking two fingers up at the patriarchy in their songs for decades.

‘Girls to the front’ is not a new ideology.

Kathleen Hanna coined the phrase in the early 90s when touring with Bikini Kill. Thirty years on and there’s still work to be done. But for once it feels like we could be at a genuine turning point from the never ending sorry-go-round of men taking advantage of the other sex, and that extends to all women, female identifying people, non-binary and all those from the LGBTQIA+ community, no matter their race.

In Sini Anderson’s 2013 documentary The Punk Singer, which follows the life of Hanna, she’s caught on camera during a gig saying: “All girls to the front! All boys be cool for once in your life, go back,” and as noted by NPR music writer Ann Powers, one of the documentary’s many talking heads, “it was a flip of the script that blew people’s minds.” In Scotland the script is being flipped once again as, dear reader, we’re happy to report, the Scottish music scene is gearing up to bid farewell to its toxic past.

But why now? Back in March life was put on hold due to the global pandemic we’re all currently living through. During lockdown months, domestic abuse was reportedly at an all-time high, and as time stretched on upsetting stories about several high profile musicians (Tom Meighan [Kasabian], Mark Kozelek [Sun Kil Moon], The Killers, The Growlers) and a label (Burger Records) came to light. It’s impossible to say whether or not these stories would have been told had it not been for the rare gift of time that coronavirus offered to an otherwise non-stop industry, but closer to home the same thing was happening.

Several accounts of discrimination, abuse of

power, aggression, bullying, manipulation, harrassment, complicity, rape and sexual abuse have risen to the murky surface of Scotland’s music scene in recent months, with many from within its DIY grassroots communities speaking out online about their experiences. Realising it’s no longer enough to just be angry at this mess we’re in, certain individuals and organisations are stepping up, taking action and ready to do the hard work.

“Change is necessary and we must come together in order to achieve it” Scottish Women Inventing Music The Glasgow Accountability Network (GAN) are one such group. Describing themselves as “a collective of artists, organisers, activists and survivors working on collective action as a response to abuse and insidious toxic culture within our music community,” GAN was set up during lockdown, giving survivors hope that there could be a safer music community to return to post-coronavirus. “We believe survivors,” they tell us via email to maintain their anonymity, “and we are advocates for survivor-centred, non-carceral approaches towards transformative justice. We encourage harm-doers to take authentic action and steps towards accountability.”

Nothing that has come out hasn’t been heard before. “The music industry has never been a level playing field, [it’s] one of the least regulated industries there is in terms of codes of conduct and good practice,” GAN are quick to point out.

“Representation has never been a focus or concern for the cis white male gatekeepers at the top.

The music industry has operated as a noxious — 16 —

boys’ club since its birth. Moving forward, we need to see more diversity within music and these gatekeepers need to loosen their grip on the keys if we want to have a better, safer future in music.”

The Skinny has regularly highlighted safe spaces and their importance for music communities over the years, but it’s become apparent that simply declaring a space as ‘safe’ hasn’t been enough. There needs to be a cultural shift in attitudes for safe space policies to truly work, with education, mentoring and training from the ground up being the key to lasting change.

As an immediate response to what has come out during lockdown, Scottish Women Inventing Music (SWIM), a charity set up in 2018 that advocates for women in Scottish music, recently made their intent known in a Twitter post, announcing extensive plans to offer support from experts, education for all and change through collaboration. “We’re looking at a collaborative approach with a number of different groups to try and signpost help for victims more clearly and also support anyone who approaches SWIM for help,” a SWIM spokesperson tells us via email. “We’re committed to creating change through understanding, collaboration and education.”

GAN also agree there “needs to be more education for all participants in music to raise their consciousness on how their actions and behaviours may give or take away space from someone of a marginalised identity.” And are keen to highlight: “This applies to cis white male fans of music as well, as often this particular group of people are the ones who uphold the power of a harm-doer within a scene and dismiss the voices of survivors upon call out.”

Education is the vital next step in rebuilding a broken system, but it needs to sit alongside action and solidarity. In the same way the Black Lives Matter movement gains strength and momentum through the continual work of activists and its growing network of allies, the Scottish music scene

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accountability as a necessary step for change, as it would set a clear expectation and assist with getting policy and procedure in place in venues etc. It is incredibly important that we are not doing this in silo. Change is necessary and we must come together in order to achieve it.”

“We hope to set an example that harmdoers will no longer be tolerated or welcome within music communities”

we still have a long way to go.”

The stresses and concerns coronavirus has posed for the future of Scotland’s music industry are countless, and there is a genuine fear that not all venues will reopen and not all those working in music pre-pandemic will return to their jobs. But it’s also given us an opportunity to change something we do have control over – the kind of music scene we want to return to post-COVID. Ask yourself, do you want to return to a scene that’s populated with toxic individuals, unsafe spaces and unfair practices, or do you want to return to one that’s free from discrimination and welcoming to all? Believe survivors. Call people out. Seek help.

Be a good ally. Work together not against each other, and treat others as you’d like to be treated.

It’s time to do the work. It’s time to flip the script.

Music

needs to build community power. People need to be willing to check their privilege, learn and grow from past mistakes, and call people out.

GAN believes that “calling out your friends on their harmful behaviour is an action of compassion and care,” and “hope that through education on accountability and transformative justice, that we can normalise accountability.” When we ask what their plans are for the future, they tell us: “We aim to support smaller community groups with their own interventions and actions towards transformative justice with harm-doers within their groups before things escalate towards a larger community call out. This includes signposting individuals to the appropriate services, organisations and practitioners to support them through their situation. If things escalate to a call out, GAN will amplify these actions and stand in solidarity with that community.” They conclude: “Ultimately, we hope to set an example that harm-doers will no longer be tolerated or welcome within music communities.”

One of SWIM’s big plans is to develop a Kite Mark. “In collaboration with a number of organisations [the aim is] to encourage all involved in the Scottish Music industry to uphold best practice and a code of conduct,” they tell us. “Our hope would be that the SWIM Kite Mark acts as a means to achieving accountability, positioning

Glasgow Accountability Network When we ask GAN what their hopes are for the future of the Scottish music scene, their message is loud and clear: “Our hope is for a safer, inclusive environment where all participants are welcomed, appreciated and respected equally.”

Unsurprisingly SWIM echo the sentiment: “That one is easy – equality and respect for all those who work and exist within it. It sounds simple, but

If you need advice or support on any of the above issues, the Glasgow Accountability Network and Scottish Women Inventing Music have links to several helpful resources on their website: linktr.ee/glaccnet and scottishwomeninventingmusic.com

September 2020 — Feature

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We speak to comedians Ruth Hunter, Kimi Loughton and Ashley Manning about sexual misconduct on the Scottish comedy scene, and the need for progress. TW sexual violence and misconduct Interview: Polly Glynn

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“We're not out to ruin men in comedy, we're just asking for a bit more respect and safety”

September 2020 — Feature

n audience member approached me after the gig in the bar area to say that he really enjoyed my ‘bold material’, then grabbed me by my neck and waist and whispered a filthy joke about a man raping his daughters.”

That’s just one of Ashley Manning’s experiences of the Scottish comedy scene. Sadly, sexual misconduct is endemic within the Scottish comedy industry. It’s a shocking statement, but merely making people aware this is happening is not enough. Since the start of the #MeToo movement, “acknowledging the assault and harassment has done nothing whatsoever,” says Ruth Hunter, an Irish comic now living and performing in Glasgow.

“People have agreed that it’s terrible but unless people actually change the environment from which it was bred, it will just continue.” Although this misconduct has been rife on the scene for years, it has attracted more attention over lockdown due to resurfaced allegations about male comedians internationally and closer to home.

“It’s still just such a boy’s club,” Kimi Loughton explains. She’s currently on hiatus from comedy due to the Scottish scene’s toxic environment and the mistreatment of women within it.

All three comics are unsurprised that many female acts have quit comedy as a result of the sexual misconduct they’ve endured. It’s particularly difficult to keep track of numbers at the bottom of the circuit. Fewer women get far in comedy “because when they start it’s just so intimidating.”

There’s a glaring lack of HR in the comedy industry, something organisations like the newlyformed Live Comedy Association want to help with.

Manning suggests comedy isn’t viewed as a ‘proper’ workplace because so many see it as a hobby. “It’s one of the rare jobs where you can drink or do drugs at your place of work, and so the boundaries of professional conduct are skewed to begin with.”

Loughton agrees: “If people are going to make careers out of comedy they’re going to have to treat it like a career and a job with morals and standards and rules.”

Although there has been some reporting on the impact of sexual misconduct on the Scottish comedy scene, little has been mentioned about how the scene can progress. Three of Scotland’s largest comedy clubs have drawn up a collective code of conduct for their venues, but there’s some scepticism over whether acts were consulted and why the code remains unpublished on the websites of The Stand, Monkey Barrel and Glasgow’s Rotunda. Hunter suggests that “if you’re not proud of it then it’s just a band-aid. It’s not a solution.”

We asked Hunter, Loughton and Manning how they would tackle sexual misconduct on the circuit. Bookers or promoters have a lot of responsibility to improve the scene, the comics reckon. For Manning and Loughton, it’s about Ashley Manning looking beyond profit and focusing on gig quality. “A lot of bookers don’t watch the performances they’ve organised, and sometimes don’t even have that much of an interest in comedy,” states Manning.

“There needs to be more care and pride in the job,” Loughton agrees. “If you’re just putting on the same acts every weekend, why are people gonna keep coming to your club to just see the same people talk the same shite?” She feels bookers and acts quickly form cliques, barring new comics from progressing their careers.

Hunter has been campaigning for bookers to take a training course on sexual harassment, assault and consent. She fundraised over £500 in 48 hours so 15 bookers can complete training offered by the Good Night Out Campaign, a charity which gives advice and development opportunities to organisations wanting to

Comedy

Building a Better Scene

Comedy

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ensure safer nightlife. She also thinks bookers need to do more by making acts sign contracts in accordance with venues’ codes of conduct. “You say, ‘I am booking you, this is our code of conduct, if you think for any reason you can’t abide by any of these then please turn down this job offer, and if you do break any of these, we will not book you again.’” By agreeing to a contract, this legitimises comedy as a job as well as making acts accountable for their behaviour on and off stage.

The way Hunter sees the Scottish comedy scene progressing is through collective action from everyone involved in the industry. She believes venue staff would particularly benefit from the same training she has organised for bookers. “If you don’t understand what [harassment, assault and consent] is you’re not gonna do anything about it, you’re not going to know how to approach it, you’re not going to understand why it’s a serious problem.” And, if there’s consistency in training across the industry, including sexual misconduct definitions and the vocabulary used, it will help normalise the reporting of this behaviour and empower staff to handle it effectively.

Manning thinks venues can do better by having codes of conduct visible in green rooms and providing act line-ups in advance to Kimi Loughton other comics. “I’ve always found it nervewracking when I didn’t know who else was going to be performing. Having a few names and knowing the male/female ratio helped a bit.” The Stand is the best venue you can get according to Loughton.

Their staff are all comedy-lovers and are visible and present, “unlike other places where you’re just shoved away somewhere, hidden” where people think it’s acceptable to express inappropriate language and behaviour.

All three agree that fellow comics can do more to advance the Scottish comedy scene.

Loughton’s looking to stalwarts and professionals to show more interest in new acts, take them under their wing and have a better understanding of what the current newbie experience is like. By speaking to newcomers, there’d be fewer bombshells dropped when sexual misconduct is noticed and reported. Likewise, she thinks acts need to be kinder to each other. “[Comedy] is a breeding ground for people with mental health problems but if nobody wants to talk to each other and support each other in that way, then things are gonna escalate,” leading to serious incidents. Importantly, to both Hunter and Manning, the onus to fix the industry shouldn’t be on its victims of sexual misconduct. “It’s draining enough being asked all the time ‘What’s it like being a female comedian?’ without the context of the assaults,” says Manning.

Hunter adds, more directly: “If there’s a gig that is run and booked by someone who is known to be a rapist, don’t do that gig. Don’t give that person your business or talent.” Continuing to work with known abusers means you’re “complicit in

September 2020 – Feature

“If people are going to make careers out of comedy they're going to have to treat it like a career and a job with morals and standards and rules”

perpetuating the environment that comedy has become, is, has always been.”

Manning agrees: “We’re not out to ruin men in comedy, we’re just asking for a bit more respect and safety.” These are things that male comedians receive automatically.

Some audiences can further cement the hostile environment female comics face. There are still gigs where audiences think comedy is about heckling and punching down. “It’s important for audiences to understand what comedy is and how live comedy works,” Loughton asserts. Comedians work hard on their material and would rather not “waste their ten minutes on stage having to put people in their place”. Manning stresses the importance of the MC to set the tone for an audience including acceptable behaviour at a gig. By a compere amping up a ‘LADS LADS LADS’ vibe, she’s had awful experiences of audience members, “as a direct result of the host egging the toxic males in the room to reach their full dickhead potential.”

But can any improvements be made before the scene picks up again? All three comedians think so. Codes of conduct are a good place to start, although as Hunter explains, it’s only one step. If you want to achieve a safe environment and “you only do the first step, you’re still at the bottom of the stairs.” She also thinks communicating with the Good Night Out campaign is a simple move in the right direction.

Hunter and Loughton believe setting up a third-party reporting system would be massively beneficial due to the close-knit nature of the Scottish comedy scene. On top of this, Manning emphasises the importance of diversity in bills: “book more women and non-binary people on line-ups”. It’s not a box-ticking exercise of minimum representation for female/people of colour/LGBT+ acts. “The excuse that there are not enough female acts is just not valid.” Ultimately though, Loughton says the Scottish comedy scene could progress quickly with “the number one rule of comedy: just don’t be a dick”.

goodnightoutcampaign.org/ Our acts want to shout out to some fellow brilliant female comics so you’ve no excuse: Bylgja Babýlons, Amelia Bayler, Fern Brady, Roisin Caird, Mara Joy Craig, Eve Darcy, Sophie Duker, Krystal Evans, London Hughes, Heather Jordan Ross, Jay Lafferty, Amy Matthews, Allie O’Rourke, Susan Riddell, Marjolein Robertson, Alison Spittle You can also find Ashley Manning on her Twitch channel at Twitch.tv/ashleymanningx

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Stream Spirit Cannes couldn’t and EIFF effed off till later in the year, but some film festivals have embraced taking their programmes online after in-person events were kiboshed by COVID-19, including the upcoming Take One Action and SQIFF

September 2020 — Feature

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Photo: Filmhouse Archive

Film

Interview: Jamie Dunn

any industries have taken a hit during the coronavirus pandemic, but among the worst-affected must surely be red carpet manufacturers. Not a foot of the stuff has been unfurled since March, with film festivals around the world shutting up shop as concern around the rampant spread of COVID-19 saw public gatherings outlawed.

Scotland’s overflowing film event calendar became so scored with crosses it began to look like Donald Trump’s cognitive exam. Some festivals cancelled altogether (such as Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival), while others postponed (Hippodrome Silent Film Festival rescheduled from March to October). For a select few, however, the old attitude of “the show must go on” held water.

Out of this chaos and uncertainty emerged a fascinating new breed of film event: the virtual film festival.

The question was: would these virtual festivals look any different to most of our front rooms? In the early stages of the nationwide lockdown that began on 26 March, film lovers starved of the big screen began creating their own mini versions of Cannes from home, except the dress code now included PJs and the chief film curators were Netflix and Amazon. It’s a problem that festivals of all stripes have had to tackle, of making a festival ‘feel like’ a festival – some have done better than others.

Cancellation was out of the question for Edinburgh International Film Festival. After all, it had its claim as the world’s longest continuouslyrunning film event at stake. We are still likely to get some form of live EIFF event later in the year, but in EIFF’s usual June slot we had EDFILMFEST AT HOME. A partnership with Curzon Home Cinema that featured fourteen titles, it essentially amounted to little more than some previews of features due to arrive on Curzon’s video-on-demand platform later in the year, although the additions of Q&As with filmmakers like the Dardenne Brothers and Ron Howard added some of the star power we usually associate with Scotland’s biggest film celebration.

More lively and creative was the “12th and a half edition” of Glasgow Short Film Festival, which took place in August. Its opening night began as so many events in quarantine culture have, with a moodily-lit Zoom chat, in this case between the festival’s artistic director Matt Lloyd and co-director Sanne Jehoul. Just when things couldn’t get more depressing, with Jehoul looking set to throw in the towel, the familiar scene broke into a Minnelli-esque song and dance routine. This Technicolour effervescence continued throughout the week of screenings, panels and workshops, which were only slightly diminished by happening

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Film

“We asked ourselves, ‘How do we make this not just people watching films by themselves at home?’”

Helen Wright, SQIFF Van Strijthem agrees that the accessibility benefits of going online are huge. “We’re removing all the costs associated with just getting to the cinema, which can be such a barrier for so many people; removing the issue of childcare. And we’ve made sure that every film we presented has captions this year, not just a selection, but all of them.”

While we desperately miss the buzz of a live film festival – its chattering crowds, its distinguished guests, its seemingly endless free alcohol – any situation that opens these inherently privileged events up to new audiences who have previously been excluded from such gatherings can only be a good thing.

Take One Action, 16-27 Sep, takeoneaction.org.uk SQIFF, 5-18 Oct, sqiff.org

Scottish Queer International Film Festival

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fans, who might not always feel at home in the traditional cinema space. SQIFF’s producer and programme coordinator, Helen Wright, had one question on her mind when it became clear that planning a live event would be a risky proposition.

“We asked ourselves, ‘How do we make this not just people watching films by themselves at home?’”

The solution was to blend the convenience of home viewing – allowing all the films to be watched on-demand at any time throughout the festival – with live components. “Most of the films will have live watch parties, as well as also being available on Vimeo,” Wright explains. “And then obviously we wanted to have some workshops, and a couple of parties online as well.”

Like Alchemy, SQIFF and TOA are also finding silver linings to taking the festival online.

“A big benefit is we’re now UK-wide – people can actually join the watch parties from anywhere in the world, technically,” notes Wright. “We’ve always tried to reach queer audiences around the whole of Scotland, but it’s always more difficult to reach people living in more rural areas or away from the Central Belt. So hopefully this will increase the access for those audiences.”

Photo: Tiu Makkonen

on our laptops rather than in the hum of GSFF’s hub at the CCA in Glasgow. It’s fair to say that the high watermark for all other digital festivals in Scotland has been set.

Of course, GSFF had more time to prepare than others, having rescheduled from its initial March dates when lockdown hit. Acting as the canary in the coal mine for other film events in Scotland was Alchemy Film & Moving Image Festival, which became the first major festival on these shores to step up to the challenge of hosting a fully digitised event. “We didn’t just stage a virtual festival,” Rachael Disbury, Alchemy’s production director, tells us. “We staged an emergency festival.”

Taking place in the Heart of Hawick arts centre and in various other venues around the Borders town, Alchemy has garnered a reputation as one of the most stimulating and imaginative moving image events in the UK, blending screenings of world-class avant-garde cinema with symposia, site-specific video installations and expanded film performances. As the scale of the pandemic became clear in March, the Alchemy team found themselves with only six weeks to pivot from a fully curated in-person event to a streaming event – all using a home broadband connection thanks to lockdown restrictions.

Gone, of course, were those site-specific installations and expanded cinema events, but Disbury explains that it wasn’t just a matter of dropping the rest of the programme online. “Our key aims, which we always came back to in every decision we made, were to retain the quality of the screenings and curation, to deliver a meaningful experience for the audiences maintaining elements of community and clarity in how to watch the festival.”

One key difference in Alchemy’s approach to the other festivals that followed with their own digital events was its screenings were live; no playback, no pausing. “It was important for us to find ways to cultivate community around Alchemy Live and make it feel like an ‘event’,” says Disbury.

“Live-streaming one single screening of each programme, rather than offering films on demand, allowed the closest replication to the way films would be viewed at our festival in-person, in terms of a one-time-only format.”

One experience that can’t be shared online, of course, is the enthusiastic jawing in the Heart of Hawick foyer that follows every Alchemy screening, inevitably spilling over to more discussion at a local watering hole. And it’s not just Alchemy’s attendees who missed this physical presence: the fragile economy of Hawick also took

a hit. “We estimate that we brought more than £345,000 into the town across 2018-19, for instance, which is dramatically reduced by going virtual,” says Disbury.

Bringing the festival online does have one chief advantage, though: it makes the festival accessible to people reluctant to take the bone-rattling Take One Action Film Festival X95 bus to the town.

“This number of screening visits this year [15,334] is unprecedented in the festival’s history,” says Disbury, “and is only surpassed as an organisation by the 27,030 visits recorded at our Scotland+Venice exhibition at the 2017 Venice Biennale.”

Over the coming months, two of Scotland’s most community-focused festivals will take their own adventure into the brave new world of online film festivals. Since 2008, Take One Action’s aim has been to bring people together for positive social change, using film as a springboard for discussion and debate. How does a festival do that when bringing more than a handful of people together in one space is outlawed?

“First we had to find a sense of purpose in doing this [digitally] and making sure that the motivation and the heart that goes into it is actually still there,” the festival’s executive director, Tamara Van Strijthem, tells us. “And that’s what motivated me; not just because we have to put something on but because we feel there’s a space that needs to be filled, and there are stories that need to be shared in a way that we wouldn’t be able to if we just sat back and didn’t deliver anything.”

One thing Van Strijthem knew she didn’t want to lose was the lively discussion that follows every TOA screening. “We didn’t want to put on a film and for there to be no compelling conversation afterwards, because that’s an absolutely key part of the festival. It doesn’t make sense for us to just present a film online and just be a film library, we’re presenting films because we are supporting, encouraging and nurturing a conversation around the issue the film explores.”

Van Strijthem and her team did have to accept, however, there would be elements of TOA that simply couldn’t be recreated online. “The word community gets used a lot, but there are spaces we go to that have very specific communities that look forward to our screenings, like the Grassmarket Project, for example,” Van Strijthem explains. “So obviously there’s a flavour of what you do that disappears by going online.”

Scottish Queer International Film Festival (aka SQIFF), which will take place in October, is similarly focussed on community, providing a warm and welcoming space for LGBTQ+ film

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Showcase

Photo: Lizzie Urquhart It's All Over But The Dreaming

September 2020 — Feature

Tamara MacArthur I

make drawings, installations, durational performances and videos that explore yearning, futility and the boundaries of intimacy. My recent body of work features weeping and water imagery: vast, glittering storms with floods, seas and rivers, pouring rain that pools in silver lakes. Selfportraits stand among such scenes, comically vulnerable and desperate as they withstand the elemental forces.

Drawing underpins all forms of my practice: my installations are assemblages of drawn elements; charcoal is used to pictorialise sculptural forms and charcoal make-up and paper costumes transform me, as performer, into a live self-portrait.

The installations are constructed to be warm and beguiling with a nostalgic air that alludes to familiar old songs and stories. Glittering paper homes that play host to a moment of emotional intimacy I try to generate between the viewer and myself. They

are my best effort; everything laboriously hand-made and embellished – no effort spared. But my obvious attempts to impress tip into ridiculous, comic excess. The sets are forward-facing: sculptures are revealed as flat-backed reliefs and the “glittering silver” is kitchen foil – they’re fragile façades... paper-thin. Seemingly liable to collapse, they rely on me as performer or on my larger-than-life self-portraits – like Greek caryatids – to uphold them.

The performances mirror this tension between fullness and the unfulfilled, containing dualities of authentic and staged emotion, spontaneous and scripted gesture. Repetitions of a sentimental pop song become my lament; and singing, crying and smiling I maintain eye contact for as long as viewers keep it. But the durational performances omit any climactic fulfilment and as a viewer moves on, I turn my attention to the next. tamaramacarthur.com — 24 —

I'm Here For You, A Hole In The Sky Is Open, The Modern Institute, Glasgow, 2018 Photo: Courtesy of The Modern Institue

THE SKINNY

Showcase

And Baby I Just Melt Away, Fall Like Rain Squeezed into a corridorlike space, is a vast, glittering storm. Watery chaos over spilling its boundaries. It is too close and too much. In the middle, stand two bodies holding each other over the threshold of a rising flood.

But the storm is held interminably in quiet suspense and the bodies are empty shells – just the relic of an old embrace. A memory of a feeling, made into a theatre set: to be stepped into and played out by performer and audience again and again.

September 2020 — Feature

And Baby You Just Melt Away Fall Like Rain, Just A Bowl Of Cherries, Thessaloniki, 2019

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THE SKINNY

Showcase

Photo: Claudio Giordano

September 2020 — Feature

If You Believed In Me, Il Colorificio, Milan, 2018

If You Believed In Me Oh it’s only a paper moon hanging over a cardboard sea But it wouldn’t be make-believe if you believed in me And the whole thing will glitter. I’ve built this glittering space for our glittering embrace Careful architectural engineering. So it should be just right, just, perfect.

Both of us glittering for-each-other--for-one-another *Because when you’ve told me everything and I’ve told you everything,- when I’ve given you all of me (all the me’s) then we’ll belong to each other Completely Cs I’ve got a lot to give.

Take all of me, why,not,take,all,of,me, take my best, and the rest too, it’s here for you I’m holding it out for you I’m holding out for you Do you like it?

I hope you like it I tried really really hard to make the best home I could, the Most beautiful (bellissima), the most full of love, warmth (that’s the gold), but what if that’s not enough? I mean what if you give everything you have, everything

you own, ‘my house my heart my home’, and your kids grow up and say mum you fucked me up and I fucking hate you What do you do then?

What if the embrace isn’t enough and it doesn’t last? Not close enough, not long enough, not anything enough really. What if what you thought was a hug isn’t because the body you’re holding has gone limp, and my arms are tired, they’re really tired. And I keep dropping her. sorry I don’t know if the paper will hold because when paper gets old it starts to fold and crumple and disintegrate Substandard tourist attraction. Come Visit The Sights Of Milano. Duomo. La Scala. tamara’s chapel in Giambellino.

(Larger smaller than life) I know it’s not much, but it’s all I’ve got.

And that’s why it’s all dressed up, my little substandard tourist attraction, my little substandard home. Over Blown Grandeur, cs baby you’re just overblown.

It’s too much isn’t it? Too intense, shit I’ve done it again, oops I did it again.

…………..I want to hold you, I want to heal you, I want to shield you, hold you, love you, squeeze you, please you. Blah blah blah yeah yeah yeah yeah, you think we’re falling for that tamara? SANTA TAMARA ? !

Because it’s shameful really Ooh it’s too shameful I can’t say it *go on* But really I need to be the savior Because that’s my important role It’s always been my role And if I’m not the savior then I’m nothing Paper thin ‘everything is performance, even intimacy’ Because the embrace is never close enough and your arms always grow tired in the end and the talking always has to come to an end ‘Ok I’d better get going’ It’s unfillable And that’s why there’s no beginning and no end Cs life goes on And you’re just passing through And there’s always somewhere else to be And we’re trying and trying, giving and giving, giving and crying singing and crying here in the gloom of my of my lonely room But at some point you’ve ‘Gotta go’

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And that’ll be it. Performance over.

Empty gold Empty tears Empty arms ‘Counterfeit body of a counterfeit woman’ Oh god what am I doing? I’m sorry God I don’t believe in you but I’ve got a question for you: How d’you get people to build all these beautiful houses for you eh? I always have to build my own A house is a home, a home is where the house is. Oh. Where the heart is, cs my house is built out of heart and other soft matter… and maybe I built my house on the sand, cs it sure is foolish. But the effort is absolutely Sincere - I give you my word. Blood Sweat and lots of Tears tears tears tears tears tears tears (but it wouldn’t be make-believe if you believed in me) Xxxxxxxx

THE SKINNY

Showcase

September 2020 — Feature

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September 2020 — Feature

Showcase

THE SKINNY

Marilena Vlachopoulou Glasgow-based photographer Marilena Vlachopoulou shares some of the work she created in response to lockdown

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THE SKINNY

Showcase

“A

September 2020 — Feature

s a documentary photographer primarily working in music, I naturally went through that shocking feeling of loss and despair. Once I overcame my fear of leaving the house, I realised that it’s time I started a documentation of what Glasgow currently looks like.

With a remaining couple of rolls of colour film I started warming up to what this body of work would grow to become. Being a film shooter, it dawned on me that there’s no better time to start developing at home than right now. I decided to stick to blackand-white in order to maintain that sense of timelessness. This photo diary is a collection of street scenes as well as portraits of strangers, friends and fellow creatives. It has also served as a way to stay connected with artists across Glasgow during this weird time.”

Instagram: @darkroom.memoir

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September 2020 — Feature

Showcase

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THE SKINNY

Brave New Stages Scotland’s theatre industry is struggling to survive under the pressure of social distancing regulations. Meet the designers thinking outside the box to stage new work Interview: Eliza Gearty

The answer from many in the sector is frank: either not at all, or shows must be staged completely differently. “With the restrictions in place, it’s not safe or financially viable for theatres to open,” says Beth Morton, a theatre-maker and director at Mull Theatre, which will remain closed to the public until 2021. But, Morton argues, “we can make work – we just had to think about how to do it.” Now that the government is allowing social ‘bubbles’ to exist, Mull Theatre came up with an unusual solution that will place the space and set at the epicentre of their autumn season. To produce two new plays by Oliver Emanuel and Anita Vettesse, the creative team of four will form a household bubble, rehearse in the empty theatre, and then have the pieces staged, lit, performed and filmed. It’s what Morton calls ‘a digital stage’ – a step further than the filmed-at-home theatre shorts that were common during lockdown. “The

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Becky Minto rehearses with the cast of Doppler

design a show, but also on how to have the audience physically distanced. We can do that in an interesting way, making it part of the show that’s being told by the rest of the team, rather than in a purely practical way.” Award-winning designer Becky Minto, who is currently working on a show called Doppler with site-specific company Grid Iron, agrees. “Could [socially distanced] design become part of the language of the story that we’re telling?” she asks. “Restrictions can sometimes create a wonderful possibility about how else we envision putting on performances.”

The problems faced by those staging new work are very real, but the creatives we speak to all agree that designers are nothing if not resourceful.

Minto recalls taking over from another designer, Janet Scarfe, early on in her career. “I said, ‘is there anything I need to know?’ she said, ‘there’s no flys, no wings and no money... but apart from that, you can do anything you like.’ I’ve never forgotten that.”

And Wilson suggests that as long as imagination lives on, we’ll find a way to tell visually arresting stories. “If we genuinely listen to what people need,” she says, “we can always make some kind of magic and excitement from what we have.” comar.co.uk/journal/emergence-two-brand-new-plays-theatre curious-seed.com kate-wilson.co.uk gridiron.org.uk/doppler-update

September 2020 — Feature

Katy Rae Wilson

Theatre

“I can take the restrictions and the challenges that we have and try to make something positive out of it”

emphasis is on theatre,” she explains. “It’s very much an experiment: this is work that has been commissioned for stage, we’re staging it for theatre – so how will filming it work?”

When it comes to inviting audiences back into spaces, designers’ skills will prove to be critical. “Managing where the actors are, where the audience are... this is part of the job. It’s nothing new,” says designer Karen Tennent, who has worked with companies such as Dundee Rep Theatre and the National Theatre of Scotland. “I think we are going to be pivotal in moving things forward.”

Tennent has been working with performance company Curious Seed on a project called Field – Something For The Future Now. The piece, which is a research project rather than a performance, grew out of dancers practising outside in Holyrood Park due to lack of studio space during the pandemic.

“It’s not something that we’ve adapted [that] was going to happen anyway,” she says. “It’s about using what happened to create something in reaction to where we are.” (Curious Seed will host a sharing of Field... in Holyrood Park on 30 August).

Katy Rae Wilson, the designer and creator of interactive all-ages-gig Sprog Rock, has also used the government restrictions as an opportunity to venture outdoors, something she says her work was “steering in the direction of” anyway. “I don’t want to undermine the struggles that are very real for venues and people in theatre – but as a freelancer, I can take the restrictions and the challenges that we have and try to make something positive out of it,” she tells us. For Wilson, that means focusing on creating sustainable live performance while following regulations. “I’ve been thinking about using the Scottish landscape as a backdrop as much as I can,” she says.

Theatre may be in a gloomy place generally, but is there anything exciting about the challenges posed by the current situation for designers?

Tennent thinks so: “To keep in with the government guidelines, you have to be flexible and nimble. But as designers, we always have to be flexible and nimble,” she laughs. “[We think about] space all the time – we can be consulted, not just on how to

Photo: Delilah Rose Niel

I

magine this: entering a building, without a face-mask. The building itself might be hundreds of years old – it could be so ancient that it was built for people who were, on average, a few inches smaller than you. The ventilation is poor and the air is musty. You cram yourself into a tiny seat, elbow to elbow with the stranger beside you.

This scenario might seem almost inconceivable now but, only five months ago, it was the classic night-out-at-the-theatre experience. Since then, Scotland’s theatres have closed their doors.

Some expect to cautiously reopen on 14 September, the date proposed by First Minister Nicola Sturgeon: others have confirmed that their lights will be off until at least 2021.

In the meantime, theatre companies haven’t let the coronavirus and the closure of venues stop them from producing new work. When lockdown hit, theatres around the country adapted swiftly to culture’s changing digital landscape. As restrictions ease, companies and artists face a new challenge – how do theatre-makers return to creating physical, live performance while respecting the boundaries necessary for public health and safety?

THE SKINNY

Touch Me Not Over lockdown, all our relationships have been thrown into question. One writer explores why it’s the physical intimacy of friendships that she misses most of all

Intersections

Words: Anahit Behrooz Illustration: Sarah Wilson

I

haven’t touched another person in five months. I have been touched a few times – eight to be exact – in the same place in the crook of my elbow where the practice nurse takes my blood, but that is the extent of it.

I am not alone in this. For those of us who live alone or have been shielding, the last few months have meant an utter absence of any form of physical intimacy. And by physical intimacy, I mean every kind.

As this strange year has unfolded, there has been a lot of discussion about what dating and sexual relationships will look like in our new pandemic world. Think pieces have been written, Twitter has become a maelstrom of sexual frustration and Hinge is pushing video chatting as the hot new date idea, a development so horrifying that I deleted the app with unprecedented alacrity.

September 2020 — Feature

“My friends were – are – my body’s ecosystem. We are porous, entangled, made up of ourselves but also of each other” The least said about the train wreck that is my dating life the better, but suffice it to say that several months of government-mandated celibacy did not constitute that vast a shift from the norm. Instead, the last few months have thrown into aching relief the absence of everyday physical connection that normally exists between my friends and me.

Close friendships between women and femmes have long been perpetuated in popular culture, but it wasn’t until the coronavirus pandemic that I realised quite how viscerally affectionate and borderless these friendships are: hands touching hair, falling asleep next to each other, swapping clothes and pinching food from plates without asking. They hold an intimacy that is usually only spoken about in a romantic context.

One friend and I would sit in our underwear smoking on her bed, bare legs overlapped, and without asking I would reach for her crumpled pyjama top on the floor and put it on for warmth. I would regularly crop another friend’s undercut, seating her between my legs as I ran her hair through my fingers. Another friend and I, on the same medication, supplement each other’s supplies if our prescriptions are a day late, literally permeating our organs with what the other has. My friends were – are – my body’s ecosystem. We are porous, entangled, made up of ourselves but also of each other.

As central as these relationships are to my life, I nevertheless lack the proper vocabulary to describe them. They are friendships, but they are much deeper than that. They are physical, but they aren’t sexual.

They are romantic, but they aren’t erotic. I’m reminded of Bathsheba Everdene from Thomas Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd lamenting: “it is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in language which is chiefly made by men to express theirs.” In a society predicated on patriarchal structures of marriage, heteronormativity and the nuclear family, there is no real language to articulate the complex nature of these relationships.

It manifests as an inadequacy of expression, but there is more to it than that. Fundamentally, it comes down to a failure of our society to imagine people, especially women and femmes, outside of the utilitarian relationships that the marriage market and dating industrial complex have to offer. As a single woman, I am told over and over again to focus on the platonic and familial relationships I have in my life. Yet how am I meant to be satisfied in these relationships when the world sees them as training wheels for the monogamous romantic relationship that I should eventually graduate into? How many times have I attended a wedding alone when all my friends with partners receive plus ones? As if I don’t have people in my life who I feel inseparable from, who I want to celebrate with, who anchor me among a sea of acquaintances.

If the coronavirus pandemic has taught us anything, it is the extent to which we are all profoundly interdependent on each other, with a wealth of networks, desires and relationships that reach far beyond romantic couplings. Once we emerge from this pandemic, we need to reprioritise our current relationship hierarchy, as well as radically reconceptualise how we understand intimacy outside of sexual relationships.

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For women and femmes especially, who bear the brunt of having their bodies and sexuality constantly policed and commodified, intimacy and physicality need to be liberated from the narrow confines of the dating world. We need to value – and mourn the absence of – the romance and sensuality that exist in our platonic relationships. Because yes, sex is cool and all. But sometimes, you just want to hold your friend’s hand.

THE SKINNY

Forwards It was the worst of times, it was the most cursed of times. Our Intersections Editor takes stock of the last few months and wrestles with how to move on Words: Katie Goh Illustration: Lotte Schuengel

“There’s a cursed sense of Keep Calm and Carry On in the air, an attempt to move on, or, maybe more accurately, an attempt to repress a nervous breakdown”

Instagram black square, perhaps the pinnacle of 2020’s individualism and performativity. Ignoring Black Lives Matter activists’ requests for people not to post black squares using the movement’s hashtag, hundreds of thousands flooded social media. Captions babbled about using this time to learn and reflect, while also blocking out information for demonstrators. The discourse around Black Lives Matter for white liberalism became one of self-growth, often through the lens of the anti-racist reading list. Magazines that have no Black people on staff published lists about how to be better allies, while books grabbed haphazardly from shelves were propped up, perfectly lit and posted on Instagram. The Colour Purple, White Fragility, a Toni Morrison novel, Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race and Queenie were presented as a monolithic tome of content that will turn you woke. Instagram is not the place to go for nuance, but seeing these books – their contexts, complexities and intentions – presented as vessels of self-care by white liberals was maybe the most cursed moment in a very cursed year.

Educating yourself is important. Reading books is important. But tweeting about reading a book by a Black author is not going to make you anti-racist.

Social media went from photos of burnt banana bread to black squares, back to photos of burnt banana bread before you could say institutional racial discrimination. Despite promises of better “representation,” “diversity” and “inclusion”

behind-the-scenes in companies and organisations, little change seems to have happened. We posted a black square, now we are moving on.

Looking ahead is not inherently a bad thing.

Neither is optimism. They are essential in the fight to dismantle institutional inequalities. But we need to move forward by looking back. We need to understand this country’s history and the reasons why every aspect of our society, culture and legislation is actively hostile to those who are the most vulnerable. We need to understand our position in the world by learning about Britain’s colonial past, its roots still found across the globe.

Because how can we move forward without making reparations or apologies or acknowledgements? How can we move forward when it takes a video of a Black man being killed for a white person to pick up a book?

One thing that I’ve realised over the last few months is that there is potential in everything.

Potential for bad things to be made good and good things to be made bad. There’s potential for language to evolve, laws to be passed, institutions to be held accountable. Governments can change and people can change. There is potential in the future. But potential isn’t an inevitability; conscious action and mass movement are needed to bring about change. I’m not all that optimistic for the future but I can see its potential. It’s not enough but, right now, it’s something and maybe that’s enough.

Intersections

U

nsurprisingly given the circumstances of, well, everything, I find myself talking about the future every day. The future of a second wave of COVID-19, the future of the arts, the future where I’m on a beach far far away. I’m thinking about the future so much I’ve started reading essays about the psychology of prediction and books about the politics of optimism.

But while the future has been on my mind, equally so is the past. Because how can we start moving forward when we haven’t even begun to process the past few months? Depression rates have doubled, with young people and LGBTQ+ people’s mental health the most impacted. A report found that people of Black and Asian origin are disproportionately dying from COVID-19 in the UK, a fact taking its toll on the mental health of those communities. The resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement, too, has had a colossal impact on Black people’s mental health. The world is traumatised from 2020.

September 2020 — Feature

But the pubs are open, Britons are going on their holidays and walking around my neighbourhood in Edinburgh, you’d be forgiven for thinking that we’re not currently living through a global pandemic and the worst recession since records began in 1955. There’s a cursed sense of Keep Calm and Carry On in the air, an attempt to move on, or, maybe more accurately, an attempt to repress the urge to have a nervous breakdown in public, as if ignoring the trauma of the last few months will leave it behind.

Lockdown has fucked everyone up. It’s also exemplified many of the things that we already know: that the British government cares more about marketing than people’s lives. That we rely on strangers much more than we think we do and that we can’t survive without our communities.

That this country’s hegemonic ideology is built on a foundation of individualism and performativity as one week, we’re clapping for the NHS and the next week, we’re threatening to deport its nurses.

And then in June, during a resurgence of Black Lives Matter protests, there was the — 33 —

THE SKINNY

Taking Stock Food

From the ubiquity of delivery apps to the adaptability of food and drink producers, the pandemic has been a whirlwind – here’s how we can reap it, and come out the other side stronger than before Words: Peter Simpson

September 2020 — Feature

T

hink back to the spring, to a day off work or uni. Bobbing from bar to bar, squeezing yourself into the last seat in a cafe, absentmindedly sharing food with friends – those heady pre-Covid days are the past which everyone seems to pine for. It’s in the calls to head to the pub, the desire to book in at your favourite restaurant, and it’s the motivation for the UK government’s Eat Out to Help Out scheme. It was used more than 35 million times in its first two weeks – the government wants you going out to eat, and they want it badly enough that they’ll pay for a good chunk of your dinner.

And in one very limited sense, it stacks up, if you approach this as a problem of circumstance.

The people in the food and drink and hospitality industries rely on consumption to keep them afloat, but people aren’t consuming as much as they were before. Therefore, provoking more consumption is the best way to help those people get back to the position they were once in, with schemes like Eat Out acting as an extremely lo-fi time machine wedged into a branch of Wagamama.

But this isn’t a time machine, and no amount of tenners off your dinner can change the reality of the situation. Thousands of people have died as a result of this pandemic, many more have faced shielding themselves from society to one extent or another, and even comparatively healthy people are urged to keep their distance from one another for fear of passing on the virus. Welcome to the present day, where the goal is to try and keep things moving forwards and backwards simultaneously. It’s about taking steps towards normality, while acknowledging the massive changes that are afoot and that cannot be ignored – adaptability is the name of the game, and the adaptability of the people who work in food and drink has been on display from the start of the lockdown.

It was in the ad-hoc delivery services that brought creature comforts to our homes at the height of lockdown, the indy venues quickly adapting their processes to make their food deliveryfriendly, and the restaurants offering top-drawer meals for you to enjoy at home. It’s the cafes doing spots of on-the-fly interior redesign to set up for a socially-distant grab-and-go. It’s the bars and

breweries switching to takeaway and setting you loose with a pint for the pavement outside.

Around 47,000 people work in hospitality in Glasgow, with around the same number employed in the industry in Edinburgh, and the food and drink scene intersects with so many other aspects of cultural life. But while some people work in venues that put their wellbeing above everything else, or put their time towards building genuine communities through food, others work in precarious conditions and less-than-ideal circumstances.

This has always been the case, but coronavirus has kicked things up a notch.

“We shouldn't accept the idea of a direct choice between putting workers in short-term peril and long-term jeopardy” Look at delivery. Food delivery was one of the first areas to get the weird battlefield promotion to ‘key worker’ status during the early days of the pandemic. What does the phrase ‘key worker’ mean? According to one delivery cyclist speaking to BBC Scotland, not a whole lot. “Companies have all pushed for us to be classed as key workers. But it’s really clear that this is about their interests,” Alice Barker told the Unlocked Podcast, “they haven’t actually done anything to make us feel like we’re key workers. We’re actually quite disposable.”

Delivery services mean individuals going door-to-door in the middle of an infectious disease pandemic, which is a difficult enough situation to begin with. Throw in the fact that if workers don’t take up enough of the work on offer they can be booted from the tech platforms that hand out the jobs, and things get genuinely difficult for workers.

Delivery apps draw on a pool of casualised

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and semi-anonymised workers, connecting you with the restaurant you want – the idea that a rider is affiliated with a particular venue is abstracted away. ‘Dark kitchens’ take the same approach, but seek to obscure the very idea of the restaurant as a physical location in the community and convert it into a rentable service. A dark kitchen acts as a black box, where your order goes into an app and food comes out the other end, but the intermediate stages are murky at best. In some cases, these are literal black boxes – container-style structures in which staff plug away at as many orders as possible, while all the interaction and camaraderie of hospitality is stripped out of the equation.

As our appetite for delivery increases, the impetus from business is to get food to our homes as easily and cheaply as possible, but the potential effects are obvious. Fewer front-of-house staff roles, tougher circumstances for those who do still have work, muddier lines of transparency and accountability, and a larger role for tech platforms at the expense of the individual.

For those who work in bricks-and-mortar businesses, coronavirus has brought problems that existed before COVID to the fore. Furloughed staff at The Ivy’s Glasgow branch claim they were told they could carry over their holiday pay into next year, before their managers changed their story on the last day of their holiday year. Unite Hospitality took up their case in an effort to turn the situation around. “I know of some people who had 26 days to take and have lost out,” one member of staff told the Daily Record. “It’s a lot of money for people who don’t earn a lot.” The Ivy is owned by Richard Caring, whose estimated net worth is £820 million.

When Glasgow hospitality group Lynnet Leisure told 240 of its staff that they face redundancy, and that they couldn’t bring a union rep to meetings about that possible redundancy, there seemed to be no need for justification. “We do not believe there is a need for you to have a union representative at this meeting (nor is there a legal entitlement to be accompanied),” they said, according to the Evening Times.

Pizza Express announced plans to close a heap of restaurants and cut more than a thousand jobs across the UK, in a move that was presented as

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September 2020 — Feature

Deliveroo Glasgow

a sad result of the pandemic’s impact on the high street and the inexorable march of Big App. At the same time, it was reported that before coronavirus hit, many of the chain’s restaurants were actually making money. So was this the result of COVID, or the result of a system that allows a private equity firm to lay off hundreds of low-paid restaurant staff to make its balance sheet look a little better?

We don’t know what the future holds, but it’s not as if we haven’t seen any foreshadowing.

When it comes to ‘getting back to the pub’, the Aberdeen cluster of cases from August makes for a cautionary tale. More than 230 cases were linked to an outbreak that drew in dozens of pubs and restaurants across the city, which had barely had the chance to re-open before closing again.

Luckily, the furlough scheme was still in operation at the time, making it easier for staff to wait out the closure without the fear of going broke, but that might not be the case next time around.

In Germany, there are proposals to extend the Kurzarbeit short-working scheme, similar to the UK’s furlough scheme, to cover workers for two years. Given what we know about both hospitality and coronavirus, why not do this for bar workers, baristas, or anyone in food and drink? Pubs have been flagged up as the most COVID-friendly environments around – full of unrelated and unconnected people slowly removing their inhibitions and desire to distance – so why insist that it’s actually a good idea to open them up? For any government ministers reading this, ‘to make economy go big’ is not a proper answer.

The most valid reason for reopening comes down to one word: community. We want to go back to our favourite pubs so that they stick around as living rooms for our neighbourhoods. We want to support our favourite restaurants because they provide intrigue and excitement. We want to buy cans from our favourite breweries, or coffee from our favourite cafes, because they help make the places we live more interesting and vibrant. But we also shouldn’t accept the idea that there is a direct choice to be made between endangering the health of vulnerable people and losing the places that make our communities so interesting, or between putting workers in short-term peril and long-term jeopardy. Instead, it’s vital to show support with the places and people who make our food and drink scene tick, and to offer them help in ways that support safe, ethical practices.

The importance of physical, public spaces has been vital throughout the pandemic – as sites of protest, collaboration and leisure – and it will continue to be vital as we tiptoe into winter.

“Residents should feel like space belongs to them and is in their best interest not in the interest of the market,” wrote former Labour MP Laura Smith in Tribune magazine earlier on in the pandemic. “A sense of collectivity could be rebuilt from community centres, cafes, pubs and libraries.” It’s this spirit that leads to tiny cafes becoming hubs for community, to hole-in-the-wall restaurants hosting round-the-block queues, and which sees pubs stick around for decades at a time. Food and drink may not be powerful enough to drive away coronavirus, but it can certainly help bring us all together – we just need to make sure we’re doing it for the right reasons.

Food

Photo: Ross Sneddon on Unsplash

THE SKINNY

THE SKINNY

Film

Team Players Rocks, the East London-set drama from director Sarah Gavron, is bursting with energy thanks to its cast of teenage newcomers. Gavron, and associate director Anu Henriques speak to us about the film’s uniquely collaborative production

September 2020 — Feature

Interview: Jamie Dunn

Photo: Charlotte Croft

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Film

J

Can you tell us a bit about Rocks’ production process?

Sarah Gavron: It was very much the decision of, ‘Let’s make a film with these young people; let’s really collaborate as a team; let’s do it a different way.’ Right from the beginning we were all acting as a team: let’s not say I’m the director, let’s all collaborate, let’s all as a group brainstorm what this could be.

We went and found young women who wanted to be part of that journey with us, and did workshops with them. And during that process, the thing that really came across was their energy and their friendship. And then the writer Theresa Ikoko, who’s British-Nigerian, born in Hackney, and sort of had a life quite similar to the girls, came up with this idea for this love-letter to her sister that she’d been developing for a while. And

then the young cast fed back into that and it evolved out of those workshops, which were a year-long process.

“Right from the beginning we were all acting as a team” Sarah Gavron

celebrate London as a melting pot.

SG: That was very much just what we found in the schools. We were in East London and we went into lots of schools and we found friendship groups that look like the friendship group you see on the screen.

AH: And also Theresa, the writer, she is born and bred in Hackney. And I think there’s always been a sense from her that she wanted to write a loveletter to her area and to show the city, and particularly that part of London, in a way that is joyful and magical and shows this is people’s homes, rather than like how it is often depicted on screen, which can be quite different from that.

There’s a real intimacy to the way the teen actors interact. Did the cast help in keeping the dialogue fresh and authentic?

Anu Henriques: They were extremely generous with their input in terms of the dialogue and in terms of the story. The writers were able to have conversations with the young cast and their thoughts and experiences and feelings were all kind of then woven into what became the script.

But we had done so many improvisation workshops and so much work with them to feel trust and feel comfortable performing, so when i t came to shooting, it felt like the spine of the story was part of them anyway; they were completely free to improvise all the dialogue during the shoot. We knew the emotional beats we needed to hit, but we were able to let them lead in terms of dialogue.

The energy of the cast seems to extend to the filmmaking, in terms of the handheld camera and intercutting of the characters’ iPhone videos.

SG: Yeah, and the girls shot all that.

AH: We were having conversations about what it means to tell your own stories, and I think for a lot of young people now, recording everything on your phone is a way for you to have control of your own story and tell your own narrative. And so the girls were able to shoot everything themselves on set with their phones. And then we were able to look at that, along with the 150 hours of footage that we had from the main cameras and kind of have them joined together. So it should feel like it’s coming from them because it did come from them, and their iPhone footage was a great way to tap into and convey that feeling.

Rocks feels genuinely radical – but also very realistic – in how diverse the main friendship group is in terms of cultures, races and socioeconomic backgrounds. It really seems to

Rocks is released 18 Sep by Altitude

— 37 —

September 2020 — Feature

oyful chaos bursts from the screen in Rocks, the new film from Suffragette director Sarah Gavron. It’s a social-realist film with real energy and wit, following the East London British Nigerian teenager of the title (played by newcomer Bukky Bakray) who finds herself in increasingly desperate straits after her mother disappears one day.

Rocks’ homelife is precarious, but she has a tight friendship group, and the film is at its most electric when Rocks is surrounded by her pack of pals, with Gavron’s documentary background surely helping her capture the teen cast with such realism.

As we found out in our discussion with Gavron and associate director Anu Henriques back in March at Glasgow Film Festival, Rocks’ unique collaborative process also contributes to the vibrance of the performances and the film’s authenticity.

THE SKINNY

You Can’t Go Home Again Film

Hong Khaou discusses his graceful second feature Monsoon, which sees Crazy Rich Asians beefcake Henry Golding play a Vietnamese-born Londoner returning to the country of his childhood but struggling to find a connection Interview: Jamie Dunn

September 2020 — Feature

M

onsoon, the poignant second feature from BritishCambodian filmmaker Hong Khaou, isn’t set during the current pandemic, but that doesn’t mean its characters aren’t wearing masks. Take Kit (played by Crazy Rich Asians star Henry Golding), a 36-year-old Vietnamese-born Londoner who’s travelled to Ho Chi Minh City to find a suitably “momentous” location at which to scatter his parents’ ashes. He is returning to his hometown but it feels like a foreign country; he stumbles around the city in a daze, stopping by his old neighbourhood and spots that were special to him as a child, but too much time has passed (his family moved to Britain when he was six) and these areas have either been Westernised beyond recognition or fallen into squalor. At the same time, people he meets in the street address him in Vietnamese, assuming he’s a local, but Kit’s mother tongue has long slipped from his memory.

Rarely has the phrase “you can’t go home again” felt more apt.

It’s a feeling Khaou knows all too well. He was born in Cambodia but spent his early years in Vietnam after his parents fled their home when the Khmer Rouge seized power. “I don’t have memories of my childhood that much anymore either,” says Khaou when we meet at London Film Festival. “I feel very much British and that I have assimilated and integrated, but obviously my mum hasn’t, so I still have ties there.”

Identity was also the chief theme of Khaou’s debut, Lilting, which centres on the uneasy relationship between a CambodianChinese woman who has lived in the UK for decades but never picked up the language, and the English partner of her recentlydeceased son, whom the mother didn’t know was gay.

Around 15 minutes into the film we discover Kit too is gay, when he starts discussing the hookup app Grindr with Lewis, an American man with whom he’s having a beer in a bar, and it becomes clear they’re on a first date. While Kit is clearly uneasy about his national identity, he wears his gay identity more lightly.

“One thing I was very conscious of in “The idea was, Monsoon was that I wanted Lewis and Kit to be gay, but I wanted to celebrate always, you’re that, right?” says Khaou. “I didn’t want them to have any of the baggage of seeing something being gay. And I felt maybe, you know, but you don’t quite we’re at a point where we can start doing films like that.” know what it is” What makes both Lilting and Hong Khaou Monsoon such joys to watch is that Khaou plays with these themes of identity in subtle, almost imperceptible ways, with a character’s glance or a camera position saying more in any given scene than the dialogue. A perfect example of this is Monsoon’s arresting opening, which shows a high overhead shot of Kit sitting in a taxi at a busy junction. “Initially you just see cars, so I wanted to open the film with this feeling that you could be anywhere in the Western world,” Khaou says of the opening shot. “And then as the frame pulls back, you realise, with the number of mopeds on the road, you might not be in the West, it might be somewhere in the Far East.

“The idea was always, you’re seeing something but you don’t quite know what it is; it’ll take you two seconds to catch up. And that’s something we do throughout the film.” In other words, the framing and camera position keeps you, the viewer, in the same mindset as Kit – trying to get to grips with your surroundings.

So much of the film simply plays out on Golding as we observe the psychological separation his character feels from the hustle and bustle of his surroundings. It’s a nuanced, brilliant performance. “We spent a lot of time in casting getting Kit right, whoever plays him,” Khaou explains. In his previous films, A Simple Favor and rom-com hit Crazy Rich Asians, Golding’s characters were charm personified. Here, the BritishMalaysian actor’s matinee-idol looks are dented by his character’s existential malaise.

“I really made Henry jump through a lot of hoops for the role,” Khaou says sheepishly. “When we cast him, we’d heard that he had done those two films, but we weren’t allowed to watch them. But it was always going to take time to cast: this character is going back to a country carrying a lot of history and weight on his shoulders, and we had to find somebody really good. But you’re right, having now seen Crazy Rich Asians, I can’t believe it’s the same guy.”

Monsoon is released 25 Sep by Peccadillo Pictures Hong Khaou

— 38 —

THE SKINNY

Sounds of the Summer Albums

With The Skinny having been on hiatus, we’ve missed A LOT of album releases from Scottish artists over the last six months, so here’s our best effort at a round-up of sorts. To anyone we’ve missed, please forgive us Words: Tony Inglis

Photo: Beth Chalmers, edited by David Galletly

T

Martha Ffion

not, whether The Skinny is there to cover it or not, the show must go on. There has been a raft of new releases, planned and unplanned. McKay’s labelmates in the extended Lost Map universe have been extremely busy. Happy Spendy’s You’re Doing Okay is a compilation of their early EPs and singles of DIY synth-pop (complete with a nicely timed self-esteem boost of a title). Suse Bear’s new record as Good Dog, Creature, is a home-recorded diary of her 20s and A.R. Pinewood’s slice of country, No Life, is a kind of android-Orville Peck. Glasgow’s Modern Studies released their new record of cosmic, Laurel Canyon-tinged folk rock, The Weight of the Sun, in May, with a subsequent tour inevitably cancelled. Putting out fully-realised projects, laboured over for months only for an act of god to take the ability to capitalise off it out of your hands is devastating. Many high profile acts have delayed album roll outs for this very reason. For those who have continued on, it’s a scary and brave decision that shows utter — 39 —

“Music has this canny ability to work its way into the current of life and be imbued with meaning its creator never intended for it to have”

September 2020 — Review

he Skinny is proud to present to you its albums of the decade. The 2020s were some stretch. Who’d have thought a nationwide lockdown imposed by the outbreak of a virus resulting in a global pandemic would last ten whole years? Hang on, we’re being informed it’s been… just shy of six months? Wait, really? Huh. Six months, a decade. Time has been pointless and unobservable when mostly confined to your four walls. Even as restrictions have eased, a pervasive sense of strangeness has lingered over even the most mundane of daily tasks. Those who govern us point towards, rightly or wrongly, a much needed return to normality, but for Scotland’s musicians – creatives in general, all over – normality remains far off. The coronavirus lockdown has been productive for some, whether inspired by its boundaries and limits and channeling it into art, or out of a fraught sense of thriftiness. But mainly, the quarantine has signalled closed venues, unfinished projects, postponed shows, financial uncertainty, nights that won’t happen and nights to forget.

Claire McKay’s second album as Martha Ffion came out in mid-August, just as a late summer heatwave cracked across the country, making the streets uncomfortably busy for a time when a malevolent microorganism invisibly slips from one person to another. The record is something of a departure from her debut – slinky pop begging for the dying light of a sticky hot day. Its conception began long before anyone knew much about social distancing or COVID-19, but music has this canny ability to work its way into the current of life and become imbued with meaning its creator never intended for it to have. Even a phrase as simple as Nights to Forget seems connected, to long lonely evenings wasted staring at blank space or screens.

Sound familiar?

What music is very deliberate about is its ability to transport us. This is a moment when that magic couldn’t be more welcome. Take Andrew Wasylyk’s Fugitive Light and Themes of Consolation (4 Sep), the third instalment in a trilogy of works which seeks to map the landscapes of eastern Scotland. The loungey keys guide us up the River Tay, the low sun glimmering off the water’s surface. Not long ago, such a journey seemed but a fantasy. On the other hand, there’s Carla J. Easton’s maximalist, blown out, oversaturated WEIRDO, built for strobe lights and dancing in a dark club, drink in hand. Your bedroom will do for now.

These releases are a sign that, pandemic or

THE SKINNY

Photo: Amy Gwatkin

dedication to your art.

Kapil Seshasayee’s next album has fallen victim to pandemic-induced delay, but his excellent single The Pink Mirror is a timely stopover. A meditation on LGBT representation in Bollywood presented sonically as a futuristic Tron bike ride, it perfectly encapsulates his efforts to throw light on the multitudinous, diverse talents and inspirations present in the South Asian diaspora, while also casting a thoughtful critical eye.

Of those albums that have been released, truly impressive is Fast Edit, the latest from Still House Plants, a trio of artists – Finlay Clark, Jessica Hickie-Kallenbach and David Kennedy – who met at the Glasgow School of Art. Taking a traditional band set-up of guitar, drums and voice, they deconstruct what rock music can be, incorporating elements of slowcore, emo, indie-rock and jazzy improvisation. The result is a record that constantly wrong-foots, each player veering off in their own direction. Hickie-Kallenbach’s voice is deep, dexterous, and often strange and sad, as on highlight Shy Song.

The joy of spontaneity is rooted in this music.

This is all merely a sliver of the quantity of music released in Scotland over these elongated, hard to define days. It’s evidence of a scene still in artistic ascendency, even as the circumstances have become something more dire. It has been heartening to see aspects of the music industry rally round – Bandcamp Fridays should now be a monthly fixture if you want to support the musicians you love – even if streaming giants and others who hold power fail to grasp the seriousness of the situation. It has meant some have had to take matters into their own hands – Faith Eliott’s handmade face masks and polymer clay buttons, and Hailey Beavis’s paintings are testament to the lengths music makers have gone to support themselves.

On Peaks of Wreck, the final song on Mt. Doubt’s new album of baroque art-rock, Doubtlands (18

Sep), singer Leo Bargery lists seminal albums, some he’s heard, some he pretends to have. It helps recall nights filling in gaps in musical, cinematic or literary knowledge, barely even feeling productive enough to do that. Meanwhile, some were finding the time inside to be creatively energising, following in the footsteps of Taylor Swift and Charli XCX. Broken Chanter’s three volumes-worth of varying ambient sounds is the kind of meditative music that hours-long daydreams require, including the brilliantly titled laugh-cry 2020 iS gOiNg tO bE oUr YeAr. American Heather Leigh fashioned Glory Days, an album of atmospheric electronics and delicate folk, with the windows of her Glasgow flat open to the elements.

It ranges from the haunted disco of All I Do Is Lust, to the droning naturalistic Island, and is surely the most apt musical document of these times.

Photo: Kulvir Bhambra

September 2020 — Review

Albums

Still House Plants

Wait, there’s more...

Lomond Campbell – NEAR UNISON More extra-musical experiments from Highlands-based multi-hyphenate Lomond Campbell using a harmonograph and a modular synthesizer. The 18th century scientific tool employs pendulums to create drawings. The results are beautifully abstract geometric shapes and extraterrestrial music across two volumes.

Future Get Down – Here We Go, Wonder (18 Sep) Apocalyptic pop from the Edinburgh band, filled with locked grooves and enthusiastically chanted vocals.

They set out with the mission to break out of the “get comfy and you’re fucked” routine of life. Not sure **gestures to everything** it’s what they had in mind necessarily.

Audrey Bizouerne & Neil Davidson – Supermarket Ballads An often pastoral, sometimes jarring collection of compositions from improvisational guitarist Davidson and his foil here, Bizouerne, of Rev Magnetic and other Glasgow bands. In the vein of Mick Turner at its most ambient and pretty. Perfect for whiling away long days inside.

Mogwai – ZEROZEROZERO Another impressive flexing of Mogwai’s scoring chops for this soundtrack to a series about international cocaine shipping.

Enough said!

Kapil Seshasayee

— 40 —

Callum Easter – Green Door Sessions During lockdown, Edinburgh’s accordiontoting troubador Callum Easter announced that he’d signed to Moshi Moshi Records for the release of Green Door Sessions in August. It features one-take, straight to tape re-recordings of tracks from his first two EPs and debut album, Here or Nowhere.

Joell. – Left On Read This year’s Wide Days festival went virtual, but it didn’t stop them creating a live performance breakthrough with Joell. becoming the first hip-hop act to grace the stage, alongside Billy Got Waves.

This concise EP of hushed raps is a good way in.

Sun Starer – Sun Starer Catchy, fuzzy indie-pop from Codist’s Philip Ivers, and for a good cause. Profits went to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. Just one example of extended fundraising efforts by artists of all kinds over the course of lockdown.

Hudson Mohawke – B.B.H.E. A high-octane mixtape of unreleased sounds from Scotland’s beatmaker-in-chief released on August’s Bandcamp Day. Just one of a number of one-off releases.

Isolation Sessions A physical-only release of covers recorded over the course of lockdown from the Last Night From Glasgow stable. A mid-pandemic gift.

THE SKINNY

At Home

Monsoon Director: Hong Khaou

Starring: Henry Golding, David Tran, Lam Anh Dao, Ho Nhi

Schemers Director: David McLean

Starring: Conor Berry, Tara Lee, Sean Connor, Grant R Keelan

rrrrr

Schemers

Get Duked!

Director: Ninian Doff

rrrrr

Rarely has the clash between the young and old been so energetically staged as in Ninian Doff’s debut feature Get Duked! It begins with four teens being dropped off in the Highlands for a weekend of orienteering as part of the Duke of Edinburgh Award. Only one of them, Ian (Bottomley), seems remotely prepared. His teammates are three rougher lads, there as a punishment and clearly not outdoor types.

There’s sensitive stoner Dean (Gordon), dim-witted cup-a-soup fiend Duncan (Gribben) and wannabe hip-hop star DJ Beatroot (Juneja), who seems to rap exclusively about his penis. They’ve more than the Scottish weather to contend with, though. A

Can you ever go home again? That’s the sentiment at the heart of Monsoon, the delicate second feature from Cambodian-British filmmaker Hong Khaou. We open on a high, overhead shot observing the beautiful chaos of a busy junction in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Lost among this throng is Henry Golding’s Kit, a native who left Vietnam three decades ago, aged six, when his parents fled the country for Britain post-Reunification.

Kit has returned to find “somewhere momentous” to scatter his parents’ ashes, although he soon realises his search won’t be simple.

His memories of his early life are vague, to say the least, and the old spots he does remember have either been Westernised beyond recognition

Get Duked!

demented aristocrat (Izzard) is stalking the moors ready to do some class cleansing.

The film’s straightforward action-comedy structure is full of wild vignettes and surreal digressions, set to music and filmed with an ironic swagger that suggests a Lonely Island skit. The music itself couldn’t be more legit, though. Glasgow producer Alex Menzies (aka Alex Smoke) provides a trippy orchestral score while DJ Beatroot’s tumescence-centric raps are courtesy of hip-hop star S-Type.

This rambunctious style is shot through with daft humour and an endearing, toxic-masculinity smashing sweet streak. For all its larking about, Get Duked! has plenty to say about life for young people in Britain today.

In its own goofy way, Doff’s film is as angry and political as any Ken Loach picture, only with more dick jokes.

[Jamie Dunn] Streaming on Amazon Prime; certificate 15

Monsoon

The Painted Bird Director: Václav Marhoul

Starring: Petr Kotlár, Nina Shunevych, Alla Sokolova

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Adapted from Jerzy Kosiński’s 1965 novel, Václav Marhoul’s The Painted Bird comes at the viewer with its talons bared; an affront that asks audiences to stomach a vision of war marked by acts of barbarism and sexual deviancy.

The film follows an unnamed boy of Jewish heritage (Kotlár), as he embarks on a nightmarish voyage through an austere and implacable wilderness, where characters cross paths like ghosts, and violence strikes as suddenly as lightning. Named after one of the film’s most shocking scenes, in which a starling daubed with white paint is pecked to death by its flock, Marhoul’s depiction of WWII shifts seamlessly between ugliness and lyricism, thanks primarily to

— 41 —

Released 25 Sep by Peccadillo Pictures; certificate 15

The Painted Bird

Vladimir Smutny’s luminous black and white cinematography.

Despite deriving its power from a child’s-eye view of the war, the film has far more in common with Homer’s Odyssey than Andrey Tarkovsky’s Ivan’s Childhood or Elem Klimov’s Come and See. Marhoul’s commitment to an allegorical structure not only allows him to depict the breadth of atrocities inflicted by the German and Russian armies in Eastern Europe, it also gives him the opportunity to pull together a band of larger than life cameos, including Udo Kier, Stellan Skarsgård and Harvey Keitel.

Inhabiting an abstract landscape of moral degradation, there's something stubbornly impressive about Marhoul's fire and brimstone approach. The Painted Bird might be difficult to endure, but it is even harder to ignore. [Patrick Gamble] Released 11 Sep by Eureka; certificate 18

September 2020 — Review

Starring: Samuel Bottomley, Viraj Juneja, Rian Gordon, Lewis Gribben, Eddie Izzard

Released 25 Sep by Munro Film Services; certificate 15

rrrrr

At Home

Written and directed by the man himself, Schemers depicts the dawn of David McLean’s career running the gig scene in Dundee in the 1970s and 1980s. After a broken leg ends his brief football career, Davie (Berry) falls hard for student nurse Shona (Lee). With the intention of impressing the subject of his affections, Davie embarks on a career of bringing the biggest bands of the era to his humble hometown.

Schemers is a flawed tale of angst and ambition, but as a wholehearted celebration of Dundee, it can hardly be faulted. Davie’s rocky road

to success pits irrepressible teenage spirit against the limited opportunities of 1970s Scotland. The rip-roaring soundtrack, featuring the likes of The Proclaimers and Tears for Fears, creates a sense of anticipation and embodies the city’s potential.

The film’s uplifting quality is sabotaged, though, by a narrow portrayal of the women that Davie encounters. The romance underpinning the narrative is jarring, as the lack of motivation behind Shona’s love for Davie paints her as a feeble, scantilyclad pushover. Meanwhile, the remaining female characters diminish the role of women in the music industry to little more than whiney wives and groupies. [Rachel Baker]

or fallen into squalor. Stuck for inspiration, he even tries taking bus tours – after all, he “feels like a tourist”.

It’s the small interactions in Monsoon – awkward reunions with family friends left behind or hesitant small talk with strangers who assume Kit’s a local – that most resonate. You don’t need to be an immigrant returning home to recognise Khaou’s keen sense of the loneliness of a traveller in a foreign land or the discombobulating effects it has on your body.

It’s in this respect that Golding impresses. So blithe in last year’s Crazy Rich Asians, here he’s crumpled and tentative, his matinee idol looks dented by his character’s existential malaise. In a less sophisticated movie, Kit would find some catharsis. Monsoon is closer to reality: the journey simply goes on.

[Jamie Dunn]

THE SKINNY

Shelf Reflection 2020 has been a weird one, and as The Skinny returns it feels right to shout about some of the brilliant books that have come out during these strange past few months

September 2020 — Review

Books

Words: Heather McDaid

A

s the world locked down across 2020, the streets turning eerily quiet, many turned to culture as a temporary shelter.

Though a lot did grind to a halt, books kept on coming, and so it feels fitting to share some highlights that offered joy and distraction in these past few months.

One of the most anticipated books out of Scotland was Kirstin Innes’ Scabby Queen (Fourth Estate), following the death of Clio Campbell – one-hit wonder, working class feminist and activist – who took her own life. But who is Clio? In the wake of her passing, readers traverse her life told in fragments from those who loved her, mourned her, capitalised, raged, and reshaped her story for chuckles at festivals.

Clio, like the book itself, is a collage for readers to piece together – a sharp, fiery, determined, force of a collage.

It’s on the streets of Newcastle that Irina is scouting new male models in Eliza Clark’s Boy Parts (Influx Press). Offered an exhibition, she could revive her career, and perhaps escape the concoction of habits causing her rut. In a spiral of self-destruction lies an exploration of culture, gender, power, class, sexuality and more; even at its most transgressive, it all feels effortless. Dark, funny, bold, it’s an exceptional debut.

Douglas Stuart’s Shuggie Bain (Picador) travels back to 1980s Glasgow, where Agnes Bain has fallen deep into drink. Her children leave one by one, except for Shuggie – he stays the longest, in turn offering a compassionate tale on dysfunction and addiction, and the lengths people go to for those they love.

Vivek Shraya’s The Subtweet (ECW Press) follows musical icon Neela Devaki, thrust back into the limelight as internet star RUK-MINI covers her song. The dynamics of friendship and online tensions are tested, and we see laid bare the battles women of colour face in an industry centring the white gaze. It’s an excellent book packed with wit and warmth, scrutinising the modern age and how art exists within it. All too easy to inhale in a sitting, so be warned.

The dynamics of friendship are also explored in Alice Oseman’s Loveless (HarperCollins).

Georgia is in love with love, expecting one day that her person will just appear. In a world that implies romantic love trumps all, here’s a book that shows the many bonds your person can hold, and it’s just as powerful. A coming-of-age tale of asexuality and aromanticism; one of discovery, love and

acceptance, and heartfelt brilliance.

Elsewhere, a strange letter from her cousin sends Noemi to a distant house in the countryside in Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Mexican Gothic (Quercus). Out of place and surrounded by oddities, she’s determined to uncover who – or what – is the source of her cousin’s distress. Intriguing and disturbing, what starts as a slow burn ends up an unsettling edge-of-the-seat page-turner.

Yun Ko-eun’s The Disaster Tourist (Serpent’s Tail), translated by Lizzie Buehler, introduces Yona, who coordinates package holidays in disasterstricken areas for travel agency Jungle. After an assault at work, she’s sent off on a “vacation” to report on whether a Jungle trail is worth continuing; in turn, it becomes a tale of human impact on nature, and the terror nature can inflict back, with some plotting for good measure. A slim book, it packs a hell of a story into a small but thrilling package.

For a fictional escape into a fantasy world, Melissa Bashardoust’s Girl, Serpent, Thorn (Hodder & Stoughton) offers her own twist inspired by Persian myths. Soraya has lived her life hidden away, cursed to be poisonous to the touch. It’s a battle between the human and monstrous sides in everyone. A great book on flawed protagonists, in a striking world.

Another highly anticipated twist on mythology and folktales comes from Bolu Babalola’s Love in Colour (Headline), tailing summer releases with a true standout. Vivid in its exploration of love across eras and continents and style, each story oozes with the sense that it’s being written by someone who gets it, who respects it. This is a love letter to the messy, magical, multi-faceted worlds of love.

— 42 —

In non-fiction, So Hormonal (Monstrous Regiment), edited by Emily Horgan and Zachary Dickson, puts hormones under the microscope in this anthology packed with heart.

From a letter to a friend on dealing with Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder, through varying experiences of puberty, anxiety, periods, fertility, to examining black British attitudes towards healthcare, and fighting for trans-inclusive healthcare, there’s so much to traverse from personal to institutional. Hormones and their impact are often misunderstood or flat out ignored; So Hormonal is an insightful collection highlighting how much isn’t talked about widely, the varied experience of being human, and why it matters that we hear more of perspectives beyond our own.

THE SKINNY

ICYMI Regular Chunks-charmer Paul McDaniel takes in one of the best sleeper hit sitcoms of the last decade Illustration: Jonny Mowet pauses to comfort the man. “How awful. What kind of dog was it?”

Martin’s bickering sons, Johnny and Adam, are played by Tom Rosenthal and Simon Bird from The Inbetweeners (not seen it, sorry). Referring to each other as “pissface” and “pusface”, their juvenile antics made me think of Peep Show. Their continuous pranks on one another almost always backfire and very often take some innocent bystander with them.

Tamsin Greig plays Jackie, a very mumsy mum, who calls her grown sons “bobbles” and embarrasses them by showing naked baby pictures to their dates (the cringe comedy in Friday Night Dinner is off the map). She also gets very hurt when other family members don’t notice her new curtains, or when her own mother describes their colour as “piss yellow”. Greig’s been rightly nominated for a Bafta for her performance but it’s a damn shame the rest of the cast haven’t been also.

Rounding off the cast (and nearly stealing the show from Ritter) is Mark Heap at his most Mark Heap-ish as Jim, the bizarre neighbour whose unwanted visits frequently interrupt the family dinner. Jim seems terrified of his own mild-mannered dog Wilson that accompanies him, and seems to have a bit of a crush on Jackie too.

Friday Night Dinner reminded me of Fawlty Towers. It’s farcical and claustrophobic with characters running up and down stairs trying to avert disasters and only making them much worse. Various plot strands will come crashing together at the end like Seinfeld (though it’s nothing like that show). Often, a joke that’s been set up 15 minutes before will pay off just when you’ve completely forgotten about it.

In conclusion: I loved this! I really should check out more stuff I’ve heard is good. Just don’t recommend anything else to me until I’m done, okay?

— 43 —

September 2020 — Review

Paul McDaniel currently hosts the web series That Doesn’t IMPRESSION Paul Much...That IMPRESSION Paul A LOT!!!, available on YouTube.

Comedy

H

onestly, I’m the worst person at keeping up with new shows. “Oh, that sounds good,” I say to people, “I’ll definitely check that out”. But I never do. You’d think with lockdown I’d finally have time to sit and watch all those game-changing, unmissable shows I’ve been recommended. But no, I’ll always find an excuse not to. It’s quite simple. I’m a very lazy man. Or more specifically, I have “new show fear”. If I sit down and commit to watching something, what if it’s not very good and I’ve wasted my time? I’m far happier comfort-watching old episodes of Alan Partridge and Larry Sanders. That’s right, I’m lazy and a bit stuck in the past.

Friday Night Dinner is another of those shows I’ve been told is “actually quite good”. All the recent sitcoms I’d heard people rave about were from the US, and the 2010s didn’t seem a particularly dazzling decade for UK sitcoms. Friday Night Dinner, though, was one that kept cropping up. Written by Robert Popper and based on his own middle-class, Jewish upbringing, it premiered in 2011 and is now in its sixth series. The premise is beautifully simple: the Goodman family try (and fail) to enjoy their Shabbat dinner each week. And it’s great. Really great. I was only meant to watch two episodes for this article but I ended up binging the first two series in two evenings.

What really makes it great is the ‘smallness’ and intimacy of proceedings; we rarely leave the confines of the Goodman household and most episodes take place in almost-real time. What’s also brilliant is the dynamic of the family and the cast bouncing off each other. Paul Ritter absolutely steals the show as the gormless Martin, the family patriarch. Much humour is derived from his eccentricities like randomly appearing topless (“I’m boiling”) or laughing way more than is humanly acceptable at his own jokes (“Lovely bit of squirrel, Jackie!”). His catchphrase when things go wrong (and they do) is “Shit on it!” He’s also partially deaf. In fact, the first laugh out loud moment for me occurred in the first episode, when Martin mishears a man helping them move a sofabed who tells them: “Oh my God. My dad’s just died”. Martin

Local Heroes

THE SKINNY

Creative Agency Local Heroes speaks to Barrington Reeves about culture, designing creative experiences and the future for Too Gallus Interview: Stacey Hunter

September 2020 — Review

Photo: Too Gallus

B

arrington Reeves is the Creative Director of Glasgow design agency Too Gallus. The multidisciplinary studio works across nearly every field of the creative process and is known for its fresh, slick and modern approach.

“I like to think of us as an agency that is future forward and rooted in youth culture. We craft culturally relevant solutions to content, branding, web design, film and photography. Connection and emotion is at the heart of all of the work we do and we aim to create brands and work that people are fanatical about; we want people to feel that instant passion when they see a brand we’ve worked on!”

The summer of 2020 has been all about planning for Reeves, who has spent the last year expanding his team and moving into a chic new studio on Glasgow’s King Street.

“We’re learning new skills like 3D rendering and Shopify, working on portfolio pieces, and getting our work flow right. It’s been intense to say the least. Now that we have those building blocks in place it’s time for us to reach out and start pulling in clients to put them to use. Since day one we’ve never done any outbound sales or marketing so I’m really excited to see what kind of connections we can make now that we are proactively seeking new clients.”

Too Gallus set out to prove that it’s possible to work with the kind of clients they love and be successful outside of London. Reeves is committed to helping foster the creative community and spirit within — 44 —

THE SKINNY

Photo: Too Gallus

Local Heroes

Photo: Too Gallus

“Your location doesn’t matter anymore, it’s about creating work with people that you love” Barrington Reeves

you can see what makes them excited, what gets them fired up, and those are the points you can carry through into your work.”

The Too Gallus approach to photography and styling is distinctive and original, winning them Instagram followers by the thousands and an impressive roster of clients for a young agency. Says Reeves, “I think it’s possible to inspire so much connection and emotion with photography that I often find myself using it as the main communication tool in our work.

Almost the minute that I start working on a company’s branding I begin envisioning the photography and styling because I think it’s something that needs to work seamlessly with their identity, rather than be shoehorned in afterwards. It’s really important to work with people who understand your vision as a creative director. We’ve been working with amazing photographers like Stewart Bryden who is the perfect fit for our

fashion clients and Donna McGowan who works on our beauty campaigns.”

Too Gallus were behind this year’s self-assured campaign for menswear brand Slaters and a sophisticated set of animations for cosmetics brand Isle of Paradise.

“Our work for La Rue Verte has been particularly gratifying. It’s been an entirely integrated project that we built from the ground up and as our first luxury client we had the opportunity to pull out all of the stops. It was our chance to flex on everything from naming, brand identity, packaging design, photography, art direction, videography, 3D rendering, illustration and a full Shopify ecommerce build. Our client has put so much trust in us and we’ve built up such an amazing relationship it’s become a really fulfilling project to work on.”

The laser-focused agency are now developing new technologically driven services to offer in-house with a focus on interactive 3D websites.

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“Everyone already knows how powerful 3D rendering can be when launching a product and for us the next logical step is bringing it online with interactive 3D websites, allowing people to create AR / VR products and experiences on their e-commerce websites. I think it’s the future and I want to make sure we’re leading the charge on it.”

Barrington Reeves is the founder of the Black Scottish Business Fund which has raised over £23,000 to support and encourage Black owned businesses. He spoke to the Scottish Parliament in June about the need for British colonialism and the transatlantic slave trade to be part of the Scottish educational curriculum. Visit theskinny.co.uk to read an interview with Reeves on what it means to be a Black creative in 2020. toogallus.com

September 2020 — Review

Scotland, he explains, “to prove to people that your location doesn’t matter anymore, it’s about creating work with people that you love, and as long as you are great at it you can do it from anywhere you want.”

Previous experience working with big agencies created a distance from clients and offered a lack of autonomy that frustrated the young designer.

“For better or worse, I’m very headstrong and when I was working in agencies I often felt my ideas were being swept under the carpet or ignored due to being a junior, or I found ideas were often diluted and key design decisions were made by account managers. I think to achieve design work that really communicates the true essence of both parties that process has to take place between a client and a designer which is why I found the small agency model so much more appealing. When you talk to a client directly

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The Skinny On...

Anna Meredith What’s your favourite place to visit?

Probably something like Brighton Pier arcades; I love the lights, the greasy food, the smells. But the games – I like those two-person, get-in-a-booth games like Jurassic Park, and I’ve been known to spend a good twenty, thirty quid of hardearned pound coins, pumping it in and shooting dinosaurs with a giant gun.

What’s your favourite colour?

The most basic answer is just blue.

But for specificity I would say I’m drawn to, for maximum pretension, Vermeer blue.

September 2020 — Chat

Who was your hero growing up?

I had these amazing twin babysitters called Debbie and Lyneke, and they were just the coolest... [we’d] do blind food tastings and try and feed my little brother cat food, and make mud pies, and slide down the stairs in sleeping bags.

Whose work inspires you now?

You know those videos where people touch something and a marble falls, and that triggers a ruler that rolls, and then a fork tips off a table and it lands on a cat, you know those huge big long chain of event things?

People who do those. That’s my jam.

How have you stayed inspired during the lockdown?

I would say I haven’t felt hugely inspired and I’ve really struggled… for ages I just couldn’t get my ass off the sofa and didn’t really want to… so ‘with great difficulty’ is probably the answer to that.

What has been your favourite food to cook during lockdown?

Well, it’s a bit boring, but I’ve mastered a really good dal... I’ve really fucking gone for it, all my meals have been unbelievable, if I say so myself, but yeah, I make a really quite exceptionally good dal, with homemade roti breads.

What three people would you invite to your virtual dinner party and

Photo: Gem Harris

The Skinny On...

Following her 2020 Mercury Prize nomination for new album FIBS, Anna Meredith takes some time out to tell us what she’s been up to during lockdown, what scares her the most and let us in on a little secret

what are you cooking?

I’d make my aforementioned award winning dal but I’d make it the day before. In terms of guests, I really have enjoyed The Great British Sewing Bee [with] Joe Lycett, so maybe he’d be fun to have there, and I’ve always wanted to hang out with Björk... I think she’d be good company, and for pure ticking all lifetime ambitions, Keanu Reeves, just to be there looking handsome in a suit, perhaps serving drinks.

What have you enjoyed listening to during lockdown?

So during lockdown I’ve only listened to audiobooks, which is probably not what you want to hear... I really like the new Philip Pullman books, I’m listening to Adam Buxton’s one just now, that’s all great. Music-wise, Owen Pallett’s new album’s nice, he’s always good, so I’m enjoying that at the moment.

What book would you take to a protracted period of governmentenforced isolation?

Maybe something, you know, self-improving [...] some sort of DIY manual. I could finally learn how to make a wooden bracket properly, or drill something correctly, as opposed to just slamming it up. A bit of home improvement, I think that’d be useful.

Who’s the worst?

Wow. There’s a lot of contenders right now. I mean, who’s worse, Boris or Trump? Let’s just say it’s a battle between the two big blonde men in our lives.

When did you last cry?

Oh, I cried yesterday watching the trailer for a documentary that’s coming out soon about the

Paralympics (Rising Phoenix). I even had the sound off... and I was just looking at it on my phone, but just watching people do amazing things...

I was blubbing.

What are you most scared of?

I’m scared of the idea of being scared. So I can’t watch horror films because the intention that I’m going to be scared is almost worse than the thing itself, so as soon as [there] is scary tense music, I can’t bear it. It could be tense scary music showing some raccoons playing with a bit of grass, for example.

When did you last vomit?

Wow. Jeez. That’s been a while. I drank too many Dragon Soops, a potent tin of fizzy caffeinated horror, and nearly spewed in a cab in Edinburgh.

Tell us a secret?

I am the only member of my family that can roll my tongue, and it made me for a long time be absolutely convinced that must mean I’m adopted. And perhaps it still does.

Real mum, if you’re out there, come and claim me.

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Which celebrity could you take in a fight?

I’m a total wuss. I remember at primary school, one day [a girl] grabbed my hair and it hurt so much I immediately burst into tears… I don’t really think I could take anyone... maybe somebody who’s asleep, a child or a drunk, a drunk old lady, someone like that.

If you could be reincarnated as an animal which animal would it be?

You’ve just got to wanna do the flying, right? ... But if you’re gonna do the flying, maybe you want to be looking fucking great while you’re doing it. Maybe you’re just a straight out the door Golden Eagle. No problem. Looking great. Big head. Big wingspan. Lot of respect.

FIBS is out now via Moshi Moshi Records The 2020 Mercury Prize will be awarded on 24 Sep annameredith.com

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March 2020

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September 2020 — Chat

The Skinny On...

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