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| A crowd gathers in the GFT for the 2024 Glasgow Short Film Festival Photo: Ingrid Mur |
I will often argue that short film is the best film, and so by that measure Glasgow's Short Film Festival is its best film festival. Short film is an incubator for talent, an avenue for exploration, with the sheer variety of forms and genres and international interest full of opportunities for interesting curation. Short film encourages, and Eye For Film encourages short film.
Glasgow Short Film Festival has multiple prizes and a sense of fun that is balanced with a keen sense of responsibility. With an award named for Scottish film pioneer Bill Douglas, its retrospectives have included celebrations of individual creators, nations, genres, movements. Its programming has included unflinching depictions of the consequences of ongoing conflict in Palestine and other places where capitalism and colonialism have provided thickets of thorns for art to blossom.
Originally part of the larger Glasgow Film Festival, its independent streak, even from that far from rigid progenitor, has persisted. Now running in March, and about to enter its tenth year out from under the shadow of the larger festival, it's a highlight of the festival calendar. While other film festivals have struggled to find a sense of time or place, GSFF has a distinct identity. Some of that is proximity - Eye For Film's core Scottish contributors are weighted to the central belt, and I can (and have) walked to and from screenings at the Glasgow cinemas that host festival screenings. While the GFT is still the ancestral home, venues like the CCA, Civic House and more have given GSFF the chance to bring new films to new audiences.
The opening film of this 18th edition is an experimental portrait of Simon Eilbeck, the deaf DJ whose club night Hot Mess is a joyous opportunity for the city's LGBTQAI+ communities to cut a rug. At 105 minutes it may be that it's leaning more to the 'best' part of my opening sentence. Alexander Hetherington's visual art includes 'cameraless film', among a body of work that tests our understanding of the lines between genre, medium, mechanism, creativity and chemistry. It's that willingness to multidisciplinary mischief that's one of many elements that sets GSFF apart. Fond as I am of Edinburgh Film Festival's Black Box programme that often serves as a border and boundary to experimental film making.
This year includes staples like For Shorts & Giggles, which foregrounds comedy; Scared Shortless, which brings the ghoulish to the glamorous Grosvenor Picture Theater off Boo-yres road; and Family Shorts, which is labelled in an appropriately friendly way. This year's international spotlight includes a collection of Indonesian short films, deep focus on the situation in Palestine and Gaza, an exploration of community pirate television networks across border-Ireland, and a further programme of interconnectedness and intersectionality appropriately labelled Grieving Tomorrows. Among the other artistic collaborations, a Scottish Opera animated work based on Kafka's story Josephine The Singer. There are six collections within the Bill Douglas award, three for the Scottish competition, and the Young Scottish film-maker award as well. With audience prizes as well as the jury decisions, there have been many talented filmmakers whose first recognition has been at GSFF, and I look forward to seeing more this year.
There's also something special running this year. Glasgow's Bannerman High School have organised a Film Fiesta, an outing in the festival calendar that deserves the chance to shine between GFF and GSFF. The BFF is an event that we at Eye For Film (EFF) are delighted to support. Featuring films made by pupils, with them being shown at the GFT, and rounded out with a screening of The Lego Batman movie, it'll be a perfect amuse bouche before the smorgasbord of shorts.
