Belated Glasgow Short Film Festival Review

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glasgow, gsff, uninspiring shorts

After I made yesterday’s post, I was looking at the blog and thinking, “I’m sure I wrote about some films I saw at GSFF, but there’s nothing on here.” So I went looking through my drafts and there was a piece, I’d just paused at one point to go and look something up about one of the films I was writing about and never came back to it. The review feels pretty complete without it, and honestly the apathy of never having felt inspired enough to come back to it, does rather fit in with how I felt about the films.

The Glasgow film festival is upon us once again, and last week saw the short film festival make its brief but intense descent on the cinemas of Glasgow. After last year’s epic day of film viewing anything else was always going to feel thoroughly half-hearted, but nonetheless despite being ridiculously busy last weekend, I managed to squeeze in a screening on the Sunday. Annoyingly there were two screenings that I fancied seeing on the Sunday, and naturally they overlapped by 45 minutes (one at the GFT and the other at the CCA – GSFF’s usual home) so I could only go to one. One screening was all Scottish films and the other was from the International Competition. Given the choice I usually go for the International Competition screenings, for the simple reason that I’m less likely to see International shorts other places, whereas Scottish shorts are more likely to turn up other places.

Also you get your own little ballot sheet for the International Competition screenings (audience award ahoy!) and I always get excited about getting to vote on the films, makes me feel more a participant in the festival than a passive viewer. Interactivity – it doesn’t have to be complex!

International Competition 6: Writing on the Body

So unfortunately for me, this sounded like it would be a really interesting screening and didn’t really live up to its promise. Clearly this is a wider issue I have with GSFF of having very different taste in short films to that of the people who programme it. As the curator was there to introduce the films and then a Q&A afterwards and announced it as ‘the strongest selection’ which having seen the films I was a bit dubious about.

The first film did live up to the promise both from the curator and description. It was a short but substantial documentary about a deaf Brazilian man, raising his daughter as a single-parent and living with Aids. It was more about his life and passions than the other elements, defining who he was. Being a single parent, being deaf and being HIV positive were portrayed as complications in his pursuit of the things he loves rather than defining features of that life.

The second film was weird. The description of the film was essentially ‘a couple having sex in a car are interrupted by an army of snails’ and yes, they were but there was a heck of a lot more going on and I’ve no idea what it was. I think it was a riff off the idea of the possessed car brought to life by people having sex in it and exacting a bloody revenge. Except that I’m not sure if the car was trying to attack them or join in to be honest. I’m sure the snails were symbolic, but of what eludes me. The sound design however, was excellent, really effectively weird – so kudos to the sound team.

It probably says bad things about the 3rd and 4th films that reflecting on them a week later as I write this, I couldn’t remember a thing about them until I dug out the rather sparse notes I took at the time. Whatever else can be said about the 2nd and final films, at least I remembered their respective plots even I didn’t particularly enjoy them.

The final film was made no less weird for being based on real events, being a riff off events that did in fact happen – as one of the film-makers attested with wry amusement that suggested she’d explained that it had all seemed terribly normal at the time. It was every bit as surreal and weird as I’ve always suspected private schools really were behind the Enid Blyton gloss…

So overall, while yes they were all tied together by a hyper-awareness of the body with the exception of the first film, the bodies in question didn’t really have very much to say whether as protagonist or canvas.

15 Years of Contemporary Art – In Photographs

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alan dimmock, glasgow, GOMA

Photographs from the last 15 years of Comtemporary art in Scotland by Alan Dimmock, runs from the 17th of February until the 13th of May 2012 at the GOMA in Glasgow. The photos are all in black and white and mainly focus on the arts in Glasgow, although there are representations from spaces and events in Dundee, Edinburgh and Stirling too.

There’s something transitory, almost ephemeral, about this exhibition of Alan Dimmock’s work, the way there is about all good photography. Some of the best pictures could stand alone, telling whole stories all by themselves. The rest do what art photography (and really all photography, even photojournalism) does best, it captures moments in time. Fleeting forgotten moments, captured out of context, that leave the viewer scouring the surrounding photos and captions for clues as to what happened next.

The subject matter adds to that impression, dealing as it does with art exhibitions, gigs, performance art projects, short film-making and other temporary cultural endeavours. Pop up galleries that you saw once and will never find again. Fortuitous confluences of the right people and objects at the right time to create something wonderful (or indeed the complete reverse) yet impermanent. All at once an utterly unimportant subject and a vitally important one. A record of the beating cultural heart of a city. An acknowledgement that these things happened, are remembered, mattered – that the people involved mattered.

So this too is a record, of something transitory and impermanent, but nonetheless worthwhile.

You, Me, Something Else @ GOMA

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but is it art, glasgow, GOMA

On the evidence of the success of last year’s vow to see twelve documentaries in the year, my culture related resolutions work better if I admit to them here. In an attempt to be more cultured generally and to see more art I want to see and review for this blog 10 art exhibitions this year. That’ll probably involve my attending more than ten exhibits because whereas I can get an article out of both really good and really bad art (after all, even bad art can be inspiring to my own work, even if only to make me want to do better), uninspiring art does not make for good reviews. ‘That was a bit rubbish’ may be succinct but that’s really all it has going for it.

And so to the GOMA, and an exhibit of sculpture by current Glasgow artists at different stages of their careers. The advantage of attending exhibits at the GOMA is that the building itself is a rather fine piece of architecture in its own right. The afternoon that I saw this particular exhibition was a cold and crisp one, the late winter light slanting low between the buildings and in through the ground floor gallery windows. From outside on Royal Exchange Square the mournful lilt of Eastern European accordion playing drifted in, as an older gentleman took advantage of the crowds braving the chill to enjoy the brief appearance of blue skies after solid weeks of grey. There was a atmosphere certainly and arguably it brought out the best in both the gallery space and the art within.

The best thing, for me, about sculpture in a modern art context is that no matter how opaque the meaning might be, it remains an actual physical object. I can admire the craft of creating the object, even if I the artist hasn’t managed to engage me, they’re clearly skillful at working with their chosen medium. This piece for example:

Is a piece called Born Male by James McLardy. I didn’t connect with this piece at all, nor did I understand what it meant, but yet I walked round it several times admiring the stone itself, the skill in shaping/carving it and fighting the compulsion to reach out and touch it to feel the finish.

Sometimes there doesn’t need to be a deep abstract meaning with sculpture it just is what it is. Shaded by Andrew Miller is a well constructed, interesting to look at (and pretty besides) piece that made me smile the moment I saw it.

Neither am I certain what Alex Frost’s obsession with Ryvita is, but his three sculptures on the theme were rather charming nonetheless.

Rhetoric Works & Vanity Works & Other Works, is I confess, the sort of art title that invites the desire to open mockery but the outer shell of the piece reminds me of the animations in Beetlejuice, I kept expecting a sandworm to come slinking out of one of the eye windows, so the actual contents didn’t stand much of a chance against that sort of expectation.

You, Me, Something Else is on at the GOMA until March 18.

In This Changing Light

Tags

cities of my heart, glasgow, travel

I accept that Glasgow is not beautiful to everyone. But it is nonetheless beautiful to me. The first city I knew; the first city I loved. Since early childhood I’ve walked the streets straining my neck to look up. Following my mother’s example: ‘People who think Glasgow is ugly, never look up.’ This is a city where there are genuinely angels in the architecture, along with gods, muses and not a few monsters. A bit like the history of the city itself – built on tobacco and slavery, shored up later with steel and shipbuilding.

For once I’m not looking up. There can be few better views of the city than the one offered from the Lighthouse tower – formerly the water tower of the old Herald building. Looking south from it’s sturdy, though shapely, balcony reveals a landscape of jumbled roofing styles – giant insulated pipes and air conditioning ducts, spindly chimneys and incongruous domes – and reveals the baffling fact that in a city that gets as much rain as this one, new flats are still being built with flat roofs. A faded Woolworths sign marks ‘Boots Corner’ though both shops are long gone and now a Poundland wraps Pizza Hut in a retail embrace below.

Looking Westward the architecture is more grandiose, the elegant tower of the Central Hotel, distracting from the functional yet epic beauty of Central station below. I could talk for hours of the architecture – Art Novo, ‘Greek’, Georgian or Gothic – and what it says about the development of the city but to be honest there’s an exhibition in the arts centre below that says it better. Instead imagine the colours, the tarnished copper domes, the thousand different shades of reds and browns and greys that delineate the different building materials from grubby sandstone to steel and glass.

Northwards and close at hand, fences, low walls and planters delineate the roofs. Outhouses and garden huts are dotted around and two soggy looking deckchairs tell their own stories. I wonder if the pleasures of a roof garden on sunny days compensates for the leaks when it rains.

The mix of styles and periods speaks of a city always moving forward yet unafraid to embrace and repurpose the past. The ugly and the beautiful stand side by side and no two people looking out over them would entirely on all the examples, of which is which. Too many people dismiss it as a city with its feet in the gutter, but while this is true it shouldn’t be forgotten that it’s also a city looking firmly at the stars.

(Further away, on the hills beyond, wind turbines continue to drive the city into the future.)