Glasgow Film Festival reveal site-specific events

Glasgow Film Festival have announced some exciting site-specific screenings and pop-up events for the 2016 festival, including Raiders of the Lost Ark in Kelvingrove Museum and The Man Who Fell to Earth at Glasgow Science Centre Planetarium

Glasgow Film Festival have become masters of the site-specific screening. Taking films outside the cinema can sometimes feel like a stunt, but in the GFF’s sure hands the new context always compliments the content. They’ve screened Jaws in the hull of Glasgow’s Tall Ship, for example, and The Passion of Joan of Arc in Glasgow Cathedral. For Walter Hill’s The Warriors, a movie about a Coney Island gang trying to escape Manhattan via its subway, GFF took over St. Enoch’s Underground, and for potholing horror The Descent they took brave audience members into the Catacombs beneath Central Station. The screenings are always memorable, always inventive. Allison Gardner, GFF's co-director, described it like this when we interviewed her last year: “It’s experiential cinema without the experiential cinema prices.”

This year they look to have outdone themselves. For the 35th anniversary of Raiders of the Lost Ark (20 Feb), GFF have come up with the perfect place to relive the adventures of maverick archaeologist Indiana Jones: surrounded by the antiquities of Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum. And they’ll be joined by the tomb raider himself… or at least his stunt double, Vic Armstrong – the world's most prolific stuntman according to the Guinness Book of Records. We’re promised that a live-action presentation will precede the screening., "so do look out for the boulders” says the press release. Sounds like a riot, as well as an insurance nightmare.

The gallery will also play host to a 25th anniversary screening of Silence of the Lambs (20 Feb). As its charming antagonist Hannibal Lecter would have wanted, there will be live organ music, and glasses of nice Chianti with the screening. As for hors d'oeuvres, pack your own.

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Other iconic Glasgow venues are also in the mix for Glasgow Film Festival 2016. Barrowland Ballroom, the legendary gig venue, will be turned into a cinema for the first time to host the world premiere of Paul Fegan’s Where You’re Meant to Be (19 Feb), which follows Aidan Moffat on a trip round Scotland and its folk song history. The Arab Strap frontman will be bringing together a number of traditional and contemporary musicians from the film for a gig following the screening.

David Bowie is one of the stars to have graced the Barras’ stage, but the 40th anniversary of his iconic turn in The Man Who Fell to Earth (23 Feb) will be screening in the Space Zone of the Glasgow Science Centre Planetarium. Before the film, we’re told, you’ll be in for a “guided tour through the solar system and special visual treats on the incredible 360° full dome screen.”

Fresh from hosting the 2015 Turner Prize, south side art space Tramway will be the venue for exhibition This is Now: Film and Video After Punk (1978-85), a series of digitally remastered archive films – many of which have been out of circulation for over 30 years – by artists including John Maybury, Cordelia Swann and Jill Westwood (26-27 Feb). Tramway will also be the venue for a party celebrating the spirit of punk and New Wave music, with musicians and DJs including Optimo’s JD Twitch.

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