The Glasgow Film Festival returns for it’s seventh year to the city of Glasgow, Scotland, from February, 17–27, 2011. The Festival will open on Thursday 17 February with the UK gala premiere of François Ozon’s crowd-pleasing comedy Potiche starring Catherine Deneuve and Gerard Depardieu. Set in small-town France in the 1970s, the film is pure delight, combining hilarious farce with withering social commentary. Catherine Deneuve has one of the best roles of her recent career as a trophy wife in a period of rampant chauvinism who throws off the shackles of domestic servitude to assert her independence.
The closing gala on Sunday 27 February is the UK premiere of The Eagle from Oscar-winning, Glasgow-born director Kevin Macdonald. Inspired by the classic Rosemary Sutcliff novel The Eagle of the Ninth, a young Roman centurion ventures beyond Hadrian’s Wall to discover the fate of the lost Ninth Legion and restore honor to his family name. A thrilling adventure, its all-star cast includes Channing Tatum, Jamie Bell, Donald Sutherland, Mark Strong, Tahar Ramin and Douglas Henshall.
David Mackenzie’s eagerly-awaited romantic comedy You Instead is also receiving its WORLD PREMIERE at the Festival. Filmed in a revolutionary style over a mere five days – in real time – at T in the Park 2010, the central story of the film is a hilarious, free-wheeling rock ‘n’ roll love story between the lead singers of two feuding bands who find themselves handcuffed together for the entire festival where they’re both due to perform. Perfectly capturing the thrill, the energy and the passion, not to mention the unpredictability of sharing a weekend of music, friendship and good times with 85,000 people in a field, You Instead is also acelebration of our love affair with music. The impressive cast includes Luke Treadaway, Natalia Tena, Ruta Gedmintas, Sophie Wu, Gavin Mitchell and Alastair Mackenzie.
The Festival is excited to announce a new exciting strand ‘Superheroes in Glasgow’.
Each year the Festival shines a spotlight on the cinema of a particular country. In 2011 the focus falls on India. Beyond Bollywood is a celebration of the remarkable flourishing of Indian independent cinema in recent years.
GFF 2011’s selection of international films include the finest prize-winners from the year’s top film festivals, top box-office hits and the cream of the 2011 foreign-language Oscar contenders. Highlights here include Cannes Best Actor winner Elio Germano in Our Life (La Nostra Vita), Cannes Jury prize- winner A Screaming Man from Chad, Cannes Best Screenplay winner Poetry from Japan, Venice Best Actor winner Vincent Gallo in Essential Killing, Venice Best Actress winner Ariane Labed in Attenberg, Berlin Best Actor winners Grigori Dobrygin and Sergei Puskepalis in How I Ended the Summer, Canadian Oscar contender Incendies, gorgeous martial arts mystery Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame and Frenchsensation Little White Lies from actor/director Guillaume Canet.
A fruitful collaboration with Glasgow Caledonian University has produced mini-season Fashion in Film; prepare yourself for a mix of design and decks from Scots musician designer Pam Hogg, a documentary on Japanese art scene sensation Pyuupiru followed by a multimedia fashion show, and a revisit to the Studio 54 scene in documentary Ultrasuede: In Search of Halston.
Glasgow Music and Film Festival, the GFF’s mini-festival which is programmed in collaboration with The Arches, promises stunning sensory mixes as Italian rock giants and legendary creators of horror film soundtracks Goblin play live and 65daysofstatic present a specially-commissioned original 90-minute score for Douglas Trumbull’s science fiction classic Silent Running. The strand also features screenings of Swedish radical musical Sound of Noise and Danny O’Connor’s documentary of the rise and fall of “the UK’s most inspired and dissolute label” – Upside Down: The Creation Records Story.
Muvizu presents Glasgow Youth Film Festival (6–16 February) kicks off with Simon Pegg and Nick Frosts’ sci-fi geek comedy Paul and maintains that level of excellence with loads of international films, special guests and workshops on topics ranging from breakdancing to scriptwriting.
This year’s Glasgow Short Film Festival (18–20 February) returns for a feverish fourth year with a hothouse weekender of unique screenings and workshops devoted to short but perfectly proportioned movies. This year the Festival is devoted to director Jafar Panahi who has just been sentenced to a term of imprisonment by the Iranian government.
An eclectic range of documentaries includes the acclaimed Finnish award-winning Steam of Life, Jennifer Stoddard’s One Thousand Pictures, Werner Herzog’s amazing Cave of Forgotten Dreams 3D and The Big Uneasy in which comedy performer and concerned citizen Harry Shearer (Spinal Tap, The Simpsons) exposes the shameful failings around the handling of Hurricane Katrina.
The main Festival retrospective in 2011 is devoted to Meryl Streep, universally admired as one of the finest film performers of the past thirty years. The nine-film retrospective includes Streep’s Oscar-winning performances in Kramer vs Kramer (1979) and Sophie’s Choice (1982) alongside a range of modern classics that includes The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1981), Out of Africa (1985) and The Bridges of Madison County (1995).
The Festival will also celebrate the centenary of the birth of Ginger Rogers with a mini-retrospective that includes Swing Time (1936) with Fred Astaire and her Oscar-winning role in Kitty Foyle (1940). The centenary of the birth of Vincent Price is marked with a very special, late-night screening of The Tingler (1959) introduced by master showman Bruce Goldstein.
Out of the Past features an extended programme of restorations and renovations designed to bring iconic movies back to their true home on the big screen. 2011 treats include a 50th anniversary screening of the landmark, Oscar-winning musical West Side Story (1961), a 60th anniversary screening of the thrilling adventure yarn The African Queen (1951) with Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart, the extended director’s cut of Volker Schlondorff’s The Tin Drum (1979) and the restored David Bowie classic The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976).
Last year’s inaugural Glasgow Film Festival Margaret Tait Award was won by Torsten Lauschmann who will be exhibiting his work at a special event at GFF 2011. The Festival is also delighted to announce an open call for this year’s nominations and to express thanks to Creative Scotland and LUX. Among the many guests scheduled to attend the Festival will be Ken Loach and his son the film director Jim Loach, comic book artist Dave Gibbons, filmmakers Miranda Pennell and Joanna Hogg and Glasgow-born Iain Smith, one of the greatest producers to come from Scotland with an extraordinary career that stretches from Chariots of Fire (1981) and Local Hero (1983) to Alexander (2004), Children of Men (2006), Wanted (2008) and The A-Team (2010). “We are thrilled to welcome Iain Smith back to the
Festival to discuss a career of truly international significance,” says Allan Hunter.
“We look forward to announcing further special guests and appearances in the run up to the Festival’s opening night on Thursday 17 February and to a hugely successful 2011 Festival experience.”
[ source: Glasgow Film Festival ]