The Vertical Cinema project re-imagines the actual projection space and uses a custom-built projector. It is a 90-minute programme which premiered at Konstraste Dark As Light Festival 2013. It features works by artists from Austria, the Netherlands and Japan including Tina Frank, Björn Kämmerer, Manuel Knapp, Johann Lurf, Joost Rekveld, Rosa Menkman, Billy Roisz & Dieter Kovačič, Makino Takashi & Telcosystems, Esther Urlus, Martijn van Boven & Gert-Jan Prins.

Pyramid Flare by Johann Lurf

Colterrain by Tina Frank

You can preview all ten films on vimeo here and find out more about Vertical Cinema here.

For more information and to book tickets, please visit Glasgow Short Film Festival here.

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Find more events in our weekly bulletin here.

The Glasgow Short Film Festival 2015 is currently seeking submissions of short films of fifty minutes or less in any form or genre completed after 30 September 2013. The festival includes two international competition categories and two Scottish film competition categories. Running from 11-15 March 2015, the festival has a history of diverse programming across different genres and strands alongside talks, special events and workshops.

Find more information about the submissions process on the Glasgow Short Film Festival website.

Deadlines
Early: 1 September | Regular: 13 October | Late: 17 November

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Find more opportunities in our weekly bulletin here. 

The Glasgow Short Film Festival launches tomorrow. Covering four days this year, the festival offers thirty new Scottish films in its Scottish Short Film Competition and thirty-four films vying for the Bill Douglas Award for International Short Film. There are numerous programmes ranging from Irish film to Queer Russian cinema alongside a series of talks, special events and a Low Budget VFX workshop.

But what to see? Matt Lloyd, the festival director took some time to highlight some of the must-sees this year. Focusing on the relationship between film and music, this year’s festival begins to blur the lines between the two. “Short film is a medium able to explore more interpersonal relationships with sound and music..[which is] used not only to support characters but in more interesting ways”. The festival’s opening performance and world premiere, PULSE draws upon this pairing. Featuring Grammy-nominated British/Bulgarian composer Dobrinka Tabakova and Scottish filmmaker Ruth Paxton, the event is a fusion of live music and short film that is not to be missed.

With so many films to see, the question that comes to mind is how exactly does a festival programmer choose such a wide variety of films? Lloyd compares it to putting together a mixtape, “Anyone can do it. You need variety but you also have to see the connections between films without allowing too much repetition”. However as anyone who has tried to make a mixtape knows, a lot of effort goes into making something that has depth, range and flow. With his distinctively bold style, Lloyd continues to drive the Glasgow Short Film Festival forward with innovative events and a blend of new talent from Scotland and beyond.

The first of Lloyd’s recommendations comes from Scotland. Screening as part of both the Scottish and International competitions is Cara Connolly and Martin Clark’s Exchange & Mart. After debuting at Sundance and showing at Berlin, the Scottish film comes to Glasgow for its UK premiere. “It’s a strong mature work for a fiction debut that deals with isolation and the need for human contact- it’s got a lot of talent,” says Lloyd.

Looking forwards towards September’s referendum is a panel entitled ‘Independence and the Scottish Film Industry.’ Focusing less on posturing and more on discussion, the session will examine just what the effects of nationhood might have on Scottish film culture. Inspired by a casual question from a colleague, Lloyd says “I have no idea what’s going to happen and that’s exciting.”

In the international competition, Lloyd recommends On the Threshold (Sto katofli), a Greek film. “It has the steady deliberateness of recent Greek features which blends with the anger coming out of Greece at the moment.” Equally promising is Robin McKay’s international premiere of How to Abandon Ship, an American animation and live-action film about relationships that is in the words of Lloyd, “ both funny and heart-wrenching.”

Finally, not to be missed are festival guests Jillian Mayer and Lucas Leyva. Mayer, a visual artist and Leyva, a playwright both based in Miami, will present a series of films that “defy classification” in their first ever international setting. If Indiewire calls them “next great hope of American Film,” Lloyd’s suggestion that these are “ones to watch” should be heeded.

The festival runs from the 13-16 February at various venues around Glasgow. For the full programme click here.

Interview by Madeleine Schmoll

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At a special event at Encounters Short Film Festival last November, outgoing programmer Mark Cosgrove explained his approach to selecting films. He assesses each submitted film with the aid of ‘Mark’s Compass’ – a curatorial tool which places the dramatic tension of Dylan going electric as its True North. South is represented by a Cézanne still life – conventional on the surface but abstract and chaotic in detail. West is the funky bass of Bootsy Collins, East the paranoia of Tom Wait’s ‘What’s He Building In There?’

It’s an ingenious solution to the problem of defining how a short film programmer selects films, a task that, truth be told, is probably three parts experience to two parts intuition and one part personal prejudice. Since then I’ve been trying to define the criteria I use in similar terms – the other night at a Bonnie Prince Billy gig I made a realisation. Each film I view must pass the Will Oldham Test.

The Will Oldham Test examines how each film attempts to balance a series of apparently opposing properties. Is the film sincere in its intent, without taking itself too seriously? Does it find something new to say, and new ways to say it, without losing its grasp on narrative conventions? Is it accessible to new viewers, whilst offering signs of an artist in transition to those already familiar with his/her work? Does it show signs of both sharp intelligence and fearless emotion? Does it manage to appear stylish whilst sporting a bushy beard, wine-stained shirt and shabby dad-jeans?

Okay, that last one doesn’t quite fit, but you get the idea. Will Oldham’s performance (that night and every other time I’ve seen him) was effortlessly passionate, articulate and experimental. He showed a keen respect for musical history, without treating his or others’ songs with too much reverence. And he was more than a wee bit rough around the edges. All of which qualities just about transfer to short film.

Our international competition selection is stuffed with films that share these qualities. Goodbye Mandima is an autobiographical meditation on a lost childhood in Zaire, constructed from clues glimpsed at the edges of aging photographs. A Piece of Summer is a masterful documentary portrait of a Polish city boy spending his summer with his wild-man-of-the-woods grandfather. German filmmakers Christina Ebelt and Mischa Leinkauf draw on the wildly varying stylistic influences of Lars Von Trier and Michael Haneke in their frightening, funny and on-the-money corporate exposé Power! A baby interacts with puppets in the hilarious Las Palmas and Will Oldham himself turns up in Pioneer, a film that courageously breaks that key rule of filmmaking: Show, Don’t Tell.

The whole GSFF12 programme showcases ramshackle, boundary-devouring, sincere but light-touch filmmaking. Recent film from Iceland is featured in four specially curated programmes. Our strand devoted to film archives includes several recently rediscovered Margaret Tait works and the early student film by Bill Douglas, Come Dancing. Chicago-based 16mm alchemist Ben Russell presents a series of visionary works exploring naturally-derived psychedelia. Slacker 2011 is a none-too-reverential remake of the the Richard Linklater indie classic, with 24 Texan filmmakers each revising a single scene in wildly diverse ways.

One film spans the various strands in the programme. At 54 minutes, the Icelandic film Paradox stretches the definition of short. This strange documentary, screening for the first time outside Iceland, tells the story of an unfinished short film, shot in 1967 but never completed. As such, it serves as a reminder of any filmmakers’ colossal achievement in completing a project. But the story doesn’t stop there. Forty years later one of the original actors obtains the rushes and recruits a young editor and composer to shape a finished piece. But the original filmmakers have other ideas… Paradox is a fascinating study of the creative process, generational differences, and the filmmaker’s responsibility towards archive film. And Will Oldham would improve.

Film still from ‘Pioneer’

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The GSFF is very kindly offering 2 pairs of tickets to the screening of Paradox on Thursday, 9 Feb at 9pm to Central Station members.

To put yourself in the running to win, just send us an email to hello@thisiscentralstation.com with the subject line ‘GSFF – Paradox‘ or let us know you would like them by adding a comment below.

Winners will be notified on Wednesday, 8 February.

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