DAY 3: CINEMA DESPITE Festival - Reviewing artists’ film and video in Scotland

Day 3 of CINEMA DESPITE, a 3 Day Festival (1pm to 2.40pm)

Part 1
Scotch Myths: troubling cultural identity

Roddy Buchanan, Henry Coombes, Cranhill Films, Lesley Keen, Shaz Kerr, and Rosalind Nashashibi

Subverting popular representations of Scottishness, this programme examines and unsettles ideas of cultural identity, exposing the rituals, practices and beliefs which inform a national self-image. Subverting archetypes of Highland splendour, Lowland folk culture, or the machismo of Clydeside industry, many of these works use satire and surrealism to disrupt ideas of Scottishness. A charity jumble sale becomes a bazaar, a Scottish exurb becomes Berlin, the landed gentry are made monstrous, and a bottle of ginger provides the material of painterly expressionism.

PROGRAMME
Lesley Keen, Invocation, 1984. 4 minutes 46 seconds.
Cranhill Films, Clyde Film, 1985. 31 minutes 15 seconds.
Rosalind Nashashibi, The States of Things, 2004. 3 minutes.
Shaz Kerr, Tool, 1993. 10 minutes 45 seconds.
Roddy Buchanan, Sodastream, 1995. 1 minute 30 seconds.
Henry Coombes, The Bedfords, 2008. 19 minutes.

Running time: 70 minutes
+ Q&A

Access: All works include descriptive captions. 

Audience note: Includes loud noise of glass shattering; flashing lights.

Part 2 (3.10pm to 5pm)
Love and Discrimination: sexualities on screen

Enrico Cocozza, Mandy McIntosh, Ewan Morrison, Charlotte Prodger, SMITH/STEWART, and Ann Vance

Within the enduring social conservatism of twentieth-century Scotland, experimental film and video offered a permissive context for explorations of intimacy and sexuality. Comprising a selection of works produced before the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality in 1980, amidst the furore of Section 28, and in the contemporary moment, this programme maps a protracted route towards disclosure. From furtive gazes and polite suggestions of bisexuality to the taboo sexual practices of cottaging, violent fantasies, contagion, and underage sex in Glasgow’s housing schemes, these works span a decades-long campaign of sexual liberation.

PROGRAMME
Enrico Cocozza, Capriccio, 1954. 7 minutes 39 seconds.
Enrico Cocozza, Bongo Erotico, 1959. 11 minutes 18 seconds.
Ann Vance, Intrusion, 1992. 4 minutes 20 seconds.
SMITH/STEWART, Dead Red, 1994. 3 minutes 30 seconds.
Ewan Morrison, Closet, 1994. 15 minutes.
Mandy McIntosh, In an Empty, 1998. 11 minutes.
Charlotte Prodger, BRIDGIT, 2016. 32 minutes.

Running time: 85 minutes
+ Q&A

Access: All works include descriptive captions. 

Audience note: nudity; discussion of drug-taking; discussion of sex; depictions of gendered violence.
Suggested age restriction 16+

ABOUT CINEMA DESPITE
Featuring the contribution of twenty-nine artists, filmmakers and collectives working across a seventy year period, CINEMA DESPITE (1-3 September) attempts to expand and trouble an underexposed history of artists' moving image practice in Scotland. 

Including examples of contemporary work alongside rarely seen historic material drawn from archives and newly scanned for digital presentation, this one-off festival imagines an intergenerational dialogue between artists.

The programme is organised into five episodes screened over 3 days: the documentary; imperial legacies; protest; cultural identity; and sexuality. Each screening will be followed by a conversation with participating artists and a free publication of newly commissioned writing accompanies the programme.

Curated by Marcus Jack and presented in partnership with Tramway, CINEMA DESPITE follows a five-year research project and is supported by the Scottish Graduate School for Arts and Humanities and the School of Fine Art, The Glasgow School of Art.

Image: Still from Henry Coombes, The Bedfords, 2008. Courtesy of the artist