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GFF 2012 - Day planner

GFF 2012 - Day planner

Our highlights for each day of the Glasgow Film Festival

6 Feb 2012

It can be difficult, when any festival rolls around, to decide which events to skip in favour of others. Searching rigorously through the programme, referring back to the calendar, trying to fit in as much as possible - it's a painstaking piece of work…

Take One Action Film Festival Scottish Tour

Take One Action Film Festival Scottish Tour

The political film festival is set to travel around the country throughout February 2012

3 Feb 2012

The Take One Action Film Festival - Scotland's biggest film festival dedicated to cinema with a political edge - is to tour Central and Northern Scotland throughout February. Among the films scheduled to screen on the tour is Even the Rain, the Gael…

Girl Model

Girl Model

Clinical expose of the modeling industry

(3 stars)27 Jan 2012

(tbc) 78min Far from the fairy-tale fiction of America’s Top Model is Girl Model, a clinical, disturbing industry expose by documentary makers David Redmon and Ashley Sabin (Mardi Gras: Made in China). Ashley Arbaugh is an ex-model and now a…

Bombay Beach

Bombay Beach

Half real, half dream-like American documentary from director Alma Har'el

(4 stars)23 Jan 2012

(Cert tbc) 80min There was a time when documentary at least generally gave the impression of being a medium distinct from fiction, where various movements (Direct Cinema, cinema verité) put their faith in the relative objectivity of the image, as…

Profile: Carol Morley

Profile: Carol Morley

Director of documentary-drama Dreams of a Life

9 Dec 2011

Born 1966, Stockport, England. Background The sister of music critic Paul Morley, film director Carol left school aged 16 to pursue a career as a singer in various post-punk Mancunian bands. Having studied fine art film at Central Saint Martins…

Interview with Alex Gibney, writer-director of Magic Trip – Ken Kesey’s Trip for a Kool Place

Interview: Alex Gibney, writer-director of Magic Trip – Ken Kesey’s Trip for a Kool Place

Documentary on iconic 60s group the Merry Pranksters

15 Nov 2011

What was your inspiration for making a documentary about the cross-America bus trip undertaken by Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters in the summer of 1964? I was going out to the Sundance film festival in 2005 with my film Enron: The Smartest Guys in…

Blood In The Mobile

Blood In The Mobile

Documentary explores mineral extraction in Eastern DR Congo for use in phone handsets

(4 stars)9 Nov 2011

(12A) 85min The mobile phone, that universal symbol of convenience and progress, comes at quite a price. We are not talking fiscal here, we are talking of a price above rubies, a cost measured in blood, sweat and tears. All mobile phones contain…

Self Made

Self Made

Gillian Wearing's study of acting blurs the line between fiction and reality

(4 stars)17 Oct 2011

(15) 87min An intriguing debut feature from Young British Artist-turned director Gillian Wearing, which in a manner reminiscent of Clio Barnard’s The Arbor skilfully blurs the boundaries between documentary and fiction filmmaking. Having responded to…

Document 9 film festival highlights

Document 9 film festival highlights

The documentary film fest celebrates a 'year of protest' theme

12 Oct 2011

Boasting one of their best film line ups in years, the Document 9 human rights festival takes the theme of protest as its mascot this year. The festival opens with Andrea Roggon's Soy Libre (I am Free) about life and hope in modern day Havana. The next…

Director Leila Doolan talks about her documentary on radical Irish politican Bernadette Devlin

Interview: Bernadette: Notes on a Political Journey at 2011 Document 9 film festival

Director Leila Doolan's doc on radical Irish politican Bernadette Devlin

11 Oct 2011

Leila Doolan's remarkable documentary Bernadette: Notes on a Political Journey is one of the absolute highlights in Glasgow-based human rights film festival Document 9's very strong line up this year. The film follows the ideological and political…

You’ve Been Trumped

You’ve Been Trumped

Controversial doc on Donald Trump's Scottish golf course plan a triumph

(4 stars)22 Sep 2011

(12) 95min Unless you’ve had your head buried in the sand for the past few years, you’ll no doubt be aware of American tycoon Donald Trump’s controversial plans to build a golf course and hotel complex in an area of outstanding natural beauty and…

Life and Debt

Life and Debt

Heartbreaking and pertinent documentary about Jamaica's economic misfortunes

(4 stars)22 Sep 2011

(12) 80min Made the year after the launch of the Jubilee 2000 campaign to cancel third world debt at the beginning of the new millennium, Stephanie Black’s agitprop documentary looks at the case of Jamaica. In 1977, fifteen years after achieving…

You've Been Trumped - Anthony Baxter interview

You've Been Trumped - Anthony Baxter interview

Director of Donald Trump doc on being shunned by Scottish film bodies

22 Sep 2011

‘I live in Montrose and it’s 40 miles south of the Menie Estate, where Donald Trump was planning to build his golf course resort. I read the newspapers every day and I was surprised that the coverage was so one-sided. The other side of the story, as I…

Fix ME

Fix ME

Meandering fly-on-the-wall documentary filmed in Palestine

(3 stars)22 Sep 2011

Palestinian filmmaker Raed Andoni suffers from frequent headaches. His doctors tell him there is nothing physically wrong, and advise him to seek the help of a therapist. As Andoni talks about his life – about what it means to him to be a Palestinian…

Hell and Back Again

Hell and Back Again

Moving but occasionally muddled documentary about the war in Afghanistan

(3 stars)14 Sep 2011

(15) 86min Constant television coverage of the Vietnam War so shocked American households that it is said to have helped turn the tide of public opinion against the conflict. The war in Afghanistan has received saturation coverage across all media…

Page One: Inside the New York Times

Page One: Inside the New York Times

Personality-driven documentary about the world-famous publication

(3 stars)14 Sep 2011

(15) 91min These are dark days for the newspaper business. Advertising revenues and circulations are slumping in the face of ‘free’ online competitors, whilst scores of titles have already folded. Andrew Rossi’s fly-on-the-wall documentary charts a…

Steam of Life

Steam of Life

Beautiful but bleak documentary about Finnish sauna culture

(2 stars)9 Sep 2011

(E) 81 min There are five million people in Finland, and an estimated two million saunas – roughly one per household. They form an integral part of Finnish culture: women are encouraged to give birth in them, while men use the steamy rooms both as…

Project Nim

Project Nim

Excellent ape project documentary a complex meditation on human nature

(4 stars)9 Aug 2011

(12A) 99min It’s not surprising that director James Marsh has chosen to follow his Oscar-winning 2008 documentary Man On Wire by taking an approach often favoured by bands following up a hit album: don’t mess with the formula, just try and do the…

The Interrupters

The Interrupters

Intimate documentary exploring gun crime in the US

(4 stars)4 Aug 2011

(12A) 125min Best known for his epic account of teenaged African-American basketball hopefuls Hoop Dreams, director Steve James returns in collaboration with the writer Alex Kotlowitz to inner-city Chicago for this sprawling documentary, which…

Senna

Senna

Fast-paced documentary on life and death of Formula One racing driver

(4 stars)28 Jun 2011

(12A) 106min This fast-paced documentary about the life and death of the legendary Formula One racing driver Ayrton Senna plays more like a dramatic biopic than a feature-length doc. Taking his lead from and building upon dramatic documentaries such…

Jared, Nathan and Caleb Followill

Kings of Leon prepared for criticism

Music Gossip

27 Jun 2011

Kings of Leon think their new documentary could make people "dislike" them more. The 'Sex On Fire' hitmakers' rise to fame is chronicled in new film 'Talihina Sky: The Story Of Kings Of Leon', and while they are hopeful the footage will earn them…

Calvet - Dominic Allan & Jean Marc Calvet interview

Calvet - Dominic Allan & Jean Marc Calvet interview

Documentary charting extraordinary life of French artist

25 Jun 2011

CALVET depicts the struggles of Jean Marc Calvet, now an artist with burgeoning international success, to come to terms with his past and, more particularly reconcile with the son he abandoned. So far, so straightforward, but Jean Marc has quite a few…

Convento - Jarred Alterman interview

Convento - Jarred Alterman interview

Portrait of Dutch artist family and kinetic sculpture

25 Jun 2011

Jarred Alterman, director of the documentary Convento, takes me round the tie-in exhibition at Teviot Row House, full of the kinetic sculptures by Christiaan Zwanikken that populate Alterman’s dreamlike film. Passing a gang of creepy, animated and…

Project Nim - James Marsh interview

Project Nim - James Marsh interview

Man on Wire director charts 1970s chimp experiment in extraordinary film

21 Jun 2011

‘I’m here bleary-eyed straight from four weeks of shooting a feature film in Dublin!’ So claims Project Nim director James Marsh when I meet him, but you wouldn’t know it from the espresso-fuelled 30 minutes of rapid discussion that follows, in which…

Bobby Fischer Against The World

Bobby Fischer Against The World

Lovingly realised documentary on American chess master

(4 stars)21 Jun 2011

(12A) 93min Bobby Fischer was the greatest of all past chess masters, and certainly the best America has ever had. Like most geniuses, however, Fischer’s life was a bizarre trajectory of success, fame, delusion and ultimately (possibly) madness.

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