What's on at GFT in February 2024

As one of Glasgow's top date night destinations, we'll be celebrating Valentine’s Day with two special screenings. Couples can cosy up with Howard Hawks’ classic screwball romcom Bringing Up Baby — a treasure from the Golden Age of Hollywood starring Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn. We're also delighted to offer film fans the rare opportunity to see Steve McQueen’s Lovers Rock on the big screen with a special Pay What You Can screening on 14 February. Arguably the highlight of Small Axe, the series of inter-related films McQueen made for the BBC in 2020, Lovers Rock is the story of young love at a 1980s blues party and ode to the romantic genre of reggae music called lovers rock.

We'll also mark LGBT+ History Month in February with two special events. On Monday 5 February, we will host a LGBT+ History Month screening of Andrew Haigh’s hotly anticipated All of Us Strangers, a queer romantic fantasy film starring Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal. The screening will be followed by a panel discussion with Kit Renard (LGBT+ Health & Wellbeing / Rainbow Dudes), Jamie Dunn (The Skinny) and a member of Unite the Union’s LGBT+ Committee, hosted by Anna Ireland (Film Hub Scotland). On Wednesday 21 February, we will screen Cheryl Dunye’s acclaimed 1990s comedy drama The Watermelon Woman in partnership with Exhale.group: a non-profit organisation which aims to create safe space to dream, explore and connect for QTIPOC+ (Queer, Trans and Intersex People of Colour) living in Glasgow and Scotland. A landmark of LGBT+ cinema, The Watermelon Woman is the story of an aspiring Black lesbian filmmaker determined to make a documentary about an obscure 1940s Black actress billed only as ‘the Watermelon Woman’. After the screening, Exhale.group’s founder Mahasin will lead a discussion about the film with a panel of Exhale.group members.

Our next CineMasters season will showcase the work of Terrence Malick, coinciding with a new restoration of his stunningly-shot Days of Heaven coming to cinemas. Not many filmmakers can live up to the description ‘visual poet’, but it's a phrase that does perfect justice to Malick’s achievements on the cinema screen. We will show his first five features in this season, made across a span of almost 40 years — including 4K restorations of Days of Heaven, The Thin Red Line and the extended cut of The New World, as well as Malick’s debut film Badlands, which celebrated its 50th anniversary last year, and the 2011 Palme d’Or winner The Tree of Life.

 

Our late January through to February programme is packed with special events, including preview screenings of the Cannes Grand Prix prize-winner The Zone of Interest — Jonathan Glazer's first film since Under the Skin 10 years ago which has received a whopping nine BAFTA nominations; a preview screening of hilarious satire American Fiction starring Jeffrey Wright, presented by We Are Parable; and Lorna Tucker’s frank documentary about homelessness, Someone’s Daughter, Someone’s Son, followed by a Q&A with Tucker. The popular, ongoing Scorsese of the Month programme continues in February with a special screening of the master director’s passion project Gangs of New York, followed by a Q&A with one of its ensemble cast, acclaimed Scottish actor Gary Lewis.

Documentary fans won’t want to miss our special screening of Occupied City on Sunday 11 February, which contrasts the vibrancy of present-day Amsterdam with its past under Nazi occupation. Filmmaker and artist Steve McQueen and writer Bianca Stigter will take part in a live broadcast Q&A after the screening, which includes an interval. Marking two years since the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, we will also screen the vital BAFTA-nominated eye-witness documentary 20 Days in Mariupol on Saturday 24 and Monday 26 February, which follows a team of Ukrainian journalists as they enter the strategic eastern port city of Mariupol on the eve of the invasion.

We are also excited to announce Cities on Celluloid — an innovative collaboration between GFT and Queen’s Film Theatre (QFT) in Belfast, aiming to establish a shared film network through film exchange. Young programmers in Glasgow and Belfast will curate and showcase film selections in each other’s city. QFT’s LUMI Programmers have programmed Good Vibrations to be screened at GFT on Tuesday 30 January. The film tells the story of Belfast music legend Terri Hooley, who founded the Good Vibrations record store from which a record label sprung, representing bands such as The Undertones, Rudi and The Outcasts. This screening is supported by Film Hub Scotland, part of the BFI’s Film Audience Network, awarding funds from Screen Scotland and National Lottery funding from the BFI.

The much-loved IberoDocs Festival returns to GFT in February for its 10th edition, celebrating a decade of Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American documentary in Scotland. On Thursday 22 February, audiences can enjoy a special screening of Cesária Évora, a heartfelt tribute to the Cape Verdean singer of the same name, featuring unseen footage and profound insights into her remarkable life. The event will include a live singing performance by Giulia Drummond and a recorded Q&A with director Ana Sofia Fonseca. On Sunday 25 February, we will host the IberoDocs screening of El Castillo (The Castle), the modern fairytale of an indigenous maid working in a colossal mansion in the Argentinian Pampa, followed by a Q&A with directors Martín Benchimol and Ana Songel.

Our February programme is also packed with must-see new releases, including Perfect Days, the highly anticipated return to fiction feature filmmaking from Wim Wenders (Paris, Texas, Wings of Desire); The Iron Claw, the true story of the legendary wrestling family the Von Erich brothers, starring Zac Efron; and The Promised Land, a powerful Nordic epic from BAFTA nominated writer and director, Nikolaj Arcel (A Royal Affair, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), starring Mads Mikkelsen (The Hunt, Another Round). To mark its 90th anniversary, Frank Capra’s 1934 screwball comedy classic It Happened One Night will be re-released in a new 4K restoration. Other new releases include Werner Herzog: Radical Dreamer; All of Us Strangers; The Civil Dead; The Zone of Interest; American Fiction; Samsara; Out of Darkness; The Taste of Things; Your Fat Friend; Memory; and The Settlers.

February’s autism-friendly Access Film Club, delivered by GFT in partnership with the National Autism Society Scotland, will feature a screening of Adam McKay’s riotous comedy Step Brothers on Monday 12 February. This relaxed screening will include a post-film discussion in a friendly and welcoming environment. Movie Memories, our dementia-friendly film programme, will continue with Bringing Up Baby on Thursday 15 February.

On Tuesday 20 February, our deaf and hard-of-hearing friendly Visible Cinema screening will be the darkly comic drama The Lobster from Poor Things director Yorgos Lanthimos. The film will be captioned and followed by a post-film discussion with integrated British Sign Language (BSL) and live captions (speech-to-text). Take 2, our free, family-friendly programme, continues to take place every Saturday morning at 11.30am, with February’s line up including Monsters Inc, Robin Hood and Ernest and Célestine: A Trip to Gibberitia. Take 2 Access will present a free autism-friendly family screening of Disney’s Robin Hood on Saturday 27 January at 12pm.

 

Tickets for our February 2024 Programme are on sale now from glasgowfilm.org.