Get Out of The Cinema....

The challenge of cinema for a performance buff like me is whether it can strictly be counted as a performance, like ballet or Live Art, or a representation, like a painting or a TV show. Since I made up my own terminology a few years ago to deal with this problem (I'd like to think that there is something more to the division that just a diversion for a mind too empty), cinema counts as performance before it happens in a public space, has an audience and occupies a particular time. TV shows, which are probably more likely to be watched on DVD or the Internet anyway, allow the audience to watch it alone, at a time of  their choosing. So I move on, hoping no-one is ready to drive a lorry through the obvious holes in this description.

However, my residual love for theatre insists that I am more excited by the events in the Glasgow Film Festival than the admittedly impressive number of traditional screenings. Three events have grabbed my attention in particular, because they share unusual locations (an underground station, a fancy hotel and The Arches respectively): Secret Subway, Entre Chien et Loup and Sonic Cineplex. None of them are happening in the GFT or CCA, but they are shaping up to look like the defining events of the festival (at least for me).

What these screenings emphasise is that the location of a film is part of its performance. Now that the huge cinema complex is the most common venue, their identikit nature and lack of soul (hard to define and probably meaning little more than the seats don't have chewing gum underneath from twenty years ago), film on the big screen is frequently regarded as little more than TV on steroids. It's bigger, it's louder, but it seems to have lost its intelligence somewhere.

Throughout the GFF, there is plenty of evidence that this is not the case: I might have ragged on Wonder Women for not being a history of female comic book warriors, but it is a fascinating introduction to feminist readings of popular culture. Equally, I might have been disturbed by Silent Bob playing the role of a creepy film director, but Comic Con IV had me in tears.

Secret Subway is coming up this Sunday - it's sold out, but my next blog is going to pretend that the film is still a secret and I am blowing its cover. Sonic Cineplex is the day before, Entre Chen et Loup the Monday evening. They all reintroduce the idea that the audience is part of the action, establishing very clearly that my Big Idea is quite correct....