Glasgow Film Festival announces winner of first-ever Audience Award, closing dates and 2015 admissions

As the 2015 Glasgow Film Festival comes to a close with the UK premiere of  Force Majeure, the organisers are delighted to announce the winner of their inaugural Audience Award, as well as 2015 admissions numbers, and the dates for 2016’s event. The directors of the festival paid tribute to the 2015 audience and described this year as their ‘best ever’.


AUDIENCE AWARD

The winner of GFF’s first-ever Audience Award was Radiator, a beautiful and moving low-budget British film created by writer/ first-time feature director Tom Browne, and shot in the Cumbrian house of his deceased parents. 

Radiator features a pair of astonishing, career-best performances from veteran British actors Richard Johnson and Gemma Jones as elderly hoarders Leonard and Maria. Johnson and Jones, with Browne, were among the visitors to the festival this year. 

The Audience Award was voted on by the GFF audience from a selection of ten films made by first or second-time directors. Over 1100 votes were cast. The Audience Award runner up was the documentary Tender, directed by Lynette Wallworth. Both Radiator and Tender are currently seeking distribution.

Radiator writer/director Tom Browne said:
‘Receiving the Audience Award has made us all terrifically happy - thank you! Radiator has an unfashionable theme and was made on a tiny budget. Unsurprisingly it is taking a while for the film to find a place within the film industry so to receive this award is very significant for Radiator's future. Richard, Gemma and I had a great time in Glasgow - we were treated so kindly and were touched by the engagement of the audiences evident in the Q and A sessions.’


Glasgow Film Festival Co-Director Allan Hunter said:

‘We've always known that our audience has the best taste and now they have proved that all over again. The GFF audience has

enthusiastically embraced the responsibility of picking their favourite film from a list of ten contenders and deciding the winner of the festival's first Audience Award. They couldn't have picked a more worthwhile winner than Radiator.

Tom Browne's deeply autobiographical film resonates across the generations as it deals with the dynamics of family relationships and the challenges we will all face in our final years. It is funny, touching and told with a fearless truth and beautifully judged performances from Gemma Jones, Daniel Cerquiera and the magnificent Richard Johnson. I only hope distributors will take encouragement from the public passion for Radiator and the Audience Award and bring the film to the wider audience it clearly deserves.’



AUDIENCE NUMBERS
Despite fielding 23 fewer events this year due to unavailability at long-term venue partner Cineworld, the festival has still managed to reach over 40,000 admissions for the second year in a row at time of going to press.  45% of the events in the programme sold out completely; 61% of screenings sold 75% of their tickets.


Glasgow Film Festival Co-Director Allison Gardner said:
‘This year might just have been the best Glasgow Film Festival ever. It’s certainly been the most fun I've ever had. From ballroom dancing to roller-skating, from coming together in rapt appreciation at classic festival films like Wild Tales or

Mommy, giving a standing ovation to legendary Scottish writer William McIlvanney, or queuing for tickets for the Internet Cat Video Festival, our audiences have been generous, committed, passionate and open-minded. 

And they’ve all got fabulous taste in fancy dress costumes, which we have asked them to wear in some form almost every night. We’re also absolutely delighted that we've broken 40,000 admissions for a second year running, despite working with a smaller programme. Thanks so much to our wonderful audience: you make all the hard work worth it.’









2016 DATES
Glasgow Film Festival 2016 will run from 17-28 February.

Comics and Film and Celebrity.

Perhaps the biggest event in the Marvel Universe over the past decade (and they have been churning out major events most summers) was precipitated by a superhero team's preoccupation not with saving lives but appearing cool on a reality show. Big Man Japan stars a superhero who sports advertising on his chest and is bullied by his agent for not getting high enough ratings for a battle. After the horrors of the 1990s, when "realism" became a by-word for "nasty," perhaps the superhero is pondering the best way to mesh with society's obsession with celebrity.

Wonder Women (being shown at the GFF) follows the history of the superheroine through comics, film and television: the documentary's preoccupation with the mainstream representation of action women does ensure that most fantasy fiction is excluded. Although most strongly identified with the comic book, super-powered characters have niches in all sorts of fiction - but remained a marginal interest.

Until the advent of spiffy FX, flying, shooting beams of energy out of your eyes or summoning thunder was not the best qualification for being a movie star. Too difficult to fake realistically on film, the amazing growing, shrinking, burning and stabbing superhero was kept on the page. Suddenly, however, the movie mogul have become less frightened by the superhero, and are making films that turn already iconic figures (Spider-Man, Captain America, The Green Lantern) into cinematic legends.

Kapow!@GFF is curated by Mark Millar, who did some great Authority comics (that's the one with the gay (thinly-disguised) versions of Superman and Batman and applied superhero logic to real political issues) and some controversial Marvel series, and John McShane, whom I once met on a train and seems to be a one-man hub of creative resources (he can sometimes be found in Plan B comics). Their selection is a nice mash up of the popular (three of those Marvel Avengers films, including Thor, which ought to appeal to fans of faux Shakespearian dialogue), Alex Salmond introducing his favourite geek film (still a secret, but let's hope it is something embarrassing), serious documentaries (Wonder Women! and Cartoon College) and a film in which Kevin Smith presents himself, in the closing credits, as the creepiest man in film (seriously, dude, watch those comments about fifteen year old vampire chicks).

One of the core arguments about comics in Comic-Con IV: A Fan's Hope is that the geek have inherited the earth (Smith's ill judged monologue tries to suggest that getting laid is a sign of how cool something has become. Sigh). While I still think Millar and McShane could have set their sights higher - wasn't "Call Me" Dave Cameron free? - getting the First Minister to not just admit he is a geek but to come along and present the film shows that even top politicians are bowing to the power of the marginalised.

This acceptance by the mainstream isn't however, matched by a corresponding respectability - it's still not cool to read the X-Men on the Subway. The coverage around Judge Dredd's apparent homosexuality has reinforced notions that a comic addressing a real life issue is a novelty - and that the fandom is conservative. The advent of the successful superhero movie is not an expression of acceptance of heroes on their own terms, but the result of its fusion with celebrity culture. Throughout Comic-Con IV, it is the arrival of celebrities - Kevin Smith or the guy who plays Captain America that really gets the crowd going.





Nope, lost my point. Sorry.