Janey Godley is one of Scotland’s most prolific comedians who recently went on her final tour after a terminal diagnosis. Having sparked controversy throughout her career for online discrimination the GFT programmer speaks on their decision to screen her movie.
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Short filmTranscript
00:00 So that'll be the world premiere of Janie's documentary and of course Janie's had her issues.
00:06 And you know as a mixed race man, my father's Malaysian and you know I've had to deal with racism in the past,
00:14 microaggressions, you know it wasn't a decision we took lightly in terms of screening a film like that
00:20 from you know considering Janie's troubles with the racist tweets that she put out in the past.
00:26 But I think from our point of view obviously you watch the documentary and Janie Godley has had quite the life.
00:32 You do have to remember how much of an impact she's made on Scottish comedy
00:38 and like how much of an impact she's made on comedy in the UK in general.
00:42 And when you get to learn more about her life story it's very like you know incesting to find out the stuff that she's went through.
00:50 And you kind of forget, it's easy to forget in this day and age in terms of the sort of issues that you can have online
00:58 that that is someone's mother, Ashley's story obviously is that's her mother and she's going through a lot of stuff in her life and that's tough.
01:04 But obviously I think from my point of view just to touch on the controversy around the film of the racist tweets.
01:13 If you want to hold people accountable for things I think you have to give them the space to prove that they want to change
01:19 and they're actively sorry about things.
01:21 And I think our aim as a festival is to cultivate environments where you can have those conversations.
01:27 And you know, everyone doesn't have to agree about things but I think starting those conversations
01:34 and allowing people to grow and show accountability and prove that they're sorry for things is definitely a big thing for us.
01:41 But of course like you know aside from that the documentary is just a very good documentary and charts.
01:47 An iconic comedian who is embarking on the last tour.
01:52 And the fact of the matter is with the programme that's what we aim to do.
01:55 We want to show good films and films that we think people will be interested in seeing.
02:00 And that's the main reason why we wanted to show Janie.
02:03 And I think the screening will be very, very popular and very interesting to the audience.