Glasgow Film Festival organiser on putting together a diverse and inclusive programme

Glasgow Film Festival is returning for 2024 with a diverse and inclusive programme.

Transcript

00:00 We've got 125 films, we've got loads of UK premieres, Scottish premieres, a couple world

00:07 premieres thrown in there as well, some great films from Scotland but also other parts of the

00:12 world. It's a really kind of full programme and there's just really in there, there's something

00:17 in there for everyone. We've got retrospectives, our country focus is Czechia, we have films from

00:25 the archive celebrating the three anniversaries we have this year. So yeah it's just like bursting

00:31 at the seam. So for the past three years myself and Natasha Ruona had programmed strands about

00:36 focusing on black film, black filmmakers and black cinema and this year we've kind of

00:43 amicably parted ways and I have programmed a strand called 'Love is sweet oh'. I really was

00:52 thinking about representations of love on screen for people of colour, black people and people of

00:59 colour and films that were made by black filmmakers and filmmakers of colour and I was also thinking

01:06 about the collective experience of watching cinema. The films I'm screening are 'Bend It Like

01:11 Beckham', 'Love Jones' and 'Happy Together' and these are films that came out when I was very

01:18 young or maybe not even alive and I think the first time I would have watched these and a lot

01:24 of my peers would have watched these would have been at home alone if they've ever even seen them

01:28 and so I think it's really exciting to be able to bring that experience to cinema. I think the

01:34 beautiful thing about art, all kinds of art and cinema as well is this opportunity to learn

01:41 something new about the world, to see another perspective, to see another experience and

01:47 there's so much entertainment there but it's also an opportunity for more empathy and more care

01:52 and more community and also like a reimagining of how this world can be better because it can

01:59 always be better right and fairer and so I think the more diverse those stories and that art is,

02:07 the more space and opportunity there is for all those good things to happen

02:14 and for us all to just like be more connected and it's just how we learn about the world.