Glas­gow Film Fes­ti­val presents… 1969: End of Innocence

Mark 20 Feb­ru­ary on your cal­en­dars and start plan­ning what films you want to catch at the 15^th annu­al Glas­gow Film Fes­ti­val. The full line-up has now been revealed, and we want­ed to flag up an ace look­ing ret­ro­spec­tive that’s run­ning in tan­dem to a main slate which includes anniver­sary event screen­ings of The Matrix and Alien, plus a focus on the cin­e­ma of Belgium.

‘1969: End of Inno­cence’ whisks us back to the dying days of a cin­e­mat­ic decade in which fusty ​’50s for­mu­la was tossed out and freak flags were final­ly allowed to fly. ​“There was a heck of a lot of real­ly inter­est­ing stuff going on in 1969,” says fes­ti­val co-direc­tor Allan Hunter, ​“and it was reflect­ed in the Hol­ly­wood films of that era, whether that was what was hap­pen­ing in Amer­i­ca at that time, or whether it’s some­thing like the old film­mak­ing dinosaurs falling by the wayside.”

Titles in the sea­son include John Schlesinger’s Mid­night Cow­boy, Den­nis Hopper’s Easy Rid­er and George Roy Hill’s Butch Cas­sidy and the Sun­dance Kid. And to give a fuller pic­ture of the decade’s dog days, Sid­ney Pollack’s pul­veris­ing death-dance, They Shoot Hors­es, Don’t They?, and Paul Mazursky’s razor-sharp explo­ration of swing­ing cul­ture, Bob & Car­ol & Ted & Alice, are also programmed.

“The one film that I’m going to be real­ly inter­est­ed to see what kind of audi­ence we get, and whether it’ll be big or small, is Alice’s Restau­rant, the Arthur Penn film,” says Hunter. ​“It strikes me as very much of its time. It’s a bit anar­chic, it’s a bit digres­sive and it’s kind of strung togeth­er with all these small scenes. You can get what­ev­er you want at Alice’s Restau­rant. It’s the guy who made Bon­nie and Clyde, it’s Arlo Guthrie in the lead and it’s very much a film that cap­tures the period.”

This side­bar looks close­ly at the shift­ing social and polit­i­cal land­scape of 1969, but exclu­sive­ly through the prism of Amer­i­can cin­e­ma. ​“We want­ed to be more com­pre­hen­sive and also have a cohe­sive struc­ture,” says fes­ti­val co-direc­tor Alli­son Gard­ner. ​“We’re look­ing through America’s eyes at the change in their coun­try, and we can also see how those changes were reflect­ed across the globe.”

In cap­tur­ing that bit­ter­sweet end-of-an-era vibe, the sto­ry­lines tend to descend into vio­lence, and the main char­ac­ters sel­dom stay alive all the way to the end cred­its. Was that vio­lence obvi­ous when for­mu­lat­ing the line-up? ​“I guess peo­ple were see­ing the Viet­nam War every night on tele­vi­sion,” Hunter says, adding, ​“there were riots on the streets, there were peo­ple being assas­si­nat­ed all over the place. So the films com­ing out at that time were very acute­ly show­ing what was hap­pen­ing in the country.”

One unique aspect of this ret­ro­spec­tive is that all the films are being screened free of charge. ​“One of our great ideas at Glas­gow Film The­atre that res­onates through­out the fes­ti­val is ​‘Cin­e­ma For All’,” explains Gard­ner. ​“There’s a lot of bar­ri­ers for peo­ple when it comes to going to the cin­e­ma. We’re try­ing to break down those bar­ri­ers, and one of them is obvi­ous­ly price. We want to make sure that we’re offer­ing the best of the best to every­body. We have to make sure that we are inclu­sive, because that’s a cor­ner­stone of the film fes­ti­val ethos. It should be acces­si­ble, it should be inter­est­ing and it should be for everyone.”

The Glas­gow Film Fes­ti­val runs from 20 Feb­ru­ary to 3 March. For more info and to book tick­ets vis­it glas​gow​film​.org/​f​e​s​tival