CCA – Page 3 – Matchbox Cine

Two Weirds Is Too Weird

jackalfilms_queenbee — Alice Lowe in *Queen B* (Jacqueline Wright, 2010) © Jackal Films

We’re thrilled to be teaming up with Glasgow Short Film Festival for the first time with Two Weirds Is Too Weird: The Jackal Films of Alice Lowe and Jacqueline Wright. As huge fans of Alice, British comedy and GSFF, this is a very exciting development.

Before Alice Lowe wrote, directed and starred in Prevenge, the triple-threat-to-be teamed with director Jacqueline Wright on a series of strange and hilarious shorts. As Lowe has explained, “Being a woman is weird, and you’re allowed one weird. Being surreal is two weirds, and you’re not allowed two weirds… Two weirds is too weird.” With feline erotica, courtly necrophilia and aspiring mermaids, under their Jackal Films banner the two struck a path for themselves through a restrictive culture.

If we only knew Alice from her cameo as David Bowie in Snuff Box (“man was built but from clay”), we’d be over the moon to be programming this feature-length retrospective of rarely-screened shorts (mostly from 2005-2010). But then there’s her roles in Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace, Black Mountain Poets, Adult Life Skills, Sightseers, the latter of which she also co-wrote, innumerable cameo appearances (including, most recently, Black Mirror: Bandersnatch) and two series of her BBC Radio 4 sketch show, Alice’s Wunderland. And, of course, that incredible directorial debut, Prevenge.

The shorts made in collaboration with Jacqueline Wright are typically Loweian. There’s parody music videos, melodramatic pastiche and character-based vignettes, where Lowe and her cavalcade of co-stars (plenty of familiar faces) really get to shine. In tone, performance and quality these shorts do prefigure Prevenge and of course they’re part of a rich lineage of short form and sketch comedy. But they also stand alone as exemplars of women-driven creativity, ingenuity and productivity – and glorious, multi-faceted weirdness.

Two Weirds Is Too Weird: The Jackal Films of Alice Lowe and Jacqueline Wright takes place at Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow, Friday 15th March at 9pm. Tickets are on sale here.

GSFF have launched their full 2019 programme – read all about it here, or browse their brochure here.

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Never Vine Again #RIPVine

At its best, it captured the hilarity and horror of human existence in six second intervals. With Auld Lang Vine, we mourned the passing of a short-form video hosting service.

gy8a4904_2853 — *Our Auld Lang Vine #RIPVine audience*

On Sunday 27th January, 2018, we gathered 150 mourners in the Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow, to remember and celebrate Vine, “a short-form video hosting service where users could share six-second-long looping video clips.” As the audience filed in, every seat in CCA’s theatre was laid out with an order of service, and the screen displayed the classic DVD player screensaver. After local band Joyce Delaney, all decked out in Victorian mouring attire, struck up Chopin’s funeral march, Matchbox Cineclub offered a brief eulogy.

At its best, we suggested, Vine captured the hilarity and horror of human existence in six seconds. Its main tools were angry animals, children in jeopardy and basic human stupidity. Its primary modes were lip syncing, shade and screaming. After Vine, of course, you can still loop weird videos and share them. But Vine celebrated being weird, being creative and being funny. Most of all, it celebrated brevity, so perhaps it’s fitting that, in the end, its life was cut so short.

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After a six-second silence in honour of the passing of this legend, we introduced the first of two 45-minute compilations of the best Vines, originally curated by Pilot Light TV Festival, debuted in Manchester and also showcased at the BFI Southbank. The Glasgow audience spontaneously recited their favourite Vines, before holding their phone torches aloft for Puke’s interval rendition of Lady Gaga’s I’ll Never [Vine] Again.

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Then, after a second 45-minute compilation passed in the blink of an eye, Joyce Delaney once more took the stage for a short but typically wonderful set, unfortunately curtailed by a broken guitar string (please do check them out at the earliest available opportunity).

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Matchbox Cineclub would like to say a solemn thank you to Greg Walker and Pilot Light TV Festival, Live Cinema UK, BFI, Film Hub Midlands, CCA, Joyce Delaney, Puke, the ever estimable John Pooley and our stalwart volunteers (who couldn’t make it). Most of all, we’d like to say thank you to the audience and all the Vine fans who made the event so very special. 🙏

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ONE LAST THING! We’d like to note tickets for this event were sold on a sliding scale, which we would recommend to anyone with a similar screening or event. We believe in full accessibility in principle and always try to keep tickets as low as possible (or free, when we can) but the support of BFI emboldened us to try the sliding scale for the first time. Normally we’d fret about that since, as an independent exhibitor with no institutional support (barring CCA’s in-kind venue support), we have to cover costs. Making a profit, however small, allows us to keep programming films and producing events, while losing money clearly jeopardises that. However, this event proved a sliding scale approach can also be economically viable, even without support, since the uptake on £6 and £8 tickets covered any potential loss from the cheaper tickets. It won’t always be possible for us to employ a sliding scale for ticket sales, but whenever we can, we will. If you have any questions about it, please get in touch: info@matchboxcineclub.com.

Sliding-Scale

Cage, Cake and the Orgy

Matchbox Cineclub’s 2018 in pictures

2018 was the year Matchbox Cineclub stopped doing monthly screenings and ended up screening twice as many films. We launched three film festivals (even if one was postponed till 2019) and our online shop, coordinated Scalarama events across Scotland and organised a six-date tour of the UK. We hosted a world premiere, several Scottish premieres and a bunch of lovely guests, while a project we originated continued on to the Scottish Borders and Spain.

It hasn’t always been easy but we’re proud of what we accomplished this year, working with some incredible venues and a lot of our best bright and brilliant pals. We’re hoping 2019 will be our best year yet, but it’ll definitely be hard to beat 2018. The biggest thanks, as always, to everyone who came out for a Matchbox Cineclub event – you’re the ones who make it worthwhile. We always love to hear from you, so if you have any thoughts on the past year, or the next, please let us know. In the meantime, here’s our 2018 in pictures…

Cage-a-rama | After years of standalone pop-ups and our monthly residencies, this was our first time trying a new format, the micro-festival: six films over three days and as much bonus content as we could cram in. Selling it out in the early days of January gave us the encouragement to keep going. Which is a bigger deal than it maybe sounds. We couldn’t have done it without the Centre for Contemporary Arts and Park Circus supporting what we do, and of course all the Cage fans, who came from across the UK and as far afield as Dresden, Germany. We’re very much looking forward to Cage-a-rama 2: Cage Uncaged in January 2019.

Team Matchbox win the Glasgow Film Festival 2018 Quiz | Technically, Team GFF won, but since there were 18 of them and they had the inside scoop on their own programme, they were disqualified. We credit our victory to our ace in the hole, cine-savant Josh Slater-Williams. Also to the Nicolas Cage round. Thanks to the lovely Tony Harris (of Team GFF) for the photo!

Turkish Star Wars 2K world premiere | A while back, our pal Ed Glaser came into possession of the only remaining 35mm print of Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam, AKA Turkish Star Wars. Once it was all cleaned up and newly translated subtitles added, we had the chance to host the world premiere of the 2K restoration (simultaneously with our pals Remakesploitation film club in London). The May 4th screening was sold out but free entry. To cover our technician Pat’s wages, we took donations (and as usual spent way too much time on special graphics for the occasion).

Ela Orleans takes Cowards Bend the Knee to Alchemy | Our musical hero and good pal Ela Orleans took her live score for Guy Maddin’s Cowards Bend The Knee to the Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival in May. We originally commissioned Ela to write and perform her incredible new score during Scalarama 2017. Of course, 100% of the glory for the performances (Ela also later took Cowards to the Festival Periferia in Huesta, Spain), goes to Ela herself, but we’re very proud of the small part we have to play in the ongoing project. And, if you look very closely, you can see our logo in Alchemy’s Programme Partners on the screen behind Ela!

Weird Weekend | After Cage-a-rama was a success, we wanted to do something similar in the format but with Matchbox’s more typical programming – the outcasts, orphans and outliers of cinema. So, Weird Weekend was born and Scotland’s first festival dedicated to cult cinema took place at CCA in June. Over two days, we mixed cult favourites with lost classics and brand-new films and welcomed guests like The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb cinematographer Frank Passingham, Crime Wave star Eva Kovacs and Top Knot Detective co-directors Dominic Pearce and Aaron McCann. We also programmed a retrospective of our favourite local filmmaker Bryan M Ferguson’s shorts, and Bryan joined us for a post-screening Q&A. See Bryan’s latest work, including his celebrated music video for Ladytron, here: bryanmferguson.co.uk.

Alex Winter Q&A | The one and only Bill of Bill & Ted fame joined us via Skype after we screened his directorial debut Freaked at Weird Weekend. It was a fantastic screening and Q&A, all of it a mildly surreal high point. The whole thing was made totally normal, though, by the coolness of Alex and his team, who were also incredibly gracious in supporting our event with a bunch of press interviews. Of course, Alex is about to make Bill & Ted Face The Music, but these days he’s a pretty deadly documentary maker. See what he’s up to now: alexwinter.com.

Our founder returns | Matchbox Cineclub founder (lately of Paradise and Moriarty Explorers Club and, most recently, Trasho Biblio) Tommy McCormick returned for a cameo at Weird Weekend. Screening Soho Ishii’s The Crazy Family was a long-held ambition for Tommy, so when we managed to confirm a screening for Weird Weekend, he returned to pass on Ishii’s special message for the audience.

The Astrologer | We closed Weird Weekend with the Scottish premiere (and only the second UK screening) of Craig Denney’s The Astrologer (1976), such a deep cut that it can only be seen at screenings – no DVD, no VHS, no streaming, no torrent and very little chance it can ever be released. Bringing the DCP over from the States would have been 100% worth it anyway, before an unexpected onscreen mention for Glasgow melted everyone’s minds. Before all that, though, we got carried away with researching the mysterious and largely unreported story behind it and ending up writing the definitive 4,000-word article on it. Read it here!

CCA Closure | KeanuCon postponed! After Cage-a-rama, we polled the audience to see which icon we might celebrate next – Merylpalooza had a good run but Keanu was the clear winner. We debuted our trailer at a GFT late night classic screening of Speed in March and scheduled KeanuCon for the opening weekend of Scalarama in September. Unfortunately, the GSA fire meant the nearby CCA was forced to remain closed indefinitely and, try as we might, we couldn’t find a suitable alternative venue for the dates. On the bright side, our Keanu Reeves film festival will finally arrive in April 2019. And it was all almost worth it for our Sad KeanuCon image.

The World’s Greatest 3D Film Club | In July, our pals at Nice N Sleazy invited us to programme something there at the last minute. Their only specifications were for it to be something vaguely summery and fun. We had a bunch of red-blue anaglyph 3D glasses left over from when we screened Comin’ At Ya at The Old Hairdressers a couple of years ago, so we decided to screen Jaws 3D. When Sleazies had other free dates to fill, we later showed Friday 13th Part III and 1961 Canadian horror The Mask.

Scalarama | We took a lead role in coordinating Scalarama activity across Scotland again this September. KeanuCon was meant to open activities in Glasgow, but luckily Pity Party Film Club were able to fill the void with an incredible Hedwig and the Angry Inch event. We also hosted a sold-out screening of B-movie documentary Images of Apartheid at Kinning Park Complex, teamed-up with Video Namaste for another Video Bacchanal, this time at The Old Hairdressers, and screened Joe Dante’s epic The Movie Orgy (see below). Before all that, though, we hosted the Scalarama Scotland 2018 programme launch in August at the Seamore Neighbourhood Cinema in Maryhill, with a special Odorama screening of John Waters Polyester. Our pal Puke (pictured) volunteered as a Francine Fishpaw ring girl to cue the scratch and sniff action.

Joe Dante’s The Movie Orgy | We’d wanted to host this for a really long time and it took a lot of leg work, including a last-minute zoom to Edinburgh International Film Festival, to finally make happen. But it did! And, incredibly, Joe Dante himself recorded us an intro (pictured), after EIFF’s iconic Niall Greig Fulton introduced us to him in June and we got the OK to screen it. With CCA still closed, we had the opportunity to return to our old home, The Old Hairdressers, for this five-hour, sold-out screening. The film editor of the Skinny called it “Scotland’s movie event of the year”, which is daft but also we’ll take it.

#WeirdHorror with Kate Dickie | We started off the Halloween season doing a 31 days of #WeirdHorror countdown, then when CCA’s oft-postponed opening was finally confirmed, we offered to do some last-minute screenings. The idea was to celebrate CCA reopening and maybe help spread the word – which, it was super busy anyway but it was a great opportunity to team up with our pals Pity Party Film Club and She’s En Scene for some co-screenings. The four-night pop-up series had an amazing climax with legendary local hero Kate Dickie very graciously joining us for The Witch and an in-depth Q&A afterwards.

Matchbox Birthday Cake | Finally, this was just a very nice birthday surprise. Coming up in 2019, though, we have a LOT of surprises in store. First up, Cage-a-rama 2, Auld Lang Vine and KeanuCon. See you there!

Vanquish FOMO with our mailing list, here

Keep up-to-date on our Facebook page, here

Or get in touch directly: info@matchboxcineclub.com

Auld Lang Vine | #RIPVine

Matchbox Cineclub present a funeral tribute to Vine, the dearly departed platform for 6-second comedy genius

Dearly beloved, join us to mourn the passing of the 6-second wonder that was Vine. Expect a funeral-turned-party featuring over 500 of the greatest Vines and a very special eulogy. Full guest line-up to be announced soon (follow our Facebook event page here for announcements and up-to-date details)

Auld Lang Vine is a tribute to the 6-second icons that have given so much joy to millions the world over. The event centres around two big-screen compilations of the all-time greatest Vine loops, curated by our friends at Pilot Light TV Festival.

Join us as we celebrate the life of one of the biggest comedy phenomenons of recent times and move along to the final stage of grief: acceptance.

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Tickets, on sale in our shop here, are priced on a sliding scale, based on your circumstances. These are in three tiers: Free/£2, £4/£6 and £8. Read our PDF guide on what to pay here (with thanks to Scottish Queer International Film Festival), or in text here:

Sliding Scale: What Should I Pay?

FREE or £2
• I frequently stress about meeting basic* needs and don’t always achieve them.
• I have debt and it sometimes prohibits me from meeting my basic needs.
• I rent lower-end properties or have unstable housing.
• I sometimes can’t afford public or private transport. If I own a car/have access to a car, I am not always able to afford petrol.
• I am unemployed or underemployed.
• I qualify for government and/or voluntary assistance including: food banks and benefits.
• I have no access to savings.
• I have no or very limited expendable** income.
• I rarely buy new items because I am unable to afford them.
• I cannot afford a holiday or have the ability to take time off without financial burden.

£4 or £6
• I may stress about meeting my basic needs but still regularly achieve them.
• I may have some debt but it does not prohibit attainment of basic needs.
• I can afford public transport and often private transport. If I have a car/access to a car I can afford petrol.
• I am employed.
• I have access to health care.
• I might have access to financial savings.
• I have some expendable income.
• I am able to buy some new items and I buy others second hand.
• I can take a holiday annually or every few years without financial burden.

£8
• I am comfortably able to meet all of my basic needs.
• I may have some debt but it does not prohibit attainment of basic needs.
• I own my home or property or I rent a higher end property.
• I can afford public and private transport. If I have a car/access to a car I can afford petrol. • I have regular access to healthcare.
• I have access to financial savings.
• I have an expendable** income.
• I can always buy new items.
• I can afford an annual holiday or take time off.

*BASIC NEEDS include food, housing, clothing and transportation.

**EXPENDABLE INCOME might mean you are able to buy coffee or tea at a shop, go to the cinema or a concert, buy new clothes, books and similar items each month, etc.

Tickets are on sale from our online shop here.

Keep up-to-date with our Facebook event page here.

This programme is part of Comedy Genius – a nationwide celebration of comedy on screen, led by BFI, the Independent Cinema Office and BFI Film Audience network, supported by funds from The National Lottery. For more screenings go to bficomedy.co.uk.

Going Full Cage: Exploring the Enigma of Nicolas Cage

Tara Judah and Ti Singh bring their sell-out show to Cage-a-rama 2019

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We are beyond thrilled to bring Going Full Cage, the extremely popular, sell-out event from Bristol’s Watershed, to Glasgow for Cage-a-rama 2: Cage Uncaged. In January, two of the UK’s foremost film experts will explore the phenomenon of Nicolas Cage and debate the case for and against the best/worst actor of our times.

Nicolas Cage has been nominated for more Razzies than he has Oscars (The Golden Raspberry Awards recognise the worst in film), and yet he remains an Academy Award winning actor, thanks to his outstanding performance in Leaving Las Vegas. But just how can one man be recognised by both the industry’s most esteemed and most mocking award ceremonies? As fascinating as he is baffling, who is this enigmatic man? Is he utterly brilliant – in on the joke – or is he an overrated actor taking whatever pay check comes his way?

Whatever your opinion, we can say for sure that this member of the Coppola clan has worked with both the best and the worst in the business. From the Coen Brothers to the Kaufmans, with David Lynch and Neil LaBute, Nic Cage has entertained cinema audiences for almost forty years. Famous for his outlandish purchases, including oddities as wide-ranging as a castle in Bath (where he used to live!) and an illegal dinosaur skull, it’s no wonder he’s earned a reputation for eccentricity.

Nic Cage super fans Tara Judah (Watershed Cinema Producer) and Timon Singh (Bristol Bad Film Club Founder), will be diving deep into the bottomless abyss of the enigma. Presenting their cases for and against his brilliance in back to back presentations with clips, quotes and context, before discussing and debating their findings. Join us on Saturday 5th January as Tara and Ti dare to go Full Cage.

Whether you’ve seen the best or the worst of his career, this session will equip you with the tools, anecdotes and arguments to understand the curious career and big screen allure of one of Hollywood’s most unconventional A-listers.

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Tara Judah is Cinema Producer at Watershed in Bristol, and has worked in programming and editorial for the cinema’s archive, classic and repertory film festival, Cinema Rediscovered since its inception in 2016. Tara is also a freelance film critic and has contributed to Senses of Cinema, Desist Film, Monocle and Sight & Sound. Tara is a director on the board of trustees at one of the UK’s longest continuously operating cinemas, Curzon Cinema Clevedon. Tara’s favourite Nic Cage movie is Wild at Heart and her least favourite is City of Angels. (WHYYYY?) She especially loves it when Nic Cage sings.

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Timon Singh is Campaign Managers for Film Hub South West and also runs Bristol Bad Film Club and Bristol Sunset Cinema in… well, Bristol. He has previously written for Den Of Geek UK and Cineworld Magazine and his first book Born To Be Bad: Talking to the greatest villains in action cinema is out now. Timon is also the writer/producer on the upcoming documentary film In Search of the Last Action Heroes. His favourite Nicolas Cage film is Wings of the Apache. His worst is the first Ghost Rider. At the least the sequel had the decency to go Full Cage…

Going Full Cage, Saturday 5th January 2019, CCA Glasgow, part of Cage-a-rama 2: Cage Uncaged. All tickets on sale via our online store, here.

Cage-a-rama 2: Premieres, Guests and Going Full Cage

Matchbox Cineclub present the UK premiere of Nicolas Cage’s newest film, Between Worlds, with director Maria Pulera in attendance

Between Worlds is the film where Nicolas Cage makes love to women while reading aloud from a book entitled “Memories by Nicolas Cage”. That’s to say, it’s the perfect closing film for Cage-a-rama 2: Cage Uncaged, our second annual Nicolas Cage film festival. We’re delighted to welcome writer-director-producer Maria Pulera to present her film at Centre for Contemporary Art, Glasgow, on Sunday 6th January, 2019.

Nicolas Cage is Joe, a man obsessed by the death of his wife and daughter. At a way station on a lonely highway, Joe meets Julie (Franka Potente), a spiritually gifted woman who enlists him in a desperate attempt to recover the lost soul of her comatose daughter, Billie (Penelope Mitchell).

The full Cage-a-rama 2: Cage Uncaged film programme features Mandy, Army of One, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, The Wicker Man, Mom and Dad, Zandalee, Vampire’s Kiss, Wild At Heart and Between Worlds.

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Confirmed guests/contributors include: Maria Conchita Alonso (actor, Vampire’s Kiss, The Running Man, Predator 2), Skype Q&A; Lindsay Gibb (author, National Treasure: Nicolas Cage), video essay premiere; Barry Gifford (author, Wild At Heart, screenwriter, Lost Highway, Hotel Room), pre-recorded interview; Tara Judah (Bristol’s Watershed) and Ti Singh (Bristol Bad Film Club), Going Full Cage; Casper Kelly (Too Many Cooks) and Shane Morton (Your Pretty Face Is Going To Hell), creators of Mandy‘s Cheddar Goblin sequence, Skype Q&A; Maria Pulera (director, Between Worlds), live Q&A; Brian Taylor (director, Mom and Dad, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, Crank), Skype Q&A.

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Film experts Tara Judah and Ti Singh bring their sell-out Going Full Cage live event from Bristol’s Watershed on Saturday 5th January. Canadian Cage academician Lindsay Gibb will also premiere a brand-new and exclusive video essay at the festival.

With 11 Nicolas Cage films and events over three days, a counter-Cage cool-off area will be provided for those who need a break – this VHS “Hanks-a-rama” station will loop the reassuring presence of America’s Dad Tom Hanks throughout the festival weekend.

Local brewers Innis and Gunn sponsor Cage-a-rama for the first time this year. The annual Nicolas Cage Birthday Quiz will run on Sunday 6th, with prizes provided by Arrow Video and a huge pile of Cage merchandise up for grabs. A wide range of Cage-related publications and merchandise will also be on sale in the festival pop-up shop.

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Cage-a-rama weekend pass holders get a personalised Blockbuster-style membership card. All tickets are on sale via our online store: matchboxcineclub.bigcartel.com.

Cage-a-rama 2: Cage Uncaged takes place Friday 4th to Sunday 6th January 2019 at Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow.

Keep up-to-date with the Facebook event page here.

Cage-a-rama 2: Cage Uncaged

Europe’s longest-running Nicolas Cage Film Festival returns to Glasgow

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Matchbox Cineclub present Cage-a-rama 2: Cage Uncaged, a two-day film festival celebrating the wild, weird world of Nicolas Cage. Europe’s longest running Nic Cage film festival returns on Saturday 5th and Sunday 6th of January 2019, to the Centre of Contemporary Arts, Glasgow.

Cage-a-rama 2: Cage Uncaged fully unleashes the wild side of Cage with eight films, classic and brand-new, featuring the Oscar-winner’s most iconic meltdowns, freak-outs and outbursts. The festival also features a range of bonus content, including Cage’s 55^th Birthday Brunch + Quiz and Going Full Cage, a live event hosted by Tara Judah (Watershed Cinema producer) and Ti Singh (Bristol Bad Film Club founder and author).

The full programme will be announced on Wednesday 24/10.

Programmer Sean Welsh says, “People flew in from across Europe to attend the first, sell-out Cage-a-rama in January 2018. We wanted to raise the stakes with this sequel, so Cage-a-rama 2: Cage Uncaged is going to be an even more intense experience for fans. Last year, our campaign to #BringCage2Glasgow netted his official stand-in, Marco Kyris, so this year we’re upping our game to get him.”

Weekend passes for Cage-a-rama 2: Cage Uncaged are on sale now in our online shop. Limited day passes and single tickets will be on sale Friday 26/10.

Sign up to Matchbox Cineclub’s mailing list to get updates on Cage-a-rama and more: eepurl.com/duX1R9.

Sad KeanuCon

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It’s with a very heavy heart that we have to announce the postponement of KeanuCon 2018 until 27th +28th April 2019.

Due to the GSA fire and CCA Glasgow‘s subsequent closure, it’s not possible for us to hold KeanuCon on the original dates, and the next workable dates for CCA (and for us, due to Cage-a-rama 2 in January) are in 2019, which we are glad to confirm.

All our efforts to find a suitable alternative location have sadly failed. Although we did come extremely close, trust that we worked very hard to exhaust all the possibilities.

We hope you’ll accept our apologies and realise we are as gutted as anyone to have to postpone KeanuCon. We had the line-up and a lot of the supporting programme locked-in and we were so excited to share it with you. The date change *does* have some positive implications for the programming and for other aspects of the weekend, but that will become clear in due course – ASAP. KeanuCon will be even more awesome for the date change, we promise.

On a more positive note, we still be taking part in the Scalarama Glasgow 2018 programme this September, with these events and at least one more TBA:

09/09 Joe Dante’s The Movie Orgy
27/09 Images of Apartheid + Q&A

Pity Party Film Club will now host the Scalarama Glasgow Opening Party – Hedwig & The Angry Inch – now on sale!

We’re sincerely very sorry for the disappointment, but watch this space for news of KeanuCon (and Cage-a-rama 2!)

KeanuCon was originally scheduled for 1st and 2nd September, 2018. It will now take place 27th + 28th April, at Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow.

The Crazy Family | Weird Weekend

The Crazy Family, Sogo Ishii’s provocative, oddball satire, hasn’t screened in Scotland for 30 years

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Having just relocated to a comfortable new home in suburbia, the Kobayashi family – Katsuhiko, his wife, Saeko, and their two children, Masaki and Erika – appear to be the picture of middle-class success. But the family’s comfortable bourgeois veneer begins disintegrating when grandfather Yasukuni and white ants infest their home, eating away at the woodwork. As the Kobayashis’ house begins to crumble, so does the sanity of its inhabitants. Katsuhiko takes it upon himself to keep them from the asylum…at any cost.

The Crazy Family (逆噴射家族, Gyakufunsha Kazoku) Sogo Ishii’s provocative, oddball satire, hasn’t screened in Scotland for at least 30 years. Born Toshihiro Ishii, now known as Gakuryū Ishii, the avant garde filmmaker spearheaded the Japanese New Wave with his early punk features Panic In High School (1978), Crazy Thunder Road (1980) and Burst City (1982). Ishii’s reputation arguably rests on these early films, although he’s still active and his influence can been seen in the filmmakers whose international success has surpassed his own.

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Described as “one of the most genuinely demented movies to ever emerge from Japan,” The Crazy Family‘s original title (literally “The Back-Jet Family”) was a reference to an incident at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport in the early 1980s. The pilot of a short, internal flight fired the plane’s back-jet just before landing, crashing the plane and killing many of its passengers. Pressure of work was blamed for the pilot’s action. “With Crazy Family,” Ishii later claimed, “I wanted to show the Japanese family as I saw it.” Co-writer and manga artist Yoshinori Kobayashi, now a controversial, conservative figure in Japan, told Monthly Film Bulletin in 1986:

Kramer vs Kramer, Ordinary People and The Family Game are all admirable films dealing with family problems. They are serious films, much praised by critics, and some people regard them as masterpieces. But some of us think differently. We consider them timid films, more or less like the TV family dramas made for middle-aged audiences, and the critics like them more than we do. And so Sogo Ishii and I decided to make a more radical film on the same subject. We wanted film about the family that would be filled with fun and poison… There are four things that traditionally frighten the Japanese: earthquakes, thunder, fire and fathers. This list is as valid now as it ever was.

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Though it didn’t lose money, The Crazy Family was, perhaps unsurprisingly, not hugely popular domestically. “Everyone in Japan just complained that they didn’t understand my films,” Ishii later reflected. Though the film made a bigger impact abroad, according to writer David Cairns, “Most western critics found it wearisome and baffling”. As related by Shock Cinema’s Steven Puchalski, “its New York City engagement consisted of a one-week run at an upscale arthouse theatre, and a sparse, thoroughly confused audience of blue-haired Upper West Siders.”

In the UK, however, critic Tony Rayns saw its value immediately, noting “a major step forward for Sogo Ishii”. Writing in early 1986, Rayns observed that The Crazy Family “is a live action comic strip, each sequence shattered into component images like panels on a page and edited to rock rhythms.” Rayns continued:

The stylistic attack is matched, blow by blow, by the ruthlessness and cruelty of the humour: satire, slapstick, pain and black comedy are primary elements, but the film goes beyond them all into an area harder and more vicious than anything seen on screen since the early days of Monty Python. Its triumph is that it is (a) consistently funny, and (b) sustained as a narrative, rather than collapsing into a series of sketches.

if…. director Lindsay Anderson was also a fan. As recorded in Michael Palin’s diaries, Anderson preferred it to the then-recent A Room With A View, An Englishman Abroad, and even the Python’s own Private Function. Ishii’s film was the only one he’d liked recently, Anderson told Palin, since “the violence is so productive!”

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Though it’s never been released on DVD in the UK, The Crazy Family is a landmark in Ishii’s ouevre and Japanese cinema. It was his first commercial work, following the trio of dystopian punk films that made his name, but was immediately followed by an almost 10-year gap before his next feature, the thriller Angel Dust (1994). Thwarted from making the films he wanted to make, Ishii concentrated on experimental short films, music documentaries (notably Half Human, with Einstuerzende Neubauten) and TV movies. The next phase of his work would be his self-proclaimed psychedelic years, before a slight return to his roots with Electric Dragon 80.000 V (2000). In 2010, he announced his “artistic rebirth”, Bowie-style, as Gakuryū Ishii, before returning to features once more with 2012’s Isn’t Anyone Alive? With his latest, Punk Samurai Slash Down, due this year, it’s the perfect time to (re)discover his weirdest.

Sean Welsh

The Crazy Family screens at Matchbox Cineclub’s Weird Weekend on Sunday 3rd June. Tickets from £5, day and weekend passes are available. All tickets available from CCA’s box office, 0141 352 4900, or online: bit.ly/weirdweekend.

Weird Weekend brochure online

The brochure for Weird Weekend 2018 is not online over at Issuu. You can also pick up a print copy across Glasgow this weekend.

Tickets are on sale now from £5, day and weekend passes are available. All tickets available from CCA’s box office, 0141 352 4900, or online: bit.ly/weirdweekend.