Tag: Scalarama

Turkish Star Wars 2K Tour

Matchbox Cineclub team with Remakesploitation and Neon Harbor to tour Turkish Star Wars 2K around the UK for Scalarama 2018.

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Graham Humphreys poster for Turkish Star Wars 2K (on sale here)

When you become a fan of cult film, or maybe a person for whom films naturally become a cult, three things happen – first, you go deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole looking for stranger and more unusual films. Second, your affinity multiplies with curiosity to make you want to find out as much as you can about them. Thirdly, you want to share what you’ve found with as many people as possible.

Turkish Star Wars is the perfect film in that regard. Most people know it from terribly subtitled clips drawn from fourth generation VHS dubs. Its strangeness and its audacity, coupled with the absurdity of the supposed dialogue, will hook anyone’s attention. That version of Turkish Star Wars was one of the first films Matchbox Cineclub screened, and Turkish Remakesploitation one of the first topics I wrote about seriously – because I wanted to know just what the fuck was going on with these films.

Meanwhile, Ed Glaser and Iain Robert Smith separately pursued their passion for cult film inexorably toward Turkish Star Wars. It makes me very happy that our curiosity about incredibly strange films has brought us to the point that we can share the best possible version of Turkish Star Wars and tell people the incredible story behind it.

Notorious for the ways in which director Çetin İnanç edited footage from Star Wars into his own film, along with music from Raiders of the Lost Ark and Flash Gordon, Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam (1982) is the “holy grail” of remakesploitation cinema. The Man Who Saves the World revolves around two Turkish space pilots who crash-land on a desert planet enslaved by an evil wizard. Memorable sequences involve the heroes battling robots inspired by Battlestar Galactica and Forbidden Planet – plus mummies, skeletons, and multi-coloured yetis. Another sees them in starfighter “cockpits,” wearing motorcycle helmets, as footage from the Star Wars Death Star battle is projected behind them.

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For many years, the film circulated only in those low-resolution bootleg copies, but in 2016 a 35mm print of the film was discovered, and a 2K digital scan has been made so that the world can finally see the film the way it was intended. Because of the obvious rights issues around the film, there are currently no plans for a home DVD/Blu-Ray release so this Scalarama tour is the only way to see this new 2K version of Turkish Star Wars. Get yr tickets before they sell out!

Sean Welsh

Turkish Star Wars 2K UK tour dates:

14/09 Cameo Cinema, Edinburgh | Tickets

15/09 Square Chapel Arts Centre, Halifax | Tickets

19/09 Phoenix, Leicester | Tickets

22/09 Rio Cinema, London | Tickets

24/09 Connaught Cinema, Worthing | Tickets

28/09 Cube Microplex, Bristol (with Bristol Bad Film Club & Hellfire Video Club) | Tickets

Sad KeanuCon

sad CCA

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.

 

Matchbox Cineclub vs Scalarama

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Scalarama is just around the corner and we have some of our biggest and best events lined up for it this September. First, we team up with Video Namaste for an event inspired by Everything Is Terrible, the Found Footage Festival and Adam Buxton’s Bug. Then we have a very special event celebrating the 20th anniversary of Chris Morris’ landmark TV comedy Brass Eye. Our Glasgow events culminate on our regular date at CCA with our very first live score commission. Finally, we’re using Scalarama to launch our first ever tour, bringing back John Paizs’ masterpiece, Crime Wave for its theatrical debut across the UK.

07/09: Video Bacchanal at Nice N Sleazy 

The ‘90s in cinema were an amazing nightmare. A sugar-syrup throb of VHS scanlines, dire fast food tie-ins and probably the weirdest time in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s life. Come join the Video Namaste boys in a wee trip through the weird videoshop hellscape of 90s cinema and all the amazing stuff that orbited it. Have a drink, gawk at us forgetting to remember and then have a wee dance with us as we play some Exxtra Special ‘90s soundtrack songs afterwards.

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17/09: Oxide Ghosts: The Brass Eye Tapes with director Q&A at CCA

Made from hundreds of hours of unseen material from his personal archive, director Michael Cumming’s film shares insights into the process of making the legendary TV series Brass Eye. Michael directed both the pilots and the series and, over a two-year period, witnessed the highs and lows of Brass Eye from a very personal perspective.

Part documentary, part artwork – the film is designed solely for live screenings and is made up almost entirely of never before seen footage. Oxide Ghosts carries the blessing of Chris Morris and provides a rare glimpse of his extraordinary working practices.

Michael will be doing a Q&A after the film – spilling beans, shattering myths and letting a few cats out of the bag. Celebrating 20 years since Brass Eye’s transmission in 1997, this film and Q&A session are a must for fans of the series but will appeal to anyone with a curiosity about how great comedy is made.

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21/09: Cowards Bend The Knee with live score by Ela Orleans at CCA

Guy Maddin is one of the most distinctive and idiosyncratic directors currently working. The Canadian auteur has mined and subverted the imagery and style of late silent and early sound cinema in such films as The Forbidden Room and The Saddest Music In The World to disorientating, often hilarious effect. Cowards Bend The Knee is one his greatest, but least-known films. Originally conceived of and presented as a peephole show, the film’s ten chapters concoct an alternative cinematic biography for Maddin, torn between the influence of his hockey star father and his attraction to Meta, the beautiful girl from the local beauty salon / illegal abortion clinic.

This is Guy Maddin in purest form, the most concentrated and probably craziest film of his career. Never have hockey, hairdressing, homophobia and hand amputations collided to such dizzying effect, in perhaps the most authentically surrealist film of the 21st century. For Scalarama, Matchbox Cineclub have commissioned Ela Orleans to write a new score.

Ela Orleans has gained an international cult reputation for her haunted, noir-inflected torch songs. She recently came to more mainstream attention when her magnum opus Circles of Upper and Lower Hell was nominated for the SAY Awards. However, the Polish-born musician has a parallel career, scoring film soundtracks having studied composition under David Shire (The Conversation, The Taking of Pelham 123) in New York. She has composed new soundtracks for films as diverse as Frank Borzage’s Lucky Star, Carl Dreyer’s Vampyr and Jack Smith’s Flaming Creatures.

After the screening, journalist Brian Beadie will discuss Ela’s work and approaches to film scoring.

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September and beyond: Crime Wave DCP tour at various UK venues

One of the greatest and yet most perversely overlooked debuts in Canadian movie history, writer-director John Paizs’s Crime Wave announced the birth of a new genre in Canuck cinema: what cultural critic Geoff Pevere dubbed “prairie postmodernism.” Crime Wave’s recent restoration by TIFF debuted to a rapturous reception during Glasgow Film Festival 2017, programmed by us. Still unavailable on DVD, VOD or streaming, Paizs’ lost classic now comes to UK theatres for the first time. Dates are confirmed at DCA (Dundee), Castle Cinema (London), Hawick and HOME (Manchester).

Disney

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