FILM lovers are invited to a long weekend of free screenings to celebrate the 80th birthday of the first and best publicly attended art-house cinema in Scotland.
Glasgow Film Theatre is offering tickets to see a film each day from May 9 until May 12, free of charge and open to all.
The birthday begins with a preview of high school comedy Booksmart, with subsequent days showing restorations of David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive and The Wizard Of Oz using GFT’s newly installed laser projectors. The Technicolor Judy Garland classic hit cinemas across the world in 1939, the same year as Cosmo – then only the second purpose-built art-house cinema in Britain – first opened its doors on Glasgow’s Rose Street.
On Sunday’s final day of celebrations, a short drinks reception will be followed by Giuseppe Tornatore’s 1988 Oscar-winner Cinema Paradiso. Despite the mass conversion to digital projection systems, GFT is one of the few cinemas in Scotland who still project regularly from 35mm and 70mm film, allowing the nostalgic classic – largely told through a film director’s flashback to his youth as a boy-projectionist – to be shown in its original.
The cinema was renamed Glasgow Film Theatre (GFT) in 1974 and renovated in 2016 to improve accessibility to its three screens which screen 700 different titles a year from more than 60 countries, including many non-mainstream and classic titles not screened at any other cinema in Glasgow.
A registered charity, GFT was a pioneer of autism-friendly and audio-described screenings and is home to Glasgow Film Festival, Glasgow Short Film Festival and Glasgow Youth Film Festival, the first film festival in Europe curated by 15 to 19-year-olds.
Film fans can reserve a maximum of two free tickets for each screening with the exception of The Wizard of Oz, which is limited to four per person.
May 9 to 12, Glasgow Film Theatre, various times, free. Tel: 0141 332 6535. glasgowfilm.org/80years
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