The South West Picture Show line-up!

Dumfries Film Festival has a new name! 'The South West Picture Show' is a film festival for the whole region taking inspiration from Dumfries & Galloway’s thriving cinema culture, from village hall to independent cinemas and beyond.

It’s a festival of community and collaboration, celebrating the act of cinema-going with lots of live events and opportunities to eat, drink and be merry.

The theme of the South West Picture Show this year is Cinema and Music and it’s a delirious mix. We’ve got DIY punk spirit, psychedelia, folk legends, silent film scores and obsessive music fans, and that’s just for starters.

The festival takes place over 12 different venues from Langholm to Stranraer, a couple of events to whet your appetite:


The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars
RBC Film Theatre, Dumfries, Friday 3 May, 7pm
Glam up if you dare! We’ll be giving out spot prizes to anyone to dress up as Bowie – any era, so who will it be? Ziggy? The Thin White Duke? Berlin-era Bowie? Tin Machine? For those not inclined to dress up – bring in your Bowie vinyl and we’ll spin a few before the film, the obscurer the better (The Laughing Gnome, anyone?) The film is a corker too – D.A Pennebaker’s document of the of the final ever Ziggy Stardust gig.


Downhill
The RBC Film Theatre, Dumfries, Tue 7 May (7pm)
A fantastic opportunity to see a newly restored silent film by director Alfred Hitchcock, ‘Downhill’ is a dark melodrama about the fall from grace of a public schoolboy (played by Ivor Novello) who is expelled for getting a girl pregnant and subsequently disowned by his father. We are delighted to welcome silent film pianist John Sweeney to play a live score.

The Stove Presents: Art Shorts

Film-makers included are Prof. Steven Bann, John Wallace, Florencia Chafuen-Rigg and Chris Dooks.

A feast of artists' films, and other oddities from Dumfries & Galloway and beyond. Highlights include the 5 commissioned pieces from The Stove's own In:Between conference last summer; Prof Stephen Bann's film about Little Sparta; and Ayr artist and film-maker Chris Dooks' sound+vision piece about decaying harmoniums in Eskdalemuir.

Vinyl

Sara Sugarman | GB | 2012 | 85mins | Cert. 15

Phil Daniels and Keith Allen play a couple of ageing punk rockers in this raucous film which tells of how The Alarm's Mike Peters hoaxed the music world with a lip-synching "fake" band. It's an expose of a music industry obsessed with youth, but also a portrait of a man obsessed with music and doing what he can to get it heard.

Excited? Head across to the webpage here for details, dates and locations, or hit 'em on facebook and twitter to keep up to date