Indyref gets arty

The Festival of the Common Weal, 6 July at 12-6pm at The Arches in Glasgow, celebrates left music, arts and politics and brings together various left and progressive organisations and campaigns to celebrate left politics, music and culture.

The Radical Independence Campaign will have a stall at the event and will be speaking in one of the many discussions taking place on the day. The festival includes a ‘Live Arch’ for music, comedy, spoken word and film screenings, a ‘Talk Arch’ for debates and Q&A, a ‘discussion arch’ to discuss the ideas of the Common Weal Project, and an ‘Arts Arch’ for producing live art at the event itself. There is also a family area and the event is family friendly.

Some cinema dates – on Sat 12 July, 11am-1pm, a special screening event at the Filmhouse cinema in Edinburgh will feature two hours of the best of cultural filmmakers and activists on the indyref campaign.
A range of filmmakers have been brought together into one energetic reel to show their different and inspired takes on the importance for everyone of owning the future in an independent Scotland.
The event will see Ken Loach’s Spirit of 45 examining the creation of the welfare state, the recent Scotland-wide mass participation feature We Are Northern Lights from Nick Higgins, and the hilarious music videos of National Collective’s Lady Alba. Also on the reel is the personalised documentary of Igor Slepov for Bridging the Gap and Scottish Documentary Institute, the crowd-sourced feature documentary Scotland Yet which gets to the beating heart of the current campaign, and films of young first-time voters and inspired activists from RIC Edinburgh.

And the Glasgow Film Theatre spotlights Scottish history, culture and identity in their ‘To See Oursels’ screenings and events. Filmmaker Eleanor Yule and Dr David Manderson launch their book The Glass Half Full: Moving Beyond Scottish Miserablism on Monday 14 July, with an illustrated talk which defines the genre from its cultural roots in literature to its flowering on screen.
A special big screen treat in the GFT’s programme is the 1974 TV film of John McGrath’s play The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil on Sunday 10 August at 5pm. The play surveys two centuries of Scottish history from the Battle of Culloden to the coming of North Sea oil, and it’s followed by a panel discussion examining the film’s portrayal of the exploitation of Scottish people.
John Byrne’s six-part TV follow-up to Tutti Frutti – Your Cheatin’ Heart (unseen since 1990) is also at the GFT. Made entirely of Scottish film archive, From Scotland with Love (Sunday 31 August) is a feature film by award-winning director Virginia Heath, with a transcendent score by Scottish musician and composer King Creosote. Followed by a Q&A with director Virginia Heath and King Creosote, with King Creosote also playing a couple of tunes live from the film’s soundtrack.

• See: cwfest.com • filmhousecinema.com • glasgowfilm.org