Airport samba stunt celebrates funding for Glasgow Film Festival

More than 20 samba musicians and dancers welcomed passengers arriving at Glasgow Airport to celebrate the arrival of the ninth annual Glasgow Film Festival, which this year includes a focus on Brazilian cinema.

The event also marked the fact that the airport’s FlightPath Fund has awarded £7,500 to the organisers of the Festival, which will pay for a series of outreach events in Clydebank.

The Glasgow Film Festival Doon the Clyde project will take the GFF into areas that lie outside the city boundary, and introduce new audiences to the Festival through a series of screenings and workshops for school pupils, students and over 50s.

Glasgow’s own Samba Ya Bamba brought energy, colour and atmosphere to the airport’s domestic arrivals area with a ‘flash mob’ type stunt and quickly drew a large crowd of passengers and airport staff. A video of the performance is available to watch online at http://bit.ly/11TerZC

The group blends Brazilian beats with other musical styles such as ska, hip-hop, funk and reggae and its members have been honing their skills in front of audiences in Scotland and Europe for more than 15 years now.

Glasgow Film Festival Doon the Clyde – which it is hoped will become an annual event – will reach more than 700 people through three school events, three Silver Screenings aimed at over 50s, and an event for budding filmmakers at Clydebank College.

While Glasgow Film already runs a successful school programme at Glasgow Film Theatre (GFT), transport costs are often prohibitive and the Glasgow Airport funding will allow them to take the festival to Clydebank instead.

The festival has already run a series of screenings at Clydebank’s Empire theatre for local school groups. German film Wickie and the Treasure of the Gods is a gentle, witty introduction to the history of the Vikings.

Biancanieves, which played to rapt audiences of secondary school pupils, is a clever Spanish retelling of the story of Snow White, in which the heroine goes off to live with a group of bullfighting dwarves.

The Silver Screening events, also at the Empire, target an intergenerational audience at an affordable price. The Happy Lands, a new Scottish film telling the stories of mining communities in Fife, plays on Monday 18 February at 11am; glossy new Brazilian drama Prime Time Soap will be shown the same day at 11:15am, and the James Cagney classic Love Me Or Leave Me on Wednesday 20 February at 11am.

At Clydebank College, Glasgow Youth Film Festival ran a workshop called Hang ‘Em High with Scottish short film director Michael Callaghan targeted at teenagers and young people who want to make their own short films but don’t know where to start.

Allison Gardner, Co-Director of the Glasgow Film Festival, said: “We are extremely grateful to Glasgow Airport for making these events in Clydebank possible. Part of our mission is making great cinema accessible to the widest audience possible, and with Glasgow Film Festival Doon the Clyde, we hope to reach an even broader range of people and spread our love of the cinema-going experience even further across the region.

“We selected particularly exciting European films for our schools events, and the response from the young people was amazing. We also hope that our Clydebank College event will encourage the students to pursue careers in film.

“Our Silver Screenings offer up a really diverse range of experiences at a great price: some good old fashioned James Cagney nostalgia, a genuinely moving look at the struggle of ordinary working people in Scotland in The Happy Lands, and a slab of gorgeous, glossy escapism from Brazil in Prime Time Soap.”

Amanda McMillan, managing director of Glasgow Airport, said: “Glasgow Film Festival is one of the highlights of the year and the organisers never fail to come up with an interesting programme. Their Samba performance in the terminal was amazing and brightened up an otherwise quiet February evening for our passengers and staff!

“The festival is the type of event that helps to make Glasgow such a great city, both for those who live here and those visiting, and we are therefore delighted to support these new events in Clydebank through the FlightPath Fund.”

For more infor please visit www.glasgowfilm.org/festival

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Founder of Paisley.org.uk in 1998 and constantly strives to change peoples attitudes to the town, Brian is a self described Paisley Digital Champion who promotes Paisley via any means necessary. You can also follow me on X