A new cult film fes­ti­val is spot­light­ing for­got­ten cin­e­mat­ic gems

Cult film screen­ings at inde­pen­dent cin­e­mas are fair­ly com­mon, be it in the form of late night pre­sen­ta­tions of infa­mous gorefests or reg­u­lar show­ings of estab­lished anti-clas­sics like The Room with encour­aged audi­ence par­tic­i­pa­tion. Less com­mon, and a far more entic­ing prospect, is a fes­ti­val devot­ed to show­cas­ing a diverse range of film that have slipped through the cracks of movie his­to­ry – no pre­tend­ing com­mer­cial­ly suc­cess­ful John Hugh­es fare counts as ​‘cult’ here.

Tak­ing place at Glasgow’s CCA, and run by inde­pen­dent exhibitor Match­box Cineclub, Weird Week­end is Scotland’s first cult film fes­ti­val – with a twist. Exclud­ing a 45^th anniver­sary screen­ing of Ale­jan­dro Jodorowsky’s The Holy Moun­tain, as well as some con­tem­po­rary shorts and pre­mieres, the fes­ti­val is pri­mar­i­ly devot­ed to long-lost films or off­beat gems plucked from deep with­in the archives which have noth­ing in the way of home dis­tri­b­u­tion in the UK.

Among the pro­gramme high­lights are Sogo Ishii’s dark com­e­dy The Crazy Fam­i­ly, a styl­is­tic pre­cur­sor to the films of Takashi Miike and Sion Sono. This gen­uine cult odd­i­ty has only screened once before in the UK in the past 30 years, and the license was appar­ent­ly very dif­fi­cult to secure. The same can be said for new­ly restored psy­chic pow­er sci-fi The Astrologer. Else­where, Freaked, the direc­to­r­i­al debut of Bill & Ted star Alex Win­ter, will be accom­pa­nied by a post-screen­ing Skype Q&A, while actor Eva Kovacs will also speak via satel­lite link fol­low­ing a screen­ing of the Cana­di­an crime-com­e­dy Crime Wave.

Else­where Glaswe­gian direc­tor Bryan M Fer­gu­son will be on hand to dis­cuss a ret­ro­spec­tive of his short films, and there’s a 25^th anniver­sary screen­ing of stop motion ani­ma­tion The Secret Adven­tures of Tom Thumb. Final­ly, mock­u­men­tary Top Knot Detec­tive, about a hack film­mak­er mak­ing a cult samu­rai series thanks to his under­world con­nec­tions, receives its Scot­tish pre­mière fol­lowed by a Q&A with direc­tors Aaron McCann and Dominic Pearce.

“We make a point of pro­gram­ming films that are hard to see,” explains Match­box Cineclub pro­gram­mer Sean Welsh, ​“whether it’s because they’re out of cir­cu­la­tion or because they’re not par­tic­u­lar­ly well known or both. One, The Astrologer, you can only see when its screened – it’s not online and a DVD or Blu-ray release is huge­ly unlike­ly due to rights issues. The best exam­ple of what we do is maybe John Paizs’ Crime Wave, which is unjust­ly obscure and wild­ly under­ap­pre­ci­at­ed. It’s the per­fect Match­box Cineclub film in that it’s remark­able – and tru­ly a lost gem. It was a great dis­cov­ery for us to be able to bring the TIFF restora­tion to the UK, to tour it and now to bring it back for Weird Weekend.”

Despite Match­box Cineclub rep­re­sent­ing Crime Wave for UK the­atri­cal dis­tri­b­u­tion, Welsh isn’t keen on the gate­keep­er men­tal­i­ty often asso­ci­at­ed with cult cin­e­ma. ​“You don’t want these films to remain obscure, you want them to get extras-packed Blu-rays and to be seen by the widest pos­si­ble audi­ence. I can absolute­ly see the appeal of the ​‘secret hand­shake movie’, as The Astrologer has been described, but ulti­mate­ly that’s cliquey and exclu­sive and way too Com­ic Book Guy to real­ly be a good thing. The inter­net has made it hard­er to hide things, I think, but more than ever you need peo­ple to curate, for want of a bet­ter word. If some­one doesn’t fight to screen these films the­atri­cal­ly, they’ll stay lost.”

Welsh con­tin­ues, ​“We only show films we love or that are cry­ing out to be seen. Cult film is the best catch-all term for our pro­gram­ming, but it’s not nec­es­sar­i­ly the so-bad-they’re-good or self-con­scious­ly schlocky films that peo­ple some­times expect from that. I’m not sure how peo­ple retain enthu­si­asm for what they’re doing when they’re dri­ven exclu­sive­ly by snark. It would be remiss not to men­tion that all these films are direct­ed by men, and a lot of white men, too. That’s not ide­al and reflects a glar­ing deficit in my own film vocab­u­lary as much as any long­stand­ing issues with the cult canon and how it’s been generated.”

Should the inau­gur­al Weird Week­end pro­vide a suc­cess­ful plat­form for future edi­tions, and encour­age oth­er fes­ti­vals and pro­gram­mers to fol­low suit, per­haps glass ceil­ings regard­ing the cult canon can be shattered.

Weird Week­end takes place 2 – 3 June at Glasgow’s Cen­tre for Con­tem­po­rary Arts. For more info vis­it cca​-glas​gow​.com