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EntertainmentBlack Scottish movies the focus of this year's Glasgow Film Festival

Black Scottish movies the focus of this year’s Glasgow Film Festival

BLACK Scottish movies is the focus of this year’s Glasgow Film Festival.

The programme – called Welcome To – focuses on black Scottish films, filmmakers and history.

Running from March 4 -6, the films will screen online on Glasgow Film At Home, Glasgow Film’s online viewing platform.

Celebrated American poet Maya Angelou, pictured here at Stirling Castle, features in the documentary Angelou on Burns. Picture: Glasgow Film Festival

The six movies start with Adura Onashile’s 2020 short, Expensive S***, which began life as a stage play and won a Fringe First award in 2016.

It follows a Nigerian toilet attendant, desperate for survival, forced to manipulate unsuspecting women for men watching from behind a two-way mirror in a Glasgow club.

It is joined by Ngozi Onwurah’s 1995 feature Welcome II the Terrordome, a dystopian sci-fi epic and the first feature directed by a black British woman to receive a UK theatrical release.

Also showing is Maureen Blackwood’s 1992 documentary A Family Called Abrew.

The film sketches the achievements of the Abrews, a unique showbiz family whose imprint on British culture began in Scotland in the 19th century.

Meanwhile, Elly M. Taylor’s 1996 film Angelou on Burns follows the late poet Maya Angelou on an emotional, whirlwind journey into Ayrshire.

There she explores similarities between Burns’ life and her own.

The 1993 short The X in Scotland, directed by Lucy Enfield, demonstrates the importance of Malcolm X to African and Asian Scots.

And Sana Bilgrami’s 2006 documentary Tree Fellers tells the story of the 900 Belizean lumberjacks who in 1942 came to Britain to help fight fascism by felling trees in Scotland.

The programme includes a panel discussion and masterclass.

The session explores why there has never been a Black Scottish feature film.

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