50 Years Legal | 2017 |Simon Napier-Bell | 1 hr 30 mins | 15
In July Dumfries is celebrating Pride! Organised by the local LGBTQ+ community, Dumfries Pride will run from 8thJuly to 12th August, and in support of the upcoming programme of events and activities Reel to Real is hosting a themed film screening.
About the Film
From music mogul to film director, Simon Napier-Bell (previously manager of The Yardbirds, T Rex, WHAM! and George Michael) has been pivotal to so much of popular culture over the past 50 years.
Simon has gathered together some of our nations much loved personalities including Sir Ian McKellen, Sir Elton John, Matt Lucas, Stephen K. Amos, Derek Jacobi and Stephen Fry, to make 50 YEARS LEGAL; a documentary of historical and personal accounts that relate to key landmarks in the landscape of LGBT culture.
No one is born prejudiced, they learn it and they can unlearn it very quickly
Sir Ian McKellen
Watch the film trailer below…
About Reel to Real Cinema
Reel to Real Cinema is a monthly film space in the Stove Cafe, featuring an eclectic mixture of conversational films – from artist made shorts to feature length documentaries, locally made to international cinema. A space for discussion and thought-provoking films, you are welcome to join us after the film for a short discussion about the themes from this month’s selection.
More information about Reel to Real is available here.
The Stove Cafe will be open from 5:30pm – 7:00pm with a special pre-film dinner option alongside hot drinks and cakes.
Access Information: Level Access in rear of building through adjacent close to left-hand side of the Cafe (facing the front of the building). To ensure your experience with us is as best as it can be, please do let us know if you have any specific access requirements and we’d be happy to help. Please email Kevin or Sal on: [email protected] or phone 01387 252435 and speak with one of our team. We are able to provide walk-throughs of the building before attending our events as well as assign seating before your arrival.
Over the course of the past few years, documentary filmmakers Patrick Rooney and Ross Scott have been following the story of Dumfries’ fountain restoration, speaking with local community members and those involved in the engagement programme about the project, from the initial consultation through to the unveiling. Join us for the world premiere of the film, which includes behind the scenes footage of the restoration process! Sharing the journey of the fountain, and the complex work involved in its restoration, this will be the culminating event of the fountain launch activities.
There will be the opportunity after the screening to hear from some of the team involved in the project, and to join us after the screening for a celebratory drink.
Tickets for this event are free but limited so please book your space.
About the Filmmakers
Ross Scott is a freelance filmmaker and photographer, with industry experience over seven years with award-winning production company Plum Films, Ross shoots and edits documentaries, music videos, corporate film, commercials, educational content, and dramatic cinema. Learn more about Ross here.
PatrickRooney is an award-winning freelance director and filmmaker, working under thetitle of DEAR FRIEND Films. He produces a variety of high quality, professionalvideo and film content: from feature films, short films and documentaries topromotional videos, showreels and other online content. Learn more about Patrick here.
FINITE: The Climate of Change | 2022 | dir: Rich Fellgate | 90 mins
About the Film
FINITE: The Climate of Change is an insider’s view of the world of direct action; a raw, authentic and emotional insight into the David and Goliath battle between frontline communities, activists and fossil fuel corporations.
In Germany, concerned citizens step forward to save an ancient forest from one of Europe’s largest coal mines. They form an unlikely alliance with a frustrated community in rural England who are forced into action to protect their homes from a new opencast coal mine.
Watch the trailer here:
About Reel to Real Cinema
Reel to Real Cinema is a monthly film space in the Stove Cafe, featuring an eclectic mixture of conversational films – from artist made shorts to feature length documentaries, locally made to international cinema. A space for discussion and thought-provoking films, you are welcome to join us after the film for a short discussion about the themes from this month’s selection.
The Stove Cafe will be open from 5.:30pm – 7:00pm with a special pre-film dinner option alongside hot drinks and cakes.
Access Information:Level Access in rear of building through adjacent close to left-hand side of the Cafe (facing the front of the building). To ensure your experience with us is as best as it can be, please do let us know if you have any specific access requirements and we’d be happy to help. Please email Kevin or Sal on: [email protected] or phone 01387 252435 and speak with one of our team. We are able to provide walk-throughs of the building before attending our events as well as assign seating before your arrival.
Patience (After Sebald) | 2012 | Dir: Grant Gee | English | 90 mins
For our May edition of Reel to Real, we are delving into the world of literature and landscape, with a screening of film essay, Patience After Sebald. The film is inspired by author W.G. Sebald’s 1995 book The Rings of Saturn, a novel that begins as a record of the authors journey on foot through coastal East Anglia, becoming an evocation of people and cultures past and present.
About the Film
Award-winning director Grant Gee (Joy Division) ventures to East Anglia to provide an impression of the influential German writer W.G. Sebald (1944-2001). A film about landscape, art, history, life and loss, featuring contributions from Tacita Dean, Iain Sinclair and other major artists. Patience After Sebald is the first in a trilogy of feature-documentaries about landscape and literature. Featuring a soundtrack by James Leyland Kirby’s acoustic music project, The Caretaker, the film is described as a haunting, hypnotic work and journey.
Trailer
About Reel to Real Cinema
Reel to Real Cinema is a monthly film space in the Stove Cafe, featuring an eclectic mixture of conversational films – from artist made shorts to feature length documentaries, locally made to international cinema. A space for discussion and thought-provoking films, you are welcome to join us after the film for a short discussion about the themes from this month’s selection.
The Stove cafe will be open from 5.30-7pm with a special pre-film dinner option alongside hot drinks and cakes.
Level Access in rear of building through adjacent close to left-hand side of the Cafe (facing the front of the building). To ensure your experience with us is as best as it can be, please do let us know if you have any specific access requirements and we’d be happy to help. Please email Kevin or Sal on: [email protected] or phone 01387 252435 and speak with one of our team. We are able to provide walk-throughs of the building before attending our events as well as assign seating before your arrival.
This month Reel to Real brings you a selection of short films exploring the local, through landscapes and environments close to Dumfries from the eyes of artist-filmmakers. The selection of films will be presented in collaboration with the filmmakers behind each project, with opportunity to hear from them about the works after the screening.
Please note this month’s film screening takes place on Thursday, and not the normal Friday slot.
The Stove café will be open from 5.30pm serving pre-film dinner, traybakes and drinks.
About the Films
HAAF
12 minutes / hand developed 16mm / 2020
Haaf netting is a traditional method of fishing for salmon and sea trout practiced on both sides of the solway firth. The film captures a few of the last remaining Haaf netters as they continue a millennial old tradition.
The film was made in collaboration with Heather Andrews – a Glasgow based sound designer and field recordist
Haaf trailer:
In Erms of Clay
7 mins / 16mm / 2021
A Southern Scots gothic tale, in Erms of Clay explores a time when to be neurodivergent was considered to be disturbed. The story is set just prior to the 2001 Foot and Mouth outbreak in Dumfries and Galloway. It is seen through the eye of a teenage girl, Fraoch, whose journey through a diagnosis of epilepsy takes place within the walls of an adolescent unit in the South of Scotland.
THREAVE
Trees 10’50”
Water 11’13”
Grasslands 8’45”
Digital video with audio / dir. John Wallace / 2023
A sneak preview of a series of three films exploring different aspects of the ecosystems and environment of the National Trust for Scotland’s Threave Nature Reserve. Commissioned by NTS and Galloway Glens Landscape Partnership, the films coincide with a period of rapid change on the Reserve as the Trust embarks on a 100 Year Landscape Restoration Project. Its aims are to enrich the biodiversity of the land at Kelton Mains, a former mixed-use farm and shooting estate, in order to create a naturally regenerating area for nature with enhanced, sustainable access for visitors and to increase ecosystem resilience in the face of climate change.
The films which are designed for use in education, are the result of an extended residency at the site for environmental video artist and filmmaker John Wallace.
About the Filmmakers
John Wallace
John Wallace is an environmental video artist and filmmaker based in Annandale, Dumfries and Galloway. John has recently undertaken a yearlong artist residency, Artful Migration at Threave Castle Estate focussed on the presence of breeding Ospreys and those involved in their conservation and resulted in the multi-screen audio-visual installation Scene: Here.
Heather Andrews
Heather Andrews is a sound designer & dubbing mixer based in Glasgow. Her body of work spans many different disciplines, including Film, Installation, Television, Radio & Theatre.
Julia Parks
Julia Parks is based in West Cumbria and is an artist filmmaker exploring the different relationships between landscapes, plants, people and industry. She works with experimental documentary forms often using 16mm film, archival footage, poetry and song.
About Reel to Real
Reel to Real Cinema is a monthly film space in the Stove Café on Dumfries High Street, featuring an eclectic mixture of conversational films – from artist made shorts to feature length documentaries, locally made to international cinema. A space for discussion and thought-provoking films, you are welcome to join us after the film for a short discussion about the themes from this month’s selection.
Level Access in rear of building through adjacent close to left-hand side of the Cafe (facing the front of the building). To ensure your experience with us is as best as it can be, please do let us know if you have any specific access requirements and we’d be happy to help. Please email Kevin or Sal on: [email protected] or phone 01387 252435 and speak with one of our team. We are able to provide walk-throughs of the building before attending our events as well as assign seating before your arrival.
Queen of Glory, dir. by Nana Mensah (Bohemia Media, 2021)
This month, Reel to Real Cinema returned with Queen of Glory (dir. By Nana Mensah), in recognition of International Women’s Day. This feature-length film; written, directed, and starring Mensah, follows Sarah Obeng, a cancer-curing PhD student and brilliant daughter of Ghanian immigrants who is trying to navigate life after her mother’s sudden death. Mensah manages to explore themes of maternal/paternal relationships, heritage, grief and acceptance all in a neat 79 minutes – no mean feat for her directorial debut. Being an F-Rated film, (meaning it’s created by and significantly features women), Queen of Glory is perfect viewing for this year’s IWD.
Sarah Obeng is preparing to move to Ohio with her already-married lover (Adam Leon), when she receives a phone call that her mother has died following an aneurysm. Sarah is the sole inheritor of her mother’s estate, and the new owner of her Christian bookstore ‘King of Glory’ in the Pelham Parkway section of the Bronx.
Sarah is left to organise both a wake and a Ghanian funeral, decide the fate of the bookstore, wait on her dad (Oberon K.A. Adjepong) who is visiting from Ghana and placate her aunties who despite her scientific success keep telling her to lose weight and have some babies. During her endless tasks Sarah develops friendships with the lone bookstore employee, tattoo clad ex-convict and talented baker Pitt (Meeko Gattuso), and the multi-generational Russian-American family who live next door.
The film opens with close-ups of vibrant, rich textiles accompanied by the sound of West-African drums. Archive footage from Ghana is interspersed throughout the film, representing Sarah’s ongoing conversation with her heritage and her journey to celebrating it. The intermittent archive videos show both an insight to Ghanian culture and the repetitive cycle of the human experience as the videos echo what is happening in Sarah’s life.
Rich with these references to heritage and a powerful overarching conversation with grief, Queen of Glory also finds itself punctuated with pockets of humour. Memorable moments of laughter were the effects of Pitt’s pot-brownies, Sarah answering the door to a flat-viewer in a risqué outfit intended for her boyfriend, and the chaos of her neighbour going in to labour as three generations of people rush to find the blasted car keys.
At the second funeral for Sarah’s mother, we revisit the same drumming sequence which opens the film. From this we gain an appreciation of Sarah’s journey and the many women (and men!) who have influenced it. Sarah adorns her natural hair and a vibrant funeral dress, marking the inevitable end to her journey as she dances and finally weeps over the loss of her mother.
Voices of aunties, neighbours, customers and mothers guide Mensah’s character through this story with a feeling of familiarity and genuine warmth. Like the bright West-African fabrics shown in the title sequence of the film, Queen of Glory feels like it is carefully woven together by the voices of women.
Queen of Glory is currently available to watch via Amazon Prime and can be rented/bought online from various streaming services.
Erin is our Marketing Assistant at The Stove but is no stranger to watching and talking about film. Erin graduated with an English and Film Studies degree in 2022, and is delighted to share her thoughts on the films shown at our monthly Reel to Real screenings.
You can find out more about Reel to Real Cinema here.
