GLASGOW Film Festival (GFF) will this year feature Welcome To, a programme of films and events, with a focus on black Scottish films, filmmakers and history, from March 4 to 6.
Programmed by Tomiwa Folorunso and Natasha Ruwona, the programme focuses on and attempts to collate some of the many contributions made by black people in Scotland, as well as bringing to the forefront the presences of those who have and do walk the land.
Welcome To will screen six films, a mix of shorts and feature-lengths, divided into two main focuses. The first, Welcome To: A Focus On Black Women Filmmakers, will showcase Adura Onashile’s 2020 short, Expensive Shit, which 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.
In addition to the public film programme, the GFF Industry programme will include a panel discussion and masterclass. Welcome To The Conversation: Where Are All The Black Scottish Feature Films asks why there has never been a black Scottish feature film, with host Folorunso and panellists including Lorna King and Moyo Akande.
Ruwona and Folorunso, Welcome To programmers, said: “Coming into this role, we wanted to celebrate the richness of black Scottish communities and challenge the belief that they are not [or] have not been present.”
To support the continued development of black Scottish film networks, the GFF have a number of passes available free of charge for black filmmakers throughout the UK who have not previously attended GFF.
For more information and tickets go to athome.glasgowfilm.org
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