Film Festival's Trailblazers Party Provides a Literary Diversion

Last night, once again, completely against my will (a man did have a
gun to my head after all), I had to throw down the pad of paper and
pen, tear up my festival tickets to exquisite, groundbreaking,
life-changing works of art and trundle off to another party. It's a
tough life as a hack sometimes. And just as well, for it seemed that
everyone else had had the same idea.

Yesterday, one of the
industry events was an all day series of talks, workshops and
screenings to launch this year's up-and-coming hot talents (pictured),
collectively known as the Trailblazers. Selected from the seven
Skillset Screen Academies (of which Napier University in Edinburgh is
one), the Trailblazers are a series of shorts culled from the best
graduation and post-graduation work from these institutions. So I
dutifully attended the Trailblazers party after having been at none of
their events throughout the day or their screening.

I arrived with a few friends and sat in the downstairs of the Hudson
Bar where two or three other colleagues were sitting in this neon lit
David Lynch-esqe dungeon where pretty young things flitted to and fro
providing free canapes and free drinks. There was a DJ trying his best
to make this a school disco. The place was deserted and we scratched
our heads for a while before I explored the building further and
discovered everyone was upstairs in the public bar. We moved our yet to
be inebriated rear ends upstairs. Two hours later both rooms were
completely rammed, the side alley filled with smokers and the P's &
Q's gradually being demolished by endless free beer.

I met many
industry folk of name and repute, but if there was one highlight of the
night it was unwittingly exchanging a few words at the bar with what
turned out to be a literary giant in the shape of Alasdair Gray. Winner
of the Whitbread prize he is regarded as one of, if not the greatest
living novelist in Scotland.

Lanark has been compared to James Joyce Ulysses and
was called "one of the landmarks of 20th-century fiction" by the
Guardian who awarded him their Fiction Prize. Other works include 1982, Janine and Poor Things.
He is also an accomplished artist who illustrates his own work. So I
was rather chuffed to have rubbed shoulders with a living legend and
have made a mental note to read more books. Maybe I should ditch this
whole going to movies thing and excercise my brain and not my eyes so
often. In his mid 70's he was the oldest celeb in the room looking like
a cross between Albert Einstein and Christopher Lloyd in Back to the Future mode.

Let the Right One In

One other note to mention from this party is the buzz around the film Let the Right One In (pictured),
Tomas Alfredsson's teenage, angsty, semi-vampire flick which a couple of
journalists at the party raved about and reported that the usually
world-weary press at their industry screening had broken into
spontaneous applause at the end so I'm going to make a point of seeing
it and reporting back.