Glasgow Film Festival 2012 programme announced

We look at some of the highlights, including Your Sister's Sister, The Muppets and Tom Twyker's 3

The Muppets

The programme for the Glasgow Film Festival 2012 was launched today, providing details of the films and events taking place in Cinema City during February. The main branch of the Festival takes place from Thu 16–Sun 26 Feb, and starts off with a gala screening of Your Sister’s Sister, starring Emily Blunt and Mark Duplass and directed by Humpday’s Lynn Shelton. Running in the weeks leading up to the GFF are the Glasgow Youth Film Festival (Sun 5–Wed 15 Feb) and Glasgow Short Film Festival (Thu 9–Sun 12 Feb).

Curated entirely by Glasgow-based teenagers, the Glasgow Youth Film Festival launches with a screening of the brand new Muppets movie on Sun 5 Feb. The big budget puppet blockbuster dovetails neatly with the GYFF’s final film, Sesame Street-inspired documentary Being Elmo. In between, screenings of offbeat classics such as Napoleon Dynamite and Harold and Maude will take place alongside new, challenging works such as Play (a provocative Scandinavian drama exploring racial tension among teenage boys) and David (a Brooklyn-set story of accidental friendship between a Muslim boy and students at a nearby Jewish school).

The highlight of the Glasgow Short Film Festival programme is Slacker 2011, a multi-director reimagining of Richard Linklater’s 1991 indie masterpiece. Elsewhere, the GSFF takes on a musical tone, with a performance by Glasgow-based experimental musician Hanna Tuulikki and a retrospective of music videos by The Jesus and Mary Chain bassist Douglas Hart.

Incorporated into the main body of the GFF are the Glasgow Music and Film Fest (featuring a performance and documentary from Silver Apples and the return of underwater sound experience Wet Sounds) and the 12th annual FrightFest (with UK premieres of WWII zombie flick War of the Dead and brooding Australian slow-burner Crawl). Kick-Ass creator Mark Millar returns to curate the Kapow! comic books strand, with screenings of Flash Gordon, The Crow and home-grown superhero flick Electric Man, as well as events featuring graphic novelists and artists such as Bryan Hitch (Dr Who, The Ultimates), Kate Brown (Fish + Chocolate) and Charlie Adlard (The Walking Dead). Song and dance man Gene Kelly is the subject of this year’s retrospective (featuring a Brigadoon-inspired Gene Kelly Ceilidh), while various aspects of German culture have inspired two strands: Welcome to Germany, focusing on contemporary German cinema (such as Tom Twyker’s 3), and Weimarvellous, exploring the cabaret culture of the 1920s and 30s Weimar Republic. Other strands such as Crossing the Line and The Edge of the World explore the themes of experimental filmmaking and isolated cultures respectively.

Altogether, the GFF features 239 films and events. Keep an eye on list.co.uk for further coverage, including interviews, round-ups, listings and a day-by-day guide to checking out the best films.