Car Park Contemporary Cinema In Inverness

19th September 2011

Contemporary art event transforms multi-storey car park into sublime cinema experience.

A sublime experience is on offer to Highland filmgoers next week when a multi-storey car park in Inverness will be transformed into a cinema with a difference on 22 - 24 September. On each of the three evenings, cinema buffs will view open air screenings of artists' films on the rooftop of Old Town Rose Street car park.

Commissioned by The Highland Council's Inverness (IOTA) Old Town Art project, the contemporary arts event, titled "Sublime", is the first of a series of arts events that have received £37,000 supported by Creative Scotland.

A whole range of moving image works will be presented in Sublime from contemporary art films, to classic cinema, new documentaries, and Gaelic shorts followed with live music by Brian Ó hEadhra and Fiona Mackenzie.

Welcoming the IOTA initiative Provost Jimmy Gray, Chairman of The Highland Council's Inverness City Committee said: "Old Town Rose Street Multi Storey Car Park is very popular with locals and visitors to Inverness and our TEC Services staff work very hard to improve and maintain the high standards of this excellent facility.

"I hope that this inspired collaboration between IOTA and the council's car parking team will bring some new people into the facility for the first time to see how excellent it is and also enable existing users to experience something different in the building."

Sublime Curator Lorraine Wilson's aim is to bring different film audiences together, merging gallery and cinema audiences, she said: "I'm interested in what happens when you encourage audiences to cross over and merge - visual art with music, commercial film with artistic works, art-going audiences with non attendees. Having a public space like the car park as a location for different types of films lets us bring all these different audiences together for one really unusual experience."

The programme profiles artists from the Highlands who have forged successful careers alongside high quality international artists like Francis Alÿs and Nicholas Provost.

Films from artists with Highland connections include:

"Trail of Tears" - the world premiere of Moray-based artist Graeme Roger and collaborator Kevin Reid's (Ganghut) new work, filmed in and around the Highlands;
"October" by Katy Dove, originally from the Black Isle she has just completed a prestigious six month Creative Scotland artist residency in New York;
"There is a Place" by Highland-based Simon Fildes and Katrina McPherson which won the Jury Prize Best Short at the 2011 San Francisco Dance Film Festival; and
"Balnakiel" by Shona Illingworth, who works internationally, but was brought up near Durness, whose film was produced by Film and Video Umbrella, London.
Works by international artists include:

"When Faith Moves Mountains" by Mexico-based globally acclaimed Francis Alÿs;
"Plot Point" by Dutch filmmaker Nicholas Provost;
"Low Growl" by Icelandic artist Baldvin Ringsted; and
"Smuggling Lemons" by Palestinian artist Jumana Emil Abboud.
Other highlights include:

"Life in a Day" - the first Inverness screening of the new film from "Last King of Scotland" and "Touching the Void" director Kevin MacDonald. In collaboration with producer Ridley Scott, MacDonald and Scott edited over 80,000 hours of footage taken by people from all over the world on July 24th 2010, including people living in Inverness;

a screening of "Eadar Chluich/ Interludes" - a series of short wordless films from some of Scotland's best emerging directors, each inspired by a Gaelic song; and

local rock musician Toby Michaels will also perform, after a screening of Icelandic artist Baldvin Ringsted's homage to heavy metal "Low Growl".

"The Philadelphia Story" - the classic 1940 wedding comedy featuring James Stewart, Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn - which will be screened in a ground floor room of the Old Town car park which used to be a Registry Office.

All events are free on a first come first served basis. Details of the Sublime events programme at Old Town Rose Street Car Park, Inverness, IV1 1NQ are on IOTA's website at www.invernessoldtownart.co.uk