Choose Irvine Welsh Opens documentary festival

A film about the life of Trainspotting author Irvine Welsh will open a Scottish documentary festival this week.

Choose Irvine Welsh is one of 30 films to be screened during the seventh annual Central Scotland Documentary Festival, which opens on Thursday.

The feature length documentary, which has had its world premiere at the Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF) this summer, features contributions from famous faces like Iggy Pop, Martin Compston, Bobby Gillespie, Alan McGhee, Gail Porter and filmmakers Andrew Macdonald and Danny Boyle.

The screening, at the Macrobert Arts Centre, will be followed by an in-person Q&A with director Ian Jefferies.

Over five days, the festival will play host to one world premiere, three European premieres, four UK premieres and ten Scottish premieres.

It will also mark the 125th anniversary of the Scots “father of documentary” John Grierson, with a double bill of classics Night Mail, the 1936 film he narrated about the overnight postal express, and Drifters, his 1929 study of the lives of North Sea herring fishermen.

The closing documentary on 6 November will be Tish, Paul Sng’s powerful film celebrating the work of social documentary photographer and trailblazer Tish Murtha and fight for working-class communities in the 1970s and 80s North East England.

Grahame Reid, the festival’s head curator, said: “Since launching the festival in 2017, we have showcased more than 130 documentaries on all matter of topics, yet the aim of the festival has never changed and that is to start conversation.”