It’s been a big year for Andrea Gibb. As one of Scotland’s most acclaimed screenwriters, she helped create one of the biggest family films of 2016 with the Swallows and Amazons remake.
And now she is starring at a massive kids’ film festival which aims to get young people into movies and help inspire the next generation of film-makers.
The Scottish writer – best known for the Gerard Butler drama Dear Frankie and Afterlife, starring Kevin McKidd – adapted Arthur C Ransome’s children’s classic Swallows and Amazons earlier this year, with Kelly Macdonald, Andrew Scott and Rafe Spall in the tale of jolly kids encountering Russian spies in a 1930s-set
Lake District.
Andrea is introducing the movie at a special screening for next month’s Into Film Festival, one of 3000 events being held across the UK, with amazing screenings in Scotland, from Shetland, Orkney and the Western Isles, to the southernmost cinema in Scotland, on Whitburn Island. Highlights will include events in Scotland’s Secret Bunker, Edinburgh Zoo, and the Scottish Parliament, with showings also accompanied by workshops and online educational resources.
Andrea is delighted to be involved in the kids’ film festival.
She said: “I hope it will encourage them to become regular film goers, to appreciate how wonderful and important cinema can be and even inspire them to consider making their own films – either as director, writer, producer or in any of the other craft roles that go into telling a story on screen.
“The variety and scope of the programme on offer is truly fantastic. It’s incredibly heartening to see a festival declare the importance and validity of cinema to and for young people.
“By showing these films free of charge in venues right across Scotland, the festival is giving a large number of young people the opportunity to see films they might not have had a chance to see before.
“It’s also an excellent way of breaking down barriers between teachers and pupils by showing that education does not have to be desk-based.
“It’s an inclusive approach to learning that’s designed to open young minds by involving them in cultural debate.”
Andrea, who credits The Piano, My Life As A Dog and Kes as the films that made her want to get into screen-writing, is one of Scotland’s busiest writers, and is also currently working on a number of adaptations and original projects for television including drama More Than This for BBC Scotland, GI Brides for World Productions and the adaptation of Emma Healey’s award-winning novel Elizabeth is Missing for STV.
She enjoyed a massive hit with Swallows and Amazons, and said she was excited by the challenge of writing an “Into the Wild for kids”.
Andrea said: “It’s an evocation of childhood and a story about children in various stages in their development. I was fascinated by the way the child looks at the world and how the child sees the world, and how the child relates to the adult world. It’s very universal. It cuts across class.
“I’m always true to the essence of what the author originally intended and that is really the essence. It’s looking at loyalty, betrayal, duty, responsibility and injustice.”
“We made Arthur Ransome’s actual real-life story our subplot, if you like, or our B-story.
“There is actual, real-life danger. So you have the imaginative danger that the kids are living in with their war against the Amazons…and then there’s the real danger that exists around and about them, and the two stories converge and join up in, I hope, quite an organic way.
“When we were adapting it, we had to really consider things like jeopardy and the contemporary audience and what we were going to do to the story to make the narrative flow and to keep the contemporary kids with us.”
Andrea and director Phillipa Lowthorpe quickly formed a strong relationship and the screenwriter was delighted with the casting.
Andrea said: “Phillipa came in and basically empowered me, I would say, which, as a writer, you’re desperate for a director to do that. You don’t want a director to come in and sit on you and squash your ideas. You want a director to come in and open you up and make you feel confident and give you encouragement and inspiration and basically be your collaborator.”
She added: “I hope it resonates with a contemporary audience in that kind of classical film way. In harking back to films like Whistle Down the Wind, The Railway Children, or My Life as a Dog; films about childhood that have stood the test of time. Because in actual fact, it cuts across, it speaks to the contemporary in us, because we were all children once and we are all children still.”
Her childlike approach is exactly why the Scots filmmaker has backed Into Film.
The Festival launches in Scotland on November 9 with a Screening of the Roald Dahl adaptation Fantastic Mr Fox at the Cameo Cinema in Edinburgh, in celebration of the centenary of the birth of the author. There will also be workshops for young people to explore the Scots language using Sleekit Mr Tod, a translation of the book in
the Scots language.
The annual celebration of film and education, made possible by funding from Cinema First and support from the BFI through Lottery funding, UK cinema industry partners, and the National Schools Partnership, will see 450,000 young people aged 5-19 from all backgrounds and corners of the UK learn about film, interact with filmmakers and explore filmmaking.
Andrea said: “At its best film can entertain, enthral, engage, enrage, educate and inspire. It’s an amazing resource for teachers.
“I didn’t get any film education until I went to university and took a film option as part of my drama degree. I was shown films I’d never heard of, let alone seen, and my love of cinema started then.
“I’ve never forgotten being shown an early Ken Loach film called Family Life about one young woman’s mental health. That film had a huge impact on me.”
All events and screenings at the The Into Film Festival 2016 are free of charge. For information and to book events, visit www.intofilm.org/festival.
Andrea Gibb will attend a screening of Swallows and Amazons and host a Q&A at Edinburgh Filmhouse November 15 at 10am.
For more things to do in Scotland, click here.