THERE are several ways of watching Con-Air, director Simon West's excitable but highly watchable 1997 drama about Nicolas Cage and other airborne convicts. You can dig out your DVD copy at home. You can stream it, or you can look for it on your TV listings. Alternatively, you can turn up at the Glasgow Film Theatre on the evening of February 18, take your pre-booked seat on a bus, don a prison boiler suit and be manacled to another film fan, and be ferried to a secret location, where, monitored by prison guards, you can explore your "top secret surroundings". And then, and only then, you can settle down to watch the mid-air scenery being chewed by Cage, John Malkovich, Ving Rhames and Steve Buscemi.

It's part of the innovative Special Events strand at the 2016 Glasgow Film Festival, which also includes special (and long sold-out) screenings at the Kelvingrove art galleries and museum of two Hollywood classics, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Silence of the Lambs, both of which take place on the opening Saturday, February 20.

The David Bowie-starring The Man Who Fell to Earth is being screened at Glasgow Science Centre's Planetarium. Thelma & Louise will go on show at the Grand Ole Opry on the Govan Road, preceded by a line-dancing session; and Sidney Lumet's influential 1976 media satire, Network, will be shown, free of charge, to 70 people in a BBC Scotland viewing room at Pacific Quay. This, of course, is the film in which Peter Finch's US TV network anchor electrifies audiences by bellowing: "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!"

The strand is the work of 29-year-old Emma McIntyre, a graduate of the Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art now in her second year as Event Manager of GFF. And, as is already evident, she's something of an action-film buff, too.

"It’s a way," she says of the strand, "of taking the cinema into new places or suggesting new experiences or reminding people that cinema is still completely immersive. I love that experience of being encapsulated by a film but we are in a position to really accelerate that: we can enhance it by screening a film in a venue that really brings out parts of the film. And we can take the audience into totally new places. It means they’re not checking their phones or waiting for it to end. We aim to marry film with venue and I really like to highlight bits of the film that I think are particularly fun or strange: we bring them to life. It’s a sensory experience, really."

McIntyre's own, earliest memories of film "were something on a scale that I could not quite fathom."

"I later studied art, so for me this sense of complete sensory overload … I get that when I watch an action film. I hold that feeling quite dear: a sensation that I’m not quite used to, or a great visual, like an explosion, or certain colours or a sense of adrenaline.

"When I say the word ‘cinema’, those feelings are what I remember and action films are what introduced them to me. In my position at the festival, that is what I try to offer for any film - those distinct feelings, that real sense of engagement." She remembers ("this might be slightly embarrassing") once owning video tapes of Terminator 2 and Demolition Man, both of which helped to kickstart her lifelong fascination with action films.

McIntyre was greatly encouraged to the audience response to last year's Special Events programme (every film in which was a sell-out) and also to a one-off screening last November of Wim Wenders' brilliant "city symphony" Wings of Desire. When it was shown at Paisley's historic Abbey it was accompanied by experimental musicians, an artist and aerial performers.

"The audience," she says now, "seemed to indicate that they wanted more and they will hopefully come to what I am asking of them this year."

She harbours a particular affection for Steven Spielberg's flamboyant 1981 hit, Raiders of the Lost Ark, which introduced the world to the whip-cracking archaeologist Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford). "That film for me, when I was a child, was a real adventure quest. I remember that feeling of being quite small, and being quite naive in my approaches to film or watching this bumbling character suddenly saving the world, and I loved that, so I really remember it. The boulder scene stands out for me as well. I remember my dad watching it and saying, ‘Oh my God!’

"I’m an artist, and I have lots of friends who are artists, and I work with a group of them quite frequently, so we’ve got something very good up our sleeves. I think it will be fun and will bring back that sense of childhood nostalgia that that film evokes. I obviously can’t say too much about the boulder scene as that will ruin the surprise but I hope the audience will appreciate that it’s fun, and in homage to the film. We will have some archaeologists on site to talk about the history of some objects. And there will be a genuine whip-cracker, too."

The film will be introduced Vic Armstrong, the legendary film stuntman whose glittering CV includes Raiders. Armstrong will be giving a separate talk about his remarkable career at the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum on February 19.

By way of contrast with Raiders, the late-night Kelvingrove screening of Silence of the Lambs will be slightly more subtle.

"Films like that, which are so un-nerving, don’t really need anything in the way of commodity - that would be too jarring," says McIntyre. "The film is so beautiful in the way it creates this very human dynamic and when you pull it into an event you don’t want to complicate that. There are some subtle approaches that the audience will pick up on and will add to the tension of the movie."

Kelvingrove's organ will be used in both Raiders and Jonathan Demme's timeless 1991 thriller; Howard Shore's music in the latter "is so powerful, and using the organ will really add to the occasion."

The screening of Ridley Scott's Thelma and Louise, which paired Susan Sarandon with Geena Davis, takes place at the Grand Ole Opry on February 21 and will also feature a genuine American cowboy who will demonstrate the art of lassoing. McIntyre speaks highly of the "beautiful" interior of the venue and says that one of the best parts of her job is to develop lasting relationship with the people who run such venues.

BBC Scotland TV journalist Pauline McLean will give an introduction to the showing of Network at the Beeb's Pacific Quay offices on February 22. And McIntyre is excited, too, by the prospect of Nicolas Roeg's 1976 sci-fi film, The Man Who Fell to Earth, being shown at the Planetarium on February 23.

"We programmed this film as this is its 40th anniversary. I was desperate to work with the venue, which has just updated its 360 degree full-dome screen, as I was keen to see what kind of film could be screened there." The film was scheduled while Bowie was, of course, still alive; it has now taken on a certain poignancy in the wake of the singer's recent death.

"Bowie is such an enigmatic actor and performer," she adds, "and it is a really interesting film."

Other elements of the 2016 Special Events programme include director Peter Greenaway "in person" at Glasgow Film Theatre on February 20; the 70s paranoia thriller The Parallax View at CCA on February 23; David Lynch's wonderful Wild at Heart (St Luke's, Bain Street) complete with an Elvis tribute and themed food, on February 25, and William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet, directed in hyperactive style by Baz Lurhmann and featuring Claire Danes and Leonardo di Caprio as the star-crossed lovers, in the Trades Hall, on Glassford Street, on February 27. The Capulet masked ball (where the lovers meet) will be re-created, complete with angel-winged DJ on a balcony, giant fish tank and cocktails in poison vials.

The festival will also include a Modern Families strand of films for children, making the centenary of the birth of Roald Dahl with such movies as Matilda. There will be a day-long event at Kinning Park, with Dahl-themed food and artists helping the kids to recreate Dahl's world all over the space.

The Modern Families strand is an important part of the festival, McIntyre recognises, as today's young fan can become the film buff of tomorrow. She herself is living proof of this.

* For full details go to www.glasgowfilm.org/festival. Box office: 0141-332 6535.