Stars of the cult Scottish film Small Faces reunited for a 20th anniversary screening attended by a sell-out audience of 400 to mark the end of the Glasgow Film Festival.
On the red carpet at the Glasgow Film Theatre were Gillies Mackinnon, writer/director, and writer/producer Billy MacKinnon; Steven Duffy, Iain Robertson and Joe MacFadden; and Eilidh McCormick, Mark McConnochie, Colin McCredie, Carmen Pierquaccini and Garry Sweeney, all original members of the coming-of-age classic set in 1960s Glasgow, produced in 1995 by Skyline productions in association with the BBC Film Fund. When it was released in 1996 it won Best British Film at the Edinburgh Film Festival.
At a Q&A session following the screening the actor Kevin McKidd, who played Malky Johnson, the leader of the notorious gang Tongs, was interviewed by Skype from Los Angeles. Laura Fraser and Claire Higgins, original cast members who were unable to attend, sent their best wishes.
Gillies MacKinnon revealed that the film, about three teenage brothers - the Glen gang member Bobby, artistically-minded Alan and 13-year-old Lex, whose lives spiral out of control when Lex accidentally shoots Malky with an air gun - was based on Visconti's 1960s film Rocco and His Brothers and the 1995 Swedish film My Life as a Dog, and that it was semi-autobiographical.
McKidd paid tribute to MacKinnon's direction. "I'd never played a villain before and always played the loser of the group. At that time there were lots of gangs who held everybody in their thrall and who were quite mystic but really just wee boys. Malky wasn't very streetwise and we made him comedic, a wee boy like most of them but tougher and bigger.
"I remember enjoying playing him. The experience taught me the fun and the comedy you can find in that kind of role, and I'm grateful to Gillies for that."
He added that he loved the big coat chosen for him. "Actors love to have cool clothes to wear and that coat was pretty cool," he said. "It gave me something to work with. I'm not from Glasgow and didn't know about those gangs, so this big coat gave me confidence."
Iain Robertson, who played Lex, said he was 13 when he was auditioned by Gillies MacKinnon on his first day of casting. "But it took him two months to let me know. I turned down other work and held out for the film, and I'm glad I did." He won Best Performance at the Scottish BAFTAs for the role. He has since appeared in The Debt Collector with Billy Connolly and in BBC Scotland's Sea of Souls as series regular Craig Stevenson.
The festival, which ran from February 17 to 28, sold a total of 41,151 tickets and saw an overall increase of 7 per cent in admissions per event.
Just under half of the screenings sold out and 61 per cent sold more than 75 per cent of their tickets.
More than 3,500 people also visited the festival's first ever exhibition, Jeely Jars and Seeing Stars, which displayed cinema-going in Glasgow from the 1930s to the present day.
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