Glasgow Short Film Festival Barbed Wire Love 4: The Garden of Eden is a Cul de Sac

Fifty-two years since the commencement of Northern Ireland’s Troubles, Barbed Wire Love presents intimate tales from those who stayed, those who left and those who passed through. Sisters and brothers, those who danced at raves, those who had good intentions and those who did not. Chance encounters, intimate first-person cinema and the unreliability of history and biography create space for wry humour and tiny ecstasies.

With clear glimpses into, around and beyond violences proximal and peripheral to the North of Ireland, these are films which begin to describe a contested place and its social politics. Crossing genders, cruising lock-ins; moving from Tyrone to Vienna to Derry to Los Angeles and returning home to the cul-de-sacs of Eden, Barbed Wire Love creates new possibilities for connection.

In the fourth programme of the strand, Simon Aeppli leads us on a wander through a tactile and reflective decade long filmmaking practice that suggests artist John Smith’s maxim that “If you look hard enough all meanings can be found or produced close to home”.

Employing personal and subjective forms of documentary, Simon’s filmmaking manifests itself through an effortless hybrid of photography, note taking and chance encounters. This screening and talk will give Simon’s perspective on filmmaking around place and memory that incorporates a particularly Northern Irish accent and voice.

Curated by Myrid Carten and Peter Taylor.