Film – The Drouth

30th April 2026

Published by TheDrouth

A DOUBLE ACT, A CLASS ACT: Housing and Film as things in a Kingdom by Johnny Rodger

The story of British housing as seen through film is one of ubiquitous and enduring class apartheid. Yet have the filmmakers themselves been immune from that social ill? Johnny Rodger gives an intersectional reading of housing and film with lots to watch as well as read.

18th July 2025

Published by TheDrouth

RAIN, STEAM AND SPEED by Huddled McMasses

The American founding fathers took classical Rome as the model for their new Republic. Huddled McMasses examines the development of that story in a tale of two films with classical, particularly Roman, avatars - Gladiator I and II. He sees American popular culture as a mirror held up to the current drift to greater authoritarianism and more rigid patriarchical political structures.

1st September 2024

Published by TheDrouth

HE is Paul and she IS Orlando:
review of Paul Preciado’s ‘Orlando’
by Johnny Rodger

The film Orlando: My Political Biography only went into cinemas in general release here this summer, so, although it was first shown at the EIFF in August 2023, it seems to be up for discussion again. The gender issue(s) is/are, indeed, still way up on the social agenda - as Johnny Rodger puts it, 'We are all on our social stages ... all in our social cages'. Preciado's openly self-constructed cage is a particularly intricate one, and he inhabits it with his own peculiar and provocative panache.

11th March 2024

Published by TheDrouth

Another ‘Poor Things’ is Possible
by David Archibald

As Emma Stone picks up an Oscar for Best Actress in Yorgos Lanthimos' film of Alasdair Gray's novel Poor Things, people are dancing in the streets of Glasgow! David Archibald reviews a film that coulda, shoulda, woulda...

14th June 2023

Published by TheDrouth

MAKING HOME : The Fight to Save the Wyndford (ArchiFringe 23)
Kelly Rappleye

What is going on in Wyndford ? Barnabas Calder (in his book reviewed by Florian Urban in The Drouth August 21) tells us that Architecture, and especially the production of its materials, steel and cement, is the worst of climate change culprits, yet in Glasgow a whole estate is about to be pulled down and rebuilt. We are supposed to be on the brink of some massive changes in our way of living -but not just yet! Kelly Rappleye has organised an event which might enshrine Wyndford not so much as a cause célèbre as a cause désastre.

23rd January 2023

Published by TheDrouth

THE GLEAN review by Sara Stevenson

Billed as 'groundbreaking', the Edinburgh City Art Centre exhibition, Glean - curated by Jenny Brownrigg - gathers the work of 14 pioneering early 20th century women photographers and filmmakers. Sara Stevenson reviews it for The Drouth, and considers it an 'impressive achievement'.

26th March 2022

Published by TheDrouth

Black Magic with a Bitter Orange Centre:
Just Another Saturday
by David Archibald

David Archibald’s essay on Peter McDougall’s play Just Another Saturday, published with thanks to BFI Video Publishing, also appears in the 60-page book accompanying the new 3-disc Blu-ray set, PLAY FOR TODAY – VOLUME 3, released by the BFI on 11 April. It can be pre-ordered now from the BFI Shop and other outlets. VOLUME 3 contains six plays including Just Another Saturday, Edna the Inebriate Woman and A Hole in Babylon

5th July 2021

Published by Johnny Rodger

SUGAR AND SOOT & ALL THINGS MOOT :
Denise Ferreira da Silva & Arjuna Neuman @ CCA
by Johnny Rodger

Can climate change be discussed in isolation from racism? From slavery? Can it be discussed in isolation from anything? Johnny Rodger reviews the art work/film by Ferreira da Silva and Neuman commissioned for the Glasgow International Festival.

11th May 2021

Published by TheDrouth

The Greenock Industrial and the Greenock Pastoral in ‘Just A Boys’ Game’ and ‘The Elephants’ Graveyard’
by David Archibald

On 17th May the British Film Institute (BFI) released a 3 Disc Blu-ray box set to celebrate fifty years since the first transmission of the BBC's 'Play for Today'. David Archibald has written an accompanying essay for the two Peter McDougall plays which appear in volume 2 of the set. Archibald's piece is a retrospective on a way of life and the art it produced -in special arrangement with the BFI we bring the essay to The Drouth readers' attention.