A Glasgow filmmaker who has spent his entire career behind a camera viewing other people’s lives through a lense is bringing an immersive cinematic experience to the GFT this weekend.
Doug Aubrey’s ‘Legacy of an Invisible Bullet’ is a mammoth ten-and-a-half-hour-long cinematic show of 170 short films being shown across five days, taking audiences through a ten-year period of the filmmaker's life.
Having spent his career observing the world through filming, he has now turned the camera gaze inward to explore what happens when a man loses his armour and looks in rather than out at the world.
The project was created in the wake of Doug’s cancer diagnosis in 2013, which inspired the title. “When I was diagnosed with thyroid Cancer, it felt like being hit by an invisible bullet”, he says.
The films will be presented in a series of five cinematic programmes at the Glasgow Film Theatre between the 8-12 June, with an abridged feature cut, and a Director’s Q&A on the 13 June.
They capture not only a period of life when Aubrey ‘wrote directly with whatever camera I had available,’ but also revisit extracts from his earlier works, as well as documenting his love for surfing.
It also shows some previously unseen footage and outtakes from his filmmaking in conflict zones such as ex-Yugoslavia and the films he’s made in his hometown of Glasgow, which he describes as ‘a different kind of conflict zone, really’.
Aubrey started making films in the 70s as a teenager on super 8mm camera and continued filming as a student before reluctantly working as a conflict filmmaker in the Balkan region in 1995.
His previous films include The New Ten Commandments, a series of short films in collaboration with other directors including Irvine Welsh and Mark Cousins starring Tilda Swinton, and his BAFTA-nominated documentary Kurdi.
While Legacy of an Invisible Bullet was triggered by his diagnosis, Doug said he was ‘determined not to make a cancer diary’. However, throughout the difficult process, he found it becoming a labour of self-realisation and improvement.
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He said: “There's an element of satisfaction as a filmmaker pulling a piece of work like this off, because there was a point when I was thinking, my God, what have I gotten myself involved with?
“I've spent pretty much all my life pointing a camera at other people and looking at their trauma and looking at what's happening to their world. So, to turn the camera around on myself was a big thing really.
“Filmmaking for me is a way of life, and this for me was almost a survival mechanism. It helped me in a lot of ways, I wouldn’t call it therapy, but it did help me.
“It allowed me not to dwell on the cancer, and to not focus on that notion of being a victim.
“Strangely it connected things for me that I didn’t realise were connected and helped me realise a lot about myself. More than anything the whole experience has made me realise that I live and breathe for filmmaking.”
Doug currently lives between Glasgow and Copenhagen, and both nations have backed the project. Legacy of an Invisible Bullet was supported by Screen Scotland, the Danish Film Institute and Danish Arts Foundation.
However, he very much sees the GFT run as a homecoming and hopes audiences can take away some sense of hope and optimism from the screenings.
He said: “We already had a unique one-off screening of an earlier cut at the Glasgow Film Festival a few years back, which we couldn’t attend because of Covid. We’re now pleased to premier “The Copenhagen Mix”.
“This, in a way, is very much a reflection of the diversity and cultural mix that Glasgow represents, so I am very excited to be showing it here and would just like to thank the GFT for their support.”
With the 170 films being shown across five screenings, audiences will be able to attend one or all of them, but they’ll have access to all the footage through an app given to ticket holders which Doug describes as ‘pocket cinema’. The screenings will also be available on a pay-what-you-can fee.
He added: “The whole idea is for an audience to come, sit and immerse themselves in this at any point they want.
“An aspect for me that was really important was the fact the app gives ownership of the entire project to an audience, who can navigate, curate and explore the films further on their phones, computers, tablets or TVs.
“The nicest thing about the app is it gives people the ability to drop in and out of it whenever they want.
“It can be viewed linearly, or it can be viewed thematically, with the app categorizing the short films into eight or nine themes that run throughout the project including war, love, peace and more.
“Although there is a feature cut, it’s more of an abridged intro to the project as a whole and encourages people to go and explore the rest.
“With regards to paying what you can, let's face it; I’ve had support from the National Lottery, Screen Scotland and more, so the public has effectively already paid for it in a sense, and it belongs to them.”
The first Legacy of an Invisible Bullet screening will be shown on Saturday, June 8 at 12 pm at Glasgow Film Theatre. Parts two to 5 will then be shown on the days following before the feature cut on June 13. Tickets are available at the door or on Glasgow Film’s website now.
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