The Glasgow Short Film Festival (GSFF) launched yesterday and is packed with another year of groundbreaking films. We spoke to Felipe Bustos Sierra, BAFTA-winner to learn more about his latest offering at the festival; Govanhill: A Community Film Portrait

By Samar Jamal | Photos by Felipe Bustos Sierra

The Glasgow Short Film Festival (GSFF) launched yesterday and is packed with another year of groundbreaking films. Screening in venues across Glasgow including Glasgow Film Theatre, Centre for Contemporary Arts and Civic House, inviting cinephiles to enjoy a wide selection of films from 20 to 24 March.

In its 17th year, GSFF offers over a hundred short films to choose from. If you want to swap out high-budget films this weekend for high-quality, grassroots cinema that showcases new talent check out this year's programme, with a mixture of international and Scottish creators from Mexico to Glasgow’s Govanhill.

Felipe Bustos Sierra, BAFTA-winner of the masterpiece Nae Pasaran, presents his latest offering; Govanhill: A Community Film Portrait.

Described as: ‘exploring the secret recipes and whispered art of a neighbourhood conceived to be just a passing place. It may have been indelibly inked on our skin before we were born. For now, we all live and work here at the same time. Sometimes our quirks, migrations and unrelenting activism unite but mostly we’re minding our roots, carving places till they’re safe, stretching and stitching and bitching, poets in our own tongues, remembering our keys, remembering how we got here, remembering what we can be.’

Thanks for chatting with me Felipe, can you tell me a little bit about your background as a filmmaker and your connections to Govanhill?

I'm not from Govanhill but I lived in Govanhill for just over five years. I'm from Chile, but I grew up in Belgium. During COVID, I was hired as one of the Culture Collective artists at Govanhill Baths. The project was great because it was rare to get this kind of brief where there is a bit of budget but the biggest resource is time and the familiarity of making films, about the neighbourhood that you live in.

What is Govanhill: A Community Portrait about?

I started researching with Sam Gonçalves and we spent a lot of time looking at the census and addresses on Allison Street from 1880. In that time it looks like the average time that people stay in Govanhill was for four and a half years. I don't know how accurate that is but it's been an interesting bit of information that suggests it's a landing place and it's a bit of a shelter and I wanted to delve into that.

There is a South Asian community and a Jewish community and because of my past, that was my way in. I realised there’s a shared experience of growing up in a country that's not yours, in a culture that's not yours and understanding where the boundaries are, how much you want to integrate and how much you want to hold on to the culture you were born in.

So the film is about different places in Govanhill and that if you live in Govanhill and you're not from here, despite the religion or the language barrier, you have developed similar skills to deal with being in a new space. It’s filmed with the hope that people will recognize themselves in other people's stories. So it was quite collaborative. I set up interviews saying I wanted to talk about this. Even though there are different perspectives there's a shared experience that is so similar. The luxury I had with this film was the time that I had, I’ve been filming for over a year.

Can you tell me more about the stories that we will see in the film?

There’s a more observational part of the film and it's conversations about Govanhill and that feeling of home. We had access to one of the Asian fabric shops and obviously, that's not my community but the women were describing the role that the fabric shops played particularly for Muslim women.

They spoke about how it was a safe space for women to let their hair down. It was the reason for their husbands to allow them to learn to drive so then they could go to the shop on their own. Having filmed in a few fabric shops, this is no longer the social hub it used to be.

I got to film these two Black women getting their hair braided for three hours in an African salon on Butterbiggins Road and talk about kind of everything.

Going across different cultures, I loved hearing how all these different folk, who may have a different language but share a geographic location, tell the same story of settling here, of all the obstacles which are kind of the same.

How do you think Govanhill has changed for communities over the years?

I asked the women in the fabric shops ‘where is that community place today?’ And the lady just said: “Well, we don't have one because we don't need them anymore. The community is strong enough that we don't need to have a specific hub.”

We got to go a little bit through the history. Govanhill is a place that is for migrant workers with tough living conditions which kind of, by design people were not meant to stay here for a very long time. It's a planning place, where people move on from.

But how does that space survive if people just keep on moving? That's one of the open questions left with the film. There's a sadness and compromise there because that space doesn't even exist anymore. After all, you've outgrown it but there's quite a positive aspect to that too.

I think anything you make about Govanhill is going to be dated within six months. It's got a nature of that so I'm very happy that I got to make a version of Govanhill that I got to know.

Would you say that this film is about preserving and documenting that memory and that sense of community?

As soon as you arrive, you're just thinking about surviving. You're not thinking about collecting memories. It's about getting to the next step, but once you get there and look back on it you realise that. For example, one of the big problems I had for the fabric shop films was I interviewed the family who started it which has become a massive thing now, but she's passed away and her family don’t have a single picture of her in the shop.

How did you decide what to feature and film?

I know Govanhill is very political and we approached that in the film. But there were all these other communities that didn't have a way in, and I thought if I'm making a film about Govanhill I have to find a way in. So I was living my life and going to places, going to restaurants, going to takeaway shops.

It's a bit of a crutch of saying, I'm making a film, talk to me about this or that. I realize the more I've gone to a specific takeaway to get some food or to a shop there was recognition and there was openness and that led to conversations.

There are stories that we had to drop because of the Home Office and people being worried about being in front of the camera. I wish I had another six months to finish off.

What are you hoping people will take away from the film?

Everybody talks about their survival here within the first six months. It's like finding food from home, peace and sanity. I love that so many communities seem to have found a little hub that felt as close to home as possible which allowed them to form stronger communities.

People outgrow their original hub and have a more independent life, richer individual lives. So I don't know if that film needs to be for everyone. I hope the people of Govanhill will recognize it. Some of the people in Govanhill will recognize themselves from certain experiences.