Film Screening and Artist Talk: Frank Quitely’s Nothing to Declare
Join us for a film screening and artist talk on Frank Quitely's Nothing to Declare
ARC Public; ARCHalloween
Date: Monday 23 October 2023
Time: 17:30 - 19:30
Venue: University of Glasgow, Advanced Research Centre (ARC), 11 Chapel Lane, Glasgow, G11 6EW
Category: Public lectures
Speaker: Frank Quitely and Laurence Grove
On Monday 23 October at 5.30pm there will be a showing of Frank Quitely’s short film Nothing to Declare. This will be followed by a short discussion between Frank Quitely and Professor Billy Grove on the film and on the comic images on display.
Nothing to Declare
Frank Quitely, the artist behind acclaimed series including All Star Superman, New X-Men, Batman and Robin, Jupiter's Circle, and many more, has turned writer for an Indiegogo-funded short horror film titled "Nothing to Declare. The film, from first-time producer Mal Young and BAFTA-winning director Will Adams, also features Quitely's character designs brought to life through Tom Bryant's CG art.
"The film's about a nineteen year old guy coming home, from being away from home backpacking. He's a real generous, well-meaning kind of guy," Quitely explains in the Indiegogo promotional video. "Something that he has done for his sister has consequences he could not have anticipated." "A lot of the horror really is psychological," Adams adds.
In his Indiegogo crowdfunding pitch, Young says he brought together this team, which also includes former Mogwai guitarist John Cummings, with support from the Scottish Film Talent Network.
About the Speakers
Frank Quitely was born in Glasgow in 1968 as Vincent Deighan, but realising that, quite frankly, his work might offend his family, he hid behind the spoonerist penname. His output is vast and varied, and he has worked with many icons of the graphic novel including Neil Gaiman, Grant Morrison, Mark Millar, Alan Grant and Bruce Jones. In 2017 he was awarded an honorary Ph.D. from the University of Glasgow and was elected as Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2021. The dream-like world he creates for The Sandman can flip to the surrealist nightmares of the X-Men, wherein Prof X is trapped inside the mind of his evil twin; childhood memories of seaborne disorientation from Flex Mentello; the terrors of The Walking Dead; the Joker’s indelible derision, or indeed the literal surrealism of Salvador Dali. Frank Quitely’s iconic clear-line creations haunt us with their evocations of nightmares that can come from physical monsters, monsters of the mind, or monsters of the everyday.
Laurence Grove is Professor of French and Text/Image Studies and Director of the Stirling Maxwell Centre for the Study of Text/Image Cultures at the University of Glasgow. His research focuses on historical aspects of text/image forms, and in particular bande dessinée. He is President of the International Bande Dessinée Society. As well as serving on the consultative committees of a number of journals, he is joint-editor of European Comic Art. Laurence Grove (also known as Billy) has authored (in full or jointly) twelve books and approximately sixty chapters or articles. He co-curated Comic Invention (Hunterian, Glasgow) and Frank Quitely: The Art of Comics (Kelvingrove, Glasgow) and is co-author of their accompanying books.