Scotland Loves Animation is a charity that promotes anime in Scotland. They hold an annual film festival called "Scotland Loves Anime" in October and work with other festivals to programme anime content into their schedules. It celebrated its 10th festival in 2019. In May 2020, Anime Limited launched a new online festival in partnership with Scotland Loves Animation, called Screen Anime. This service hosts 4 films and one TV series monthly. It is available in the UK and Ireland only.
Background
Scotland Loves Animation is a charity that promotes anime in Scotland, through hosting an annual film festival October and partnering with film festivals and other independent cinemas to screen anime-related content during the rest of the year. The festival was established in 2010 by Andrew Partridge, who later went on to start the Glasgow-based anime distributor Anime Limited. The main festival is based across of Scotland’s two biggest cities: Glasgow and Edinburgh. They also host an education day, where the general public can meet industry professionals and other guests from Japan. They also host a smaller festival in Aberdeen. They host Education Days that run as part of the festival where the public can meet industry professionals in a full day of talks, panel discussions, and workshops. Previous guests have included The Garden of Words director Makoto Shinkai and Promare director Hiroyuki Imaishi. The festival also regularly invites directors to host Q&A sessions after their films have been screened. Previous Q&A sessions have included Naoko Yamada after the European Premiere of K-On! the Movie and Tomoki Kyoda after the European Premire of Eureka Seven: Hi-Evolution Movie 1. In the past, they have held an event called We Love Anime which screened animated films across the UK. Films that were screened as part of We Love Anime included: The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya, Summer Wars and Patema Inverted. They have also screened films in partnership with other festivals such as the Glasgow Film Festival at the Glasgow Film Theatre and the Discovery Film Festival at the DCA. The Jury Award, called the Golden Partridge is named after Andrew Partridge, the founder of the festival.
Event locations and venues
Annually during October, the "Scotland Loves Anime" festival takes place in Glasgow and Edinburgh. The festival typically runs over a weekend in Glasgow, and over a week in Edinburgh. In Edinburgh they will show more films due to the greater number of film slots available. Because of the limited runs of anime films in cinemas outside of Japan, this is often the only chance to see many of these films at the cinema. Screenings for popular films are often sold-out long before the date of showing. The festival is held in the Glasgow Film Theatre in Glasgow, the Edinburgh Filmhouse in Edinburgh and the Belmont Filmhouse in Aberdeen. Recently, they have run a smaller festival at the Belmont Filmhouse in Aberdeen a couple of months after the main event. This event screens only a handful of the more popular films from the main festival.
Previous festivals
World Premiere of the English Dubbed version of the film.
2019 Festival
The festival was announced on 26 May 2019 via Twitter. The films confirmed for the festival at that time were Masaaki Yuasa's Ride Your Wave and Keiichi Hara's Birthday Wonderland. The full list of films was announced on 4 September 2019. The festival ran from 11-13 October 2019 in Glasgow, 14-20 October 2019 in Edinburgh and 24-29 January 2020 in Aberdeen. It was Scotland Loves Animation's biggest year, with over 3000 tickets sold. In Glasgow, Weathering with You,' and Promare sold out. At the Edinburgh Filmhouse, the screenings of Weathering with You, Promare, Ride Your Wave and Children of the Sea were all sold out. Because of the popularity of Scotland Loves Anime, the weekend of 19-20 October 2019 was the Edinburgh Filmhouse's 4th busiest weekend of all time, with the Saturday having the most ticket sales in a single day in the history of the Filmhouse. Weathering with You was also Glasgow Film Theatre's second biggest film of the month of October, as it sold out two screenings in GFT's largest screen. The 2019 lineup of UK Premieres were as follows: Glasgow :
The Golden Partridge went to Ride Your Wave, however the Audience Award went to Weathering with You. To celebrate the release of Promare, in 2019 Scotland Loves Animation held a special screening of the film at The Biscuit Factory in Edinburgh. It featured themed food and drink and staff from TRIGGER were there to greet the audience. The Aberdeen festival was announced on 6 January 2020 via Twitter and ran from 24 to 29 January 2020 at the Belmont Filmhouse. It screened Scotland Loves Anime 2019's most popular films: Weathering with You, , Children of the Sea, Promare, Birthday Wonderland and Ride Your Wave. Scotland Loves Anime is aimed for returning between 9-11 October 2020 in Glasgow and between 12-18 October 2020 in Edinburgh. No conformation of an Aberdeen festival has been announced yet.
