Glasgow's Film Festival is to celebrate the golden couples of Hollywood in its 2016 programme, it has revealed.

The festival, which has become one of the most popular film events in the UK, is also expanding its focus to include a dedicated forum for the movie business for the first time.

A two day seminar featuring industry big-hitters will "offer huge benefits to Scotland's film and TV industry", they say.

The festival is to release its full programme in January but has revealed it is to concentrate a strand of movies on double acts: Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, Doris Day and Rock Hudson, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rodgers and Robert Redford and Paul Newman.Glasgow Times: FRED ASTAIRE & GINGER ROGERS

Entrance to all these films will be free, as the programme has been designed to "celebrate friendship, with an eye to cross-generational audiences."

The GFF Industry Focus, which will run for two days on February 24 and 25, will take on a area of festival work traditionally linked to the Edinburgh International Film Festival, bringing in film makers, funding bodies and "industry insiders" for a two day seminar.

Another new part of the programme, Roads To The South, will also showcase films being created in Argentina.

Tickets for the opening and closing galas will go on sale on January 18.

There were 174 events at the festival this year, including 11 World Premieres, 33 UK Premieres and 65 Scottish Premieres.

The number is 23 less than last year's festival but more than 40,000 tickets were issued.Glasgow Times: General view of the Glasgow Film Theatre. 
GFT on Rose St, Glasgow


Pictures Martin Shields Herald and Times Group. (46450711)

Allan Hunter, the co director of the festival, said: "Chemistry is everything when it comes to creating the perfect screen couple: when audiences sense that electricity they want to see it again and again.

"Dream Teams on the Silver Screen celebrates the very finest Hollywood duos, individuals who made cinema history together in unforgettable classics.

"Meanwhile, the international reaction to films like 2009’s The Secret In Their Eyes (El secreto de sus ojos) and this year’s Wild Tales (Relatos salvages), which premiered at GFF15, has been part of the surge of interest in Argentine cinema and Roads To The South is designed to celebrate the range of bright new talents in Argentinian filmmaking making their mark around the world."

There will also be a retrospective of the work of the French director Julien Duvivier.

There will be horror premieres in the Frightfest strand and Crossing the line will present work "somewhere between visual art and cinema."

The twelfth annual Glasgow Film Festival will run from 17–28 February.

The full programme will be launched on 20 January.