Edinburgh’s International film festival – A look into all the highlights of Edinburgh’s International film festival.

Edinburgh International Film Festival

By Maria McQueen.
‘Maria fell in love with Edinburgh ever since her first visit to the Scottish capital, 5 years ago now. Check out http://www.housetrip.com/en/edinburgh for accommodation and http://www.edinburghrestaurants.co.uk/ for the best restaurants.’

The Edinburgh International Film Festival established in 1947, is the world’s longest continually running film festival. It takes place annually every June, but this has not always been the case. Prior to 2008, the festival was always held in August. The change of date has been a bone of contention for some, as they have viewed it as making the festival less internationally accessible. One Time Out reader said- ‘I felt that the move away from august would change the festival from a world event with many foreign visitors to a largely provincial event on a par with Cambridge-and with similar funding’.

The return of the Classic movie theatre

Last year the red carpet became a thing of the past as they abandoned the larger more commercial Cineworld, for traditional arthouse cinemas; the Filmhouse and Cameo Picturehouse. In essence perhaps not a bad thing morally you might think, but with no multi-buy offers, and some of the weakest mediocrity shrouded film showings, they could have probably used more backing. The student union was also used as the festival hub, so the dispersal probably added to the whole affairs ambiguity.
Aside from that, in the festivals defence, one film to be premiered was ‘the Guard’, written by John Michael McDonagh, Starring Brendan Gleeson, Don Cheadle and Mark Strong. Gleeson plays Gerry Boyle, a sardonically hilarious police officer of a rural Irish village. He is a loveable rogue, a maverick with his own moral code, which provides hilarious results when he is faced with humourless FBI agent Wendell Everett (Don Cheadle). The film had great reviews across the board.

The director returns this year

In 2011 the Edinburgh International Film Festival did not have a director. The festival was run by James Mullighan, with a series of guest curators. Mullighan, who previously ran the international filmmakers networking community ‘Shooting People’, referred to this as a ‘radical shakeup’. Since this so called flop of 2011, the suggested priority for the festival was to appoint a new artistic director, with a new vision to save the apparently snowballing event. The Edinburgh Fringe is seen as a real valuable platform for independent filmmakers, and many would feel very strongly about it imploding.

In September 2011, the CMI (Centre for Moving Image) appointed Chris Fujiwara as the new artistic director. Fujiwara is renowned as a writer and advocator of film. He has a big challenge on his hands as since the departure of the last artistic director, Hannah McGill in 2010, the festival has received a £1.9m cut due to the abolishment of the UK film council. However in the face of this adversity, Fujiwara says on the topic of becoming artistic director: “I’m especially enthusiastic because Edinburgh is a festival that has been known in the past for taking the lead during periods when film-making and film criticism were going through major transitions”. Needless to say the 2012 Edinburgh International Film Festival is eagerly anticipated through the film industry and public alike.

Daryl is shamelessly obsessed with film and always stays in apartments in edinburgh rather than leaving the country for florence accommodation