Festival
AROUND TOWN For more info go to LIST.CO.UK /FESTIVAL
HITLIST THE BEST TALKS, TOURS & TALES
✽ Movements: Cybraphon Because you’ve always wanted to witness an autonomous, emotion-controlled musical robot strutting its stuff. See preview, page 90. National Museum of Scotland, 473 2000, 21 Aug, 2.30pm, £6.
✽ Skeptics on the Fringe: Alasdair Richmond – Philosophy of Time Travel Find out if time travel is genuinely possible and, if so, what it might mean for our personal lives and freedoms. Banshee Labyrinth, 558 8209, 18 Aug, 7.50pm, free.
✽ Crayfish Party Get in on the Nordic tradition of slurping up a healthy serving of
delicious sea critters while singing schnapps songs. Ticket price includes a welcome drink, crayfish, cheese tart with salad and two shots of Swedish vodka. Joseph Pearce’s, 556 4140, 19, 20 & 26 Aug, 7pm, £25.
✽ Rebus Tours: Hidden Edinburgh
A chance to see the city through the eyes of Ian Rankin’s great detective. We hope there’s time for a drink in the Oxford Bar.
Meet at the Royal Oak, 557 2976, until 24 Aug, noon, £10 (£9).
✽ Malt Whisky Demonstration for Beginners If you’re new to Scotland’s favourite beverage, why not try a few drams and find out how it’s made? Bennets Bar, 229 5143, until 22 Aug (not 16, 17), 3pm, £10 (£9).
preview, left.
✽ CineFringe Film Festival 2013 See ✽ Fatal Magic: The Attractions of Witchcraft Marina Warner talks about representations of witches and sorceresses in fairy tales and myths. Booking essential. Scottish National Gallery, 624 6560, 20 Aug, 6pm, free.
15–26 Aug 2013 THE LIST FESTIVAL 89
CINEFRINGE International and experimental screenings bring fringe fi lm to the festival
A lthough it wasn’t founded specifically for that reason in 2010, one advantage of CineFringe (tagline: ‘The official film festival of the Edinburgh Fringe’) is that it brings a film presence back to Edinburgh in August, ever since the International Film Festival’s controversial move to a June time slot. The scale is much smaller than the EIFF, naturally, but still impressive: over 20 days, three themed groups of shorts are screened three times each at the Sweet venue on the Grassmarket, with a ‘best of’ night at the end and a separate one-off compilation screening in collaboration with Summerhall. In total that’s 26 shorts over 11 screenings, plus opening and awards parties.
The films are selected from an international open submission process, with 45 countries represented. ‘We’ve got a film about a mutant crab which rides a horse, which is fairly mind- blowing,’ says founder John Lynch, as well as
‘two dramas from the UK and Germany which are amongst the best we’ve ever seen, and a film from Iran we’re very lucky to have, given the difficulty in getting art out of the country.’ ‘I see CineFringe as being the middle ground between a regular film festival and the spontaneous, edgy feel of the Fringe,’ he says, with ‘that sense of experimentation and of seeing new things. A lot of our filmmakers are people who are getting into it for the first time and working under extraordinarily tight budget constraints. We want to give them the first step on the ladder.’ The hope for the future, he says, is that they can facilitate more Fringe film events, even as their own programme grows. (David Pollock) Sweet Grassmarket and Summerhall, 17–26 Aug, times vary, £6 (£4.50), cinefringe.com