25TH BIRTHDAY
FILMHOUSE & EIFF I n 1985 the Filmhouse completed extensive renovation work to convert an old boarded-up church into a plush, new cinema. It became the base for the Edinburgh International Film Festival and has, for the last 25 years, hosted
a mixture of star-studded red carpet events during festival season, and a standout programme of arthouse films the rest of the year round. The following photos cover some of the most important moments from this history.
‘87 British film producer Lord David Puttnam
‘91 Derek Jarman and Tilda Swinton at the UK premiere of Edward II
HANNAH MCGILL A former music editor at The List, Hannah McGill is the outgoing director of the Edinburgh International Film Festival, based at the
Filmhouse for 25 years. She recalls some Festival highlights
Since EIFF has had its premises in Filmhouse, it has served as the Festival’s nerve centre, whatever the shifting official relationship between the two companies. It’s where we launch the programme, where our box office system is located, where guests and delegates hang out until the small hours and – of course – where we screen a significant portion of the programme. It’s also where we’ve made other significant announcements, such as the nailbiting reveal that we were moving to June . . . During the tortuous scheduling process for the
Festival, I always tended to put a lot of my favourite films in Filmhouse, because the auditorium is gorgeous, multiple film formats are supported and the projection is reliably top-notch (apart from that one reel change in 2009 that we don’t talk about). Many wonderful guests have passed through Filmhouse. Martin Scorsese, Kathryn Bigelow, Derek Jarman, Brian de Palma, Albert Maysles, Stephen Frears, Mike Leigh, John Hurt, Malcolm McDowell, Anne Coates, Thelma Schoonmaker and Charlize Theron have all hung out here during the Festival over the years, watching films or haunting the bar. In my own years as a programmer and then as Artistic Director I’ve interviewed Bela Tarr, Park Chan-Wook, Mary Sweeney, Catherine Breillat (with her star, Rocco Siffredi!), Shane Meadows and Terence Davies on Filmhouse’s stages – to name a few. I remember sitting with the great director Arthur Penn in the café bar in 2006, while he patiently signed autographs before his stage interview with my predecessor, Shane Danielsen. Indicating the images of Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway on the Bonnie and Clyde DVD cover he was signing, he stage-whispered to me: ‘Those two, they hated each other . . .’
This year, as part of our Lost British Cinema
retrospective, we had some amazing filmmakers in attendance – Ken Russell, Stephen Frears, Horace Ové, Mike Hodges and Kevin Billington all attended to present films rarely seen over the last fortyish years. Ken Russell was particularly great. He got a standing ovation. Also cool was Roger Corman, sitting in the retrospective screenings of his own films, pointing things out to the audience . . . Other memories are fuzzier, for reasons of emotion
and/or alcohol. In 2008 and 2009 we had very memorable award ceremonies on the final Sunday afternoon of the Festival. These events were particularly fun for me, because at the end of ten days of constant public exposure I strongly resisted having to go onstage, so that I could take my only opportunity to sit in the audience drinking, giggling and getting teary-eyed. Sir Sean Connery handed out the gongs, and it was a pure pleasure to see every winning filmmaker get his or her moment in his orbit.
26 THE LIST 23 Sep–7 Oct 2010
‘92 Gordon Brown with then EIFF director Penny Thomson