Evolution, or Even Revolution: Hannah McGill On Edinburgh’s 63rd Birthday

Hannah McGill at Edinburgh’s opening press conference yesterday. Photo courtesy of the Edinburgh International Film Festival.

“There’s a lot going on the festival’s industry side,” McGill explained. “It has a lot to do with filmmakers interfacing with technology providers. It’s really important that the festival is practically useful in that way so delegates can come up here and learn. I think a lot of people that work in the film industry - even very high up - are a little overwhelmed by how fast the technology moves. So I think it’s great when a festival can be a place where people can catch their grasp.”

Also part of what the UK film council’s investment allowed McGill and her staff to do was “clarify and define” what their festival is.  “We have been pushing the festival much more as a festival of discovery, as a place of new talent, as a meeting place for UK talent and the international industry… So that’s an ongoing process for us but that’s come into focus more predominately in the last couple of years. And I hope we will continue to move in that direction.”

As for the films themselves, McGill said that the festival “didn’t go with a specific theme this year.” Continuing, she noted, “Having had such a massive change last year, we wanted the audience to feel self-secured and keep things stable. But we did push very hard to have more world and international premieres in the lineup… It’s very important for me that the festival is not just a link in that chain of festivals that basically show all the same stuff and that we do have an original voice. I think our audience has come to expect that and invest a lot in the individuality of Edinburgh. So that’s something I really wanted to ensure.”

What audiences can expect, McGill said, was a lot of “inspiring, new, young filmmakers” and a lot of “really interesting” British works. “It’s very diverse,” she said. “Because you hear a lot about the state of the British film industry and where’s the next big hit. I always think that if people are really paying attention to festival’s programming, they will see there’s a lot of diversity going on in the UK that doesn’t necessarily break through to the mainstream but it’s there.”

This diversity is perhaps best exemplified in the ten films in the running for the Michael Powell Award, sponsored by the UK Film Council and carrying a prize of 20,000 pounds to the best British film at the festival: Brian Percival’s “A Boy Called Dad,” Duncan Ward’s “Boogie Woogie,” Jan Dunn’s “The Calling,” Justin Molotinkov’s “Crying With Laughter,” Andrea Arnold’s “Fish Tank,” Lindy Heymann’s “Kicks,” Avie Luthra’s “Mad, Sad & Bad,” Duncan Jones’ “Moon,” Julian Kemp’s “The Last Five Girlfriends,” Dale Corlett’s “Running In Traffic,” and Alexis Dos Santos’ “Unmade Beds.”

McGill hopes the festival will give films like these a chance to find themselves beyond the festival scene (though in the case of one example - “Moon” - that’s already happened). “One thing that’s really interesting to me is that as distribution and exhibition changes, especially in the current economic situation, few of these films have a guaranteed theatrical future in this country and, indeed, anywhere,” she said. “So I think in a way there’s a great deal of pressure on us to be the chance for these films to be shown in front of an audience.  I think there was a time even a few years ago where there were many more boutique independent distributors in the UK who would pick up niche or foreign language titles. And it’s not that they’ve gone away entirely but there are fewer of them and they’ve got less money to spend which means that very strong titles that you would have expected to get a cinematic release a few years ago, now don’t. While that’s sad in way, I think it also sort of increases the relevance of the festival. It means those audiences are really getting something they’re not going to get anywhere else, and that we can work hard to get those films some sort of future.”

The Edinburgh International Film Festival runs through June 28th. indieWIRE will be on the scene beginning tomorrow, but in the meantime, you can check out the festival’s schedule here.