Saturday, May 21, 2011

Edinburgh International Film Festival (2)

I blogged recently about the Edinburgh International Film Festival and mentioned how excited I was by the programme. Yesterday Crafty Green Boyfriend finally got the chance to look through the programme and said it was very disappointing for him, but then we have very different tastes in films! I'm particularly impressed that the festival has ditched the red carpet celebrity focussed strands of the last few years in favour of a more serious, issue based approach (but then I can see a lot of people not agreeing with me on that, as we live in such celebrity obsessed times). I'm also impressed by the number of films that have an environmental theme to them. My views this year are also coloured by the fact that (whisper it) I have a press pass, which means I can see all the films I want to see in return for reviews (mostly over on Crafty Green Poet) and for some general publicity (like this blog post).

Howard of Belvedere Express made a very valid point about the price of Film Festival Tickets in his comment on my first post about the festival, but I'd say:

a) it's better value than the Edinburgh International Book Festival where you pay £10 to listen to an author market their book which they then expect you to buy (I'm not knocking the Book Festival as such, I've been to some great events there - the best ever being last year's reading from two South African poets I had never previously heard of).

b) my secret to the Film Festival is to pick the films least likely to ever get released (because they're obscure or deal with unpopular topics) and to avoid going to films that are likely to get general release - why pay festival prices for a film that will be in all the cinemas only two weeks later?

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