The British Film Festival is something I’ll return to after I’ve visited Cambridge’s own this weekend, but meantime Edinburgh has announced this year’s line-up. I’ve gone the last two years but can’t really afford the kind of rates demanded by hotels during the festival month.
There’s also the problem of what Edinburgh is meant to be: an international festival a la Venice or Berlin, or a local one like London — or even Cambridge, which, although it has only three screens, is pretty shit-hot this year. Although Edinburgh talks the international talk, it’s only walking the national walk: it has nothing to match ‘2046’ as a festival boom-shack-a-lack stone killer. Like Cambridge and London, it basically takes the best of other fests.
This is, in many ways, a good thing — for the filmgoers of Scotland. Just as Cambridge is a good festival for the South East. So here endeth my rationalization of doing Chichester, which shares an opener with Edinburgh (‘Motorcycle Diaries’), instead.