The Who, What, Where, When, Why and How

Who are the Edinburgh Film Guild?

The Edinburgh Film Guild is the world’s longest continually running film society. We began in 1930 and are still going strong today.

What does the Edinburgh Film Guild do?

First and foremost, we show films. More than 100 of them a year. The films are grouped into themed seasons, each based around a filmmaker, genre, country, performer, or subject.

We also run and host various film educational activities, both formal and informal, and provide a friendly and welcoming environment for meeting and talking with other film enthusiasts.

Read the full post »

2013-14 Season Programme

The Edinburgh Film Guild  will be screening over 100 films in its 84th season, running from late September 2013 to early April 2014.

The main programme comprises 16 mini-seasons, each themed around a particular genre, director, actor, country, or subject, and each featuring six screenings, showing on consecutive weeks.

In addition there are seasonal screenings for Halloween and Christmas and an exciting new monthly strand of film events featuring premiere screenings of cutting-edge, independent cinema from around the world.

There are four screening times a week. Sunday afternoon, Sunday evening, and Wednesday and Friday evenings.

Read the full post »

The First 2013-14 Postcard

Look out for the first of our promotional postcards for the 2013-14 season.

front

back

2012-13 Season Reaction Indexes

As members will be aware we like to have you vote on how good or bad a film was. Here, with the exception of three films, are the results for the 2012-13 season from high to low.

The ratings are scored 100% for each 5 star, 75% for each 4 star, 50% for each 3 star, 25% for each 2 star, and 0% for each 1 star. 12 Angry Men received 20 five star and 5 four star ratings, for instance.

Read the full post »

The Edinburgh Film Guild Forsyth Hardy Lecture

Is on Tuesday 25th June in Filmhouse 3.

This year the lecture, by Colin McArthur, is on What Kind of (Scottish) Film Culture Do We Want?

Writer and former head of BFI Distribution Colin McArthur has explored the above question for decades in publications such as Brigadoon, Braveheart and the Scots, making it the natural subject for his Forsyth Hardy Lecture. He will review the aftermath of EIFF’s landmark 1982 Scotch Reels event (for which he convened the organising group and edited its accompanying publication), the institutional developments of filmmaking in Scotland and the possible lacunae — its concern with history, for instance — therein.

Read the full post »

Seasonal Spotlight: Mai Zetterling

Being the first in a regular summer series showcasing some of the seasons within the Edinburgh Film Guild’s 2013-14 programme…

Mai Zetterling
Signed portrait of Mai Zetterling to the Guild on her visit to the Guild on 28 February 1948, when she talked about new Swedish cinema.

Mai Zetterling (1925-1994) was not only one of the first significant female directors of non-documentary feature films, but arguably deserves credit for being the first director of explicitly feminist films targeted at mainstream audiences – even if she herself decried the title of ‘feminist film director’ as a patronising label. Like Leni Riefenstahl before her, or her contemporary Jane Arden, she began her career as an actor. The story of her early life in her native Sweden (detailed in her excellent autobiography, All Those Tomorrows [1985]) was one of poverty and drudgery, and she left school at 13 to take up a series of menial jobs until her stage debut led to her acceptance at Stockholm’s Royal Dramatic Theatre School. After her defining cinematic role in Hets, she was signed by the Rank Organisation to make Frieda, thus beginning an initially promising but ultimately unrewarding fifteen-year period of British filmmaking in mostly forgettable B-list films and television productions.

Read the full post »

Thank you…

to all those who joined the Guild and came along to our screenings for the 2012-13 season. We look forward to welcoming you back for the 2013-14 season :-)