EIFF 2017: Edgar Wright immersive cinema events

Feature by The Skinny | 23 May 2017

New immersive cinema series EIFF: Play will kick off with events based on Edgar Wright's Scott Pilgrim vs the World, Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz

Edinburgh International Film Festival (21 Jun-2 Jul) will get interactive this year with EIFF: Play, the festival’s newly announced immersive event cinema experience. The subject of the inaugural event, which kicks off on 15 June, will be the films of Edgar Wright. Audiences will be able to lose themselves in three of the British director’s features: romantic and inventive gamer-fantasy Scott Pilgrim vs the World, zombie-comedy Shaun of the Dead and crime-action spoof Hot Fuzz.

The immersive site-specific screenings of these great films will take place at three unusual venues across the city: The Venue at Potterrow and Teviot Row House, The Biscuit Factory, and Church Hill Theatre.

“We’re thrilled to launch EIFF: Play in our 70th Anniversary Year,” said EIFF director Mark Adams. “For the first time, we’re taking the concept of Edgar Wright’s incredible catalogue of films and bringing them to life across Edinburgh, with a number of immersive cinema experiences and parties.”

For the Scott Pilgrim vs the World screening (15 Jun), audiences will enter the world of the titular Scott Pilgrim, the 22-year-old gamer, garlic bread-loving, Coke Zero-drinking, bass guitar player in band Sex Bob-omb and the scrawny hero of Wright’s film and Brian Lee O’Malley's graphic novel, upon which the film is based. The interactive event at The Venue at Potterow will be followed by a comic book party at Teviot Row House. “Take part in our Tiny Zine Swap Shop, try new and retro games with We Throw Switches, and watch live illustration by Too Much Fun Club, complete with DJs and video game themed bars,” reads EIFF’s press release.

The Biscuit Factory should provide the perfect atmosphere for a screening of Shaun of the Dead (22 Jun), after which you’ll be able to “party into the undead hours with ghoulish DJs spinning tracks.” To survive the night you’ll be given your very own “zombie pack”, be shown some special effects makeup techniques so you can blend in with the undead, and it sounds like Edinburgh International Science Festival are getting in on the action too with what’s described as a “Blood Bar” (although a Brain Bar would have been more apt, surely).

Finally there’s Hot Fuzz (29 Jun), the action-packed and fairly hilarious middle-section of Wright's Cornetto trilogy. We’re told audiences should “report to the Church Hill Theatre on Thursday 29 June for a crime fighting masterclass” that accompanies the screening. At the event, audiences can “collect their bobby’s helmet and investigate the unusual happenings at EIFF’s summer fête” – which will include tombola, a chance to “get sketchy” with Primitive Painters, plus slam poetry from Loud Poets in partnership with the Scottish Poetry Library.

Tickets range from £13 - £15 and are available now through the EIFF website. Tickets for each event gives access to that film and its party; see www.edfilmfest.org.uk for more details.

The full EIFF 2017 programme will be announced 31 May. Tickets go on sale to Filmhouse members on Wednesday 31 May at 12pm and on sale to the public on 2 Jun