Opinion: Bring back the EIFF to August

You are currently trapped in the biggest arts festival on the planet. Over the next three weeks you’ll see weird and wonderful events, encompassing the written word, comedy, art, theatre, dance and the popular pageantry starring kilted men wearing bear skin hats, walking in very precise circles while making a God-awful racket using the sheep’s stomachs under their arms.

But one art form is conspicuous by its absence: cinema. Since 2008, when the Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF) moved its two week celebration of world cinema from August to June, film has been at the fringes of the fringes. But, does the Edinburgh Festival miss the EIFF, and would it want it backin its current guise? I’d suggest the resounding answer is no.

Compared to the other forms on offer, the moving image is practically a baby – barely a century old. Yet compared to the anarchy of the Fringe the EIFF looks positively geriatric, like one of those kids brought up by their grandparents who have taken on their atavistic mannerisms. The EIFF’s presentation is prosaic, indistinguishable from any normal screening at Filmhouse or Cameo. It has neither the pomp and ceremony of the International Festival, nor the frenetic energy of the Fringe.

At its inception, however, EIFF was, like the Fringe, a rebel, created to be a resounding fuck you to the International Festival, which had ignored cinema in its inaugural 1947 programme. Over the last 65 years the Fringe, despite corporate sponsorship and breakaway festivals, still maintains pockets of artistic punk rock. The same cannot be said for the EIFF, which has settled of late for a programme that is a murky slop of middlebrow and mainstream cinema.

There’s a suggestion that the EIFF might be making its way back to its August slot — a knee jerk reaction by its organizers after local and international journalists turned on their floundering film festival. It's a desperate attempt at cultural osmosis,a desperate attempt to use the Fringe’s manic energy to revitalise EIFF’s moribund bones.

The Fringe abhors a vacuum, and there are a crop of curators at this year’s festival who have brought film back. Summerhall is showing a selection of shorts and psychedelic feature films in the quirky spaces at the Royal Dick Veterinary School. CineFringe created an audience centered programme where each day’s attendees get to vote for their favourite short in the programme.

If the EIFF wants Edinburgh’s August festivities it could do a lot worse than look to see how these programmers are framing cinema within August’s manic throng, because, if it returns in its current state it will be akin to a middle-age trainspotter crashing a freshers' orgy.