Edinburgh Film Festival

The Edinburgh International Film Festival, the longest continuously run film festival in the world, moved to a new fortnight-long run in June in 2008.

The Edinburgh International Film Festival and Filmhouse today announced the departure of Ginnie Atkinson (second from left) to pursue new projects.

Thugs, footmen, dignitaries, doctors, and ladies of the night are being sought for a new comedy feature film about Edinburgh's famous grave-robbers-turned-murderers Burke and Hare. Universal Extras are holding auditions for the parts at the Tolbooth in Stirling on Thursday 17th December from 9am to 5pm (people can turn up any time on the day according to the announcement).

The 7th Edinburgh Mountain Film Festival returns to the Capital from 15-18 October, with controversial American climber Timmy O'Neill topping the bill. O'Neill, 40, hails from Boulder, Colorado and has made his name in the extreme climbing discipline of ‘buildering' which involves climbing city centre buildings and structures without a rope. ‘Slacklining' - walking along a rope strung between rock towers - is another of this extreme climber's favourite pastimes.

Take One Action - the UK's first major activist film festival - takes two this year.

Does the world really need another blaxploitation spoof?

Imagine a darker version of Walk the Line, perhaps as directed by David Lynch, and you begin to get an idea of what to expect from this imaginary biopic.

This new documentary from Kirby Dick seeks to do for closeted Republican politicians what his earlier This Film is Not Yet Rated did for the MPAA, namely expose hypocrisy and a self-serving agenda.

As someone who grew up watching Hammer horror and who regretted that new British horror films were few and far between at the time, I never thought I’d find myself responding to a film like

In 1966 Jean Luc Godard made Two or Three Things I Know About Her, a film about a Parisian housewife who prostituted herself in order to enjoy the fruits of consumer capitalism. Appearing on television to promote the film and further explain its message, that capitalism = prostitution, Godard would be accompanied by an actual prostitute.

Or Emmanuelle [Beart] and the Last Cannibals?

Horror films have never been that big in the Francophone world. One suspects that the reason, besides the competing discourse of the fantastique, is that they are seen as somewhat déclassé, not serious enough.

The title Giallo refers, generically, to a distinctive kind of Italian horror-thriller film, of which writer-director Dario Argento has been a leading exponent since his 1970 debut The Bird with the Crystal Plumage.

First things first: I must confess to being a fan of Christian Petzold’s work, such that the semi-annual appearance of his latest film usually represents one of the highlights of the EIFF for me.

Katalin Varga: it’s the kind of title that, beyond telling you its subject is a woman, gives nothing away and encourages you to look more closely at the

Duncan Jones's low-budget sci-fi Moon has won the prestigious Michael Powell Award for Best New British Feature Film

The Edinburgh International Film Festival gives out a number of awards at the end of the festival run. The top award is generally considered to be the Michael Powell Award which carries a cash prize of £20,000 and which is decided by a jury of film experts and industry professionals.

The closing film of the Edinburgh International Film Festival is suitably light in tone. A romcom with a twist, it's a tale of a beautiful girl meets boy with Asperger's Syndrome, a condition that is a mild form of autism.

Times were always hard for the British Arthouse film-maker and never more so than right now. British directors, those wishing to pursue more enlightened ideals than cockney gangster geezer pastiches or clapped out movie vehicles for overexposed TV stars, are increasingly looking abroad for funding.

I'm old enough to remember Bill Forsyth's first films Gregory's Girl and That Sinking Feeling resonating with me as a teenager when, in the early Eighties, I first watched them during half-term breaks in the North of Scotland. We thought they were great. The dark, understated comedies were familiar and strange at the same time - it seemed like some local kids had just strolled into the film, yet there was nothing else like these out there. Scottish feature films were few and far between back then.

I can tell you this year's EIFF has nearly taken it out of me. I decided to go for a swim this morning to try and remember what its like to not be in a cinema and to feel...well just to feel anything to be honest. In the last two weeks, my muscles for doing anything physical have atrophied into a sitting half awake position and consequently I sank to the bottom of the pool like a stone the second I jumped in.