The Edinburgh Film Festival

It would mean, for example, that visitors could confidently expect to see different films at each festival instead of, as happens so often at present, the same few films. It would also mean that a film student interested in a special aspect of the cinema would be able to satisfy that interest by visiting a single festival and not merely have it titillated by chance items in generalized festival programs. It might mean, too, that an enthusiast could make the circuit of the festivals confident that he would have a series of experiences rather than the same one repeated in different surroundings. When the Edinburgh Film Festival was launched in 1947, there were some critics in Britain who regretted its concentration on the cinema of reality. To them it seemed a pity that Britain's only film festival should not be modeled on the broad lines of Venice and