Trainspotting producer Andrew Macdonald has been appointed chair of the Edinburgh international film festival in order to create a new organisation to run the festival from its 2024 edition onwards, after the abrupt collapse of its previous operator, the Centre for the Moving Image (CMI) in October 2022.
Isabel Davis, executive director of Screen Scotland said: “[Macdonald] was one of the first to offer support when the previous organisation collapsed and with his customary vigour, [he] has already been instrumental in bringing people together to build an exciting new vision for what Edinburgh international film festival can become.”
Screen Scotland added that Macdonald has been tasked with forming “a board and executive team to lead the festival’s development from September 2023 as a creatively potent and financially sustainable fixture in the international festival calendar”.
Macdonald, whose distinguished producing career includes 28 Days Later, Ex Machina and the TV series Black Narcissus as well as Trainspotting, said in a statement: “Edinburgh international film festival played a huge part in my own early producing career; it’s held dear by film-makers and audiences and admired by so many around the world … I’m looking forward to helping to build long-term success for EIFF in the years to come.”
After CMI called in administrators in October, a move which saw the immediate shutdown of Edinburgh’s celebrated Filmhouse cinema and the Belmost Picturehouse, its sister venue in Aberdeen, Screen Scotland acquired the film festival’s trademark and associated intellectual property, and has been able to mount a slimmed-down event due to take place this August with new programme director Kate Taylor.
The future of the Filmhouse is still not clear however: the site, a former church in the city’s Lothian Road, has reportedly been sold for £2.65m to pub operators Caledonian Heritable, and a campaign is under way to try to ensure the building remains a cinema.
