Screen Scotland has announced that it has purchased the intellectual property rights to the Edinburgh International Film Festival.
The national body that drives the development of the Scottish film and TV industry has acquired the rights from administrators for the Centre for the Moving Image (CMI), the charity that previously ran the festival.
The rights, including the festival’s domain name and brand assets, will be provided “as appropriate to a future operator of the festival”, Screen Scotland confirmed.
In a statement released on Thursday, the national body said that an options appraisal for a film festival in Edinburgh in 2023 is “underway”.
READ MORE: Tilda Swinton honoured with film archive award in Glasgow
The appraisal is being led by Kristy Matheson, who was Creative Director of the Edinburgh International Film Festival in 2022, and colleagues. They will be supported by the Edinburgh International Festival.
📢 Screen Scotland has been in discussions regarding cultural cinema programme activity in both Edinburgh and Aberdeen following the closure of the CMI.
— Screen Scotland (@screenscots) December 1, 2022
We now have an update on the progress of a film festival for Edinburgh.
Read the update ➡️ https://t.co/03Qcx5yDIY pic.twitter.com/1MQtpwu5Kz
The work is being funded with an award of up to £97,647 from Creative Scotland, which is being drawn from the 2022/23 Regular Funding Awards originally allocated to the CMI.
Screen Scotland said it anticipated that the options appraisal will be completed by the end of January, 2023, and further announcements will be made after that time.
Commenting on the sale of the intellectual property rights of The Edinburgh International Film Festival, Chad Griffin, joint administrator and partner with FRP Advisory said: “We are delighted to have secured a sale of the Edinburgh International Film Festival IP to Creative Scotland.
"Screen Scotland sits within Creative Scotland and is well placed to take forward the development of the Edinburgh International Film Festival, which is a crucial part of Edinburgh’s cultural programming.
“We are also pleased to announce that following an extensive marketing process for the Filmhouse building on Lothian Road in Edinburgh a closing date for offers has now been set for 7th December 2022.”
The CMI entered administration back in October, and said at the time it was "facing the perfect storm of sharply rising costs, in particular energy costs, alongside reduced trade due to the ongoing impacts of the pandemic and the cost of living crisis."
The shock news came just months after the CMI lodged a planning application for a new nine-story £60m building in Edinburgh.
Since the closure of the CMI, incorporating the Edinburgh Filmhouse, the Belmont Filmhouse in Aberdeen and the Edinburgh International Film Festival, Screen Scotland has been in discussions with administrators and other partners to explore options for cultural cinema programme activity in both Edinburgh and Aberdeen, as well as the possibility of a 2023 edition of Edinburgh’s film festival.
The Film Festival celebrated its 75th anniversary in August, returning to a fully in-person event for the first time since the pandemic. It is the world's oldest continually running film festival.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel