New Artistic Director Chris Fujiwara
It's fair to say that 2011 was not a vintage year for Edinburgh Film Festival. With considerable trouble at the top, a truncated programme and a hole left where the Michael Powell Award should have been, the edition was heavily criticised, although it's worth remembering it still featured a number of notable films including The Turin Horse, Bombay Beach and Tomboy. A year is a long time in programming, however, and new artistic director Chris Fujiwara, along with the festival's stalwart team of long-standing programmers, has brought a welcome calm and confident air to the 2012 programme.
The end result is as cosmopolitan as Fujiwara's background. A New Yorker, who has most recently been living and working in Japan, he has written books on the equally well-travelled Otto Preminger and Jacques Tourneur, and a glance at his website insanemute reveals a man of diverse taste and cinematic passion. And diversity is the name of the game when it comes to the 121 films he and his team have been selected from 52 countries, which stretch from the crowd-pleasing family film Brave - receiving its European premiere on the closing night - to arthouse documentary Bestiare and the first full career retrospective of Shinji Somai to be curated outside of Japan.
When I catch up with Fujiwara two days before the festival kicks off with William Friedkin's controversial Killer Joe, he's excited and somewhat relieved that the fun is about to begin - chiefly because it is at that point that he will get to connect with audiences.
"That's the main thing for me really," he says. "I've only been in Edinburgh since January, so this will be my first encounter with the Edinburgh Film Festival audience and I've very eager to get feedback from them, to hear their reaction to the programme, to be at screenings with them and to hear their questions for the filmmakers."
There will certainly be plenty of lesser known films to talk about as well as the chance to dissect hotly anticipated titles include Peter Strickland's "anti-horror" Berberian Sound Studio, Robert Carlyle's return to the big screen in California Solo and James Marsh's cracking return to fiction features Shadow Dancer. Films just begging to be discovered include work from up and coming British-based talent, such as Alex Barrett (Life Just Is) and Katarzyna Klimkiewicz (Flying Blind) and entire strands dedicated to the Philippine New Wave and films from South America, while fans of the avant-garde will welcome the return of the experimental Black Box strand.
Discovery is something that Fujiwara is keen to emphasise.
"I think these days there are so many festivals at all levels of ambition and scope, that a festival has to do something to try to distinguish itself," he says "And that has to happen largely through the programming. One has to try to find new films that haven't been over-exposed already on the festival circuit and one has to find old films that one can show in retrospectives that are truly in need of rediscovery."
Fujiwara doesn't just have confidence in his film choices - which he described as being "about where cinema is today, what it can learn from the past and where it can go in the future" at the festival launch - he is also robust in his defence of audiences and their willingness to come along for the ride.
"I have a lot of faith in the adventurousness of the audience," he says. "I think that a programmer should have that faith because if we don't have that then we're just being cynical about the capacities and interests of our audience and if we're that cynical then there's no point in doing what we're doing. We have to believe that there is interest in seeing good work, especially work that is impossible to see in normal commercial cinemas. I think that's the central part of what a festival has to do.
"There's a long tradition of really adventurous, really original and imaginative programming at Edinburgh that I'm trying to continue."
And when it comes to seeing work that's impossible to see as a general rule, this year's retrospectives are little gems. Fujiwara is quick to praise his team - led by James Rice - for their work in negotiating prints, getting them shipped to Edinburgh and making sure that rights' holders are paid.
"It's an enormous amount of work," he says. "The Somai retrospective, dealing with all the Japanese rights' holders and prints sources has been very complicated but ultimately very successful. And the Gregory La Cava too, it was a big chore finding all those prints - they're quite rare."
Older Japanese films, in particular, are notoriously hard to find on the festival circuit because they often come with a lofty price-tag attached, so the Somai and Shinya Tsukamoto retrospectives are particularly welcome.
"I'll be quite honest, the Somai retrospective is a very expensive one," Fujiwara admits. "Japanese film companies do tend to charge more than the global norm for older titles. Programmers know this so if they plan to do a Japanese retrospective of some kind, they go into it with their eyes open."
And does he think that hinders Japanese films being brought to wider audiences?
"Yes, I think that's true. There's a lot of hope that as more and more of these retrospectives get done, that there's a greater dialogue with the Japanese film companies - a mutual education process so that they can learn about the constraints on our budgets and we can learn to work with them."
Despite this, Edinburgh has maintained its payment policy regarding new films.
"We don't pay screening fees for any of the new titles in our programme," says Fujiwara. "The only case when we would play screening fees is for retrospective titles."
With that in mind, it's easy to see why reinstating the Michael Powell Award for Best British Film, along with several other accolades, was an important way of attracting talent to the festival as well as celebrating new work.
"That was probably the first decision after I was appointed in September, together with the fact that we were going to bring back the awards," says Fujiwara. "I made it clear that we should bring back the awards and they should be open to documentaries because in the film world today, it makes no sense to distinguish documentaries and put them in a ghetto by themselves. They are part of cinema on an equal basis with fiction films.
"Awards do two things," he adds. "They add to the excitement and lustre of festival for the audience and the press - very important. And they add to the attraction of the festival for filmmakers and distributors and sales agents because naturally they want to have an award that they can put in their press pack. So I think it's good for everybody."
And even though Fujiwara is currently on a one-year contract, he clearly hopes he'll be invited to stay.
"Oh, absolutely. One year is not enough, really. It'll take several festivals really to build up a relationship with the audience, till they know me and I know them to the point where it can be a maximally productive relationship."
So, we're back to that vital ingredient again. The thing that makes films tick - the audience. And what would Fujiwara like them to say when the curtain falls on the festival on July 1?
"I would like them to say that they had such a great time, that they saw so many great films that they continuing to think about. That they can't wait to talk about these films with their friends and recommend them to them and that they're really looking forward to next year."
Bring it on.
