Dear friends,

Myspace is predominantly a place for lovers of music, and whilst we love music, all the main info about Edinburgh International Film Festival can now be found on our very own website at http://www.edfilmfest.org.uk including trailers, news updates, films, events, forums and much more...

As time passes more and more will be added to our homepage, but alas some old things must cease to make way for the new...

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Hannah McGill described the filmmakers in the Under the Radar section as "having balls." Coincidently I've always maintained that one shouldn't make a film with his/her head or heart but should make it with one's bollocks.

I might add that I've known a fair few women with bigger balls than me. Attitude is everything.

From this comes the substance and style. Responding intuitively to your subject rather than imposing a preordained formula upon it is fundamental in capturing something intrinsic and worthwhile. Crack Willow has this ethos embedded deep down within it.

The film was written as we filmed. We began shooting with enough ideas to last the first week. From there on in we made it up as we went along. This approach allowed us to respond in a spontaneous manner.

If an exciting and unexpected scenario developed we were free to follow it. If something failed to excite and stimulate then we abandoned it, threw it in the bin.

I think we shot for about seven weeks, and I'd say that a week of that was dumped in the cesspit. Crack Willow was born from this attitude.

From that attitude surfaced a film which, I hope, is quite unique. As with all aspects of life, it won't be to everyone's liking, I know this, but if the audience is willing, then I sincerely believe they can experience something unflinching and unforgettable.

Unforgettably good or unforgettably bad, again, depends on the individual viewer. That unflinching stance might not be the idea of entertainment to some cinemagoers, but I believe that cinema should be continually exploring new ways of expressing itself.

To remain static in fear of losing a few audience members will be detrimental in the long run. Filmmakers have to take risks and have to be bold with their statements; otherwise the artform becomes invalid.

Crack Willow is a film for those who don't want to stick fastidiously to their own idea of what a film should be.

Martin Radich will be making an appearance at EIFF for his film Crack Willow which screens on 21 June at

Ghosts, ghouls, freaks, fools and a man-eating car? It can only be our half-dozen highlighted horrors.

Let The Right One In

With its poignant rendering of youth's vicissitudes and its lyrical expression of monstrosity, this is an exceptionally well crafted work that will remain with you well after the adrenaline wears off. That it was recently awarded the top prize at Tribeca Film Festival as Best Narrative Feature comes as no surprise, and it's with a great sense of privilege that EIFF presents this extraordinary film to Edinburgh audiences this year.

Blood Car

An unsuspecting vegan creates a carnivorous car in spite of himself, sparking a record high in road accidents. Worldwide festival audiences have been flocking to this outrageous number like sinners to hell, and the numerous trophies it has collected on its way to Edinburgh point to a hefty future mileage. Not suitable for young children and traffic wardens.

Fear(s) of the DarkFear(s) of the Dark

Five major figures from the world of graphic art unite around the themes of fear, the dark, and light in this haunting collection of animated shorts. With unrestricted creative liberty the authors explore the darkest parts of their consciousness, visiting motley fears of fangs, spiders and samurais as they make their way to Lynchian destinations. A Freudian paradise.

Mum and Dad

Rarely does EIFF feel the need to warn audiences of disturbing scenes, but this really is one exceptionally acerbic film, which will challenge even the most hardcore of horror veterans. If there's one place we can fall back on in dismal times it must be the hearth of dear old mum and dad, but in British fear-monger Steven Sheil's world there's simply no escape. Prepare for the worst.

Trail of The Screaming Forehead

The cherished discipline of foreheadology enters the limelight here, with foxy luminary Sheila Bexter momentously uncovering the formula for a potent brow enhancer, just in time for the invasion of extraterrestrial foreheads. Will humans now have what it takes to fight back? Reviving atomic era aesthetics, this brazen Z-movie delivers what it offers with technicolour fidelity.

Shiver

Something sinister lurks in the forest but it's all very hush-hush. And when photophobic schoolboy Santi moves to the area, he is forced to uncover the local secret the tough way. Eerie and uncompromising in the vein of The Descent, Shiver is a workout for the spine.

Groundbreaking documentarian, former private detective and winner of a bet which resulted in Werner Herzog eating his shoe...we take a look at the incredible career of Errol Morris.

"After twenty years of reviewing films, I haven't found another filmmaker who intrigues me more...Errol Morris is like a magician, and as great a filmmaker as Hitchcock or Fellini." Roger Ebert

It's a claim made about, and by, many, but Errol Morris is a cinematic original.

Morris first broke onto the scene in the late 1970's with his portrait of a pet cemetery on the verge of bankruptcy, Gates of Heaven.

The film was inspired a headline in the San Francisco Chronicle, and fellow iconoclast Werner Herzog considered it so unlikely a documentary subject that he offered to eat his shoe if it ever made it to the big screen.

As famously recorded in Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe, the rest is cinematic history.

Following his sophomore feature Vernon, Florida (a fascinating study of the, frankly, bizarre residents of a swamp town), Morris found himself in limbo, unable to secure funding for a feature.

During this period he briefly became a private detective, and used his new found skills to full effect in his next feature, 1988's The Thin Blue Line.

The film concerned the case of Randall Adams, a man wrongly sentenced to death for killing a police officer, and was fundamental in securing his release.

The groundbreaking documentary was visually stunning and used re-enactments and multiple viewpoints, making the viewer question the perception of 'fact'.

Morris switched tack for A Brief History of Time, a study of the life and work of Stephen Hawking, scooping the Grand Jury prize at 1992's Sundance Film Festival.

He finally lifted the Documentary Feature Oscar in 2004 for The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons From the Life of Robert S. McNamara, telling the story of the former Secretary of Defense during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.

His latest feature, Standard Operating Procedure, is typically Morris - an unflinching investigation into the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib. The film has already won the Silver Bear at Berlin, and receives its UK Premiere at this year's Festival.

Herzog himself wonders at Morris' skill, having recently seen the film.

"We know the photos, and we know the events and we know the dramas behind it. And yet I always walk out feeling that I have seen a feature film, a fiction film."

That he continues to startle his contemporaries speaks volumes for Morris' talent, and he shouldn't be missed at the exclusive Errol Morris: In Person event

Take advantage of our Errol Morris ticket deal! Get Errol Morris: In Person and his latest film, Standard Operating Procedure, for only £12 - saving 33% on the regular ticket price.

Offer is only available in person at Filmhouse box office or by calling 0131 623 8030. Offer only available on full price tickets until 4 June.

Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro hit the headlines last year when he created an eerily lifelike android, and his fascinating story is told in the documentary Mechanical Love.

We've heard about them countless times in movies, and have more often than not been warned against their coming, but how prepared are we really to accommodate androids on this side of the silver screen?

Love them or spite them, it seems that the advent of androids in our world is fast becoming a reality, and it may not be long before we look back on Frankenstein, Metropolis and 2001: A Space Odyssey with an acute sense of irony.

If until now we've felt at a safe distance from these variously alarming futures, we may find the unlikely visions of the here and now portrayed in Mechanical Love a little too close for comfort.

The documentary's focus is a primitive but real-life android made in the image of its creator. You may even recognise it.

Last year, photos of Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro and his robotic doppelganger flooded the international press with commentators enthusiastically celebrating the remarkable novelty.

But for the Japanese engineer the android stands for something much greater than the perfunctory plaything that many people prefer it to be.

Ultimately, his goal is to define the quality that gives humans 'sonzai-kan', an aura of presence. We all have it, but some more than others. Is it possible to artificially create this ambivalent quality, and will harnessing it bring man and machine closer together?

Trying to answer the question would not only be pushing robotics to further heights, but seeking to better understand what it is to be human.

"We don't understand ourselves, but others understand us well," claims Ishiguro in one scene of the film, conceding an awkward smile as he goes on to say how he has "learned to be me" through watching the way others manipulate his electronic clone to mimic his manners.

Ishiguro's affections towards robots are still that of longing, but when he learns to love, the world will be changed. Before we know it, all those prophesies will have come true for better or for worse.

And one day we may look back at Mechanical Love and reminisce about the beginning of a new era in the way we might fondly sit back and watch early films now with the faint whirring of the projector in the background, in smug knowledge of what cinema has since become.

Mechanical Love is screening on 19 and 22 June at Filmhouse.

Junta Sekimori

With less than a fortnight to go before the red carpet makes its return, we take a look at a selection of this year's special guests.

Guests will generally attend the first, if not both, of their film's programmed screenings, and audiences will have the opportunity to quiz them in a Q&A session at the end of the show.

The Edge of LoveThe Edge of Love

Director John Maybury will be joined by headliners Keira Knightley, Sienna Miller and Matthew Rhys together with writer Sharman Macdonald and rising indie songwriter Beth Rowley. Look out for the illustrious ensemble as they grace the red carpet on the opening night.

Better Things

Hot on the heels of the film's debut in Cannes, cutting-edge British director Duane Hopkins will be present to discuss his eagerly anticipated first feature. His short films Field (2001) and Love Me or Leave Me Alone (2003) garnered multiple accolades from around the world, including the award for Best British Short for the latter at EIFF.

Jesus Christ Saviour

This intriguing record of the late screen legend Klaus Kinski's brutal take on evangelism should have reached the public much earlier than this. Director Peter Geyer who resuscitated the precious footage will be joined by none other than Klaus' son, Nicolai Kinski, for the film's International Premiere.

Crack Willow

Having graduated from Edinburgh College of Art to the tune of Best British Short award at EIFF 2000, director Martin Radich is hot local produce. EIFF proudly welcomes him back with his debut feature powered by dark, Freudian insights into solitude and death.

Blood Car

A dulcet vegan unwittingly creates a man-eating vehicle. Mindless romp or tasteful metaphor? EIFF presents director Alex Orr for your grilling pleasure.

The King of Ping Pong signals the arrival of yet another major talent at EIFF, in Swedish debut director Jens Jonsson.

Following a decade long apprenticeship as a renowned shorts director, Jens Jonsson has effortlessly graduated to features with his debut, The King of Ping Pong.

Not many first-time directors earn a nomination for the Tiger Award at Rotterdam, never mind scoop a Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in the World Cinema - Drama category.

Quite beside having perhaps the best title at this year's Festival - it sounds even more lyrical in the native Swedish, Ping-Pongkingen - this is a black comedy with darker elements of drama which is set to win over audiences worldwide.

The story centres around a pair of brothers in snow-bound northern Sweden. The rotund Rille is introspective and a table tennis champ at the local youth club, while the younger sibling Eric is lithe and outgoing.

The pair live at home with their mother, pining for their often absent alcoholic father, and the boys struggle with their mother's growing relationship with the local sports shop owner.

The acting is terrific across the board, and the widecreen cinematography of the white wastelands of northern Sweden is simply stunning.

Almost equal parts Napoleon Dynamite and My Life as a Dog, The King of Ping Pong is a debut which easily justifies the buzz it has generated on the festival circuit.

Director Jonsson is undoubtedly a talent to watch, so make sure you don't miss his remarkable debut feature at EIFF.

The King of Ping Pong is screening on 22 and 24 June at Cineworld.

Director Wayne Wang returns to his indie roots with a pair of films at EIFF, typically compelling and deeply involving yet stylistically unique.

It wasn't so long ago that Wayne Wang was the cause célèbre of the US indie scene. The acclaimed director of The Joy Luck Club struck critical gold with a trio of films from 1995 to 1999 - Smoke, Blue in the Face and Anywhere But Here.

All of which made it difficult to reconcile his attachment to such lightweight Hollywood movies such as Maid in Manhattan and Last Holiday in recent years.

The good news for the EIFF audience is that the prolific Hong Kong born director - he's directed almost twenty films in the last three decades - has returned to his independent roots and is back on form.

The Princess of Nebraska and A Thousand Years Of Good Prayers receive their UK Premieres at this year's Festival, following critical acclaim for their handling of delicate issues, the latter winning the Golden Shell at the San Sebastian Film Festival.

The Princess of Nebraska is the lower budget of the two, shot digitally, yet with immense skill, immediately before its companion piece.

Aesthetically the films are almost at odds with each other - a DIY ethic versus high production values - but they share the same literary source, both being adapted from Yiyun Li short stories.

'Princess' and 'Prayers' focus on two very different women with a shared ethnic heritage in an adopted homeland.

While the 'Princess' is a wild and slightly directionless Chinese student in Omaha who travels to San Francisco determined to have an abortion, 'Prayers' tells the story of a modern professional women who finds herself frustratingly tethered to her father who visits from China.

The great unifying factor is that both films are equally effective in dealing with issues of culture and identity, and ,just as with the earlier pairing of Smoke and Blue in the Face, Wang has hit top form as a filmmaker.

The Princess of Nebraska is screening on 27 and 28 June at Cineworld.

A Thousand Years Of Good Prayers is screening on 26 and 28 June at Cineworld.

We have two great ticket deals for you this week.

Errol Morris:
Groundbreaking documentarian, former private detective and winner of a bet which resulted in Werner Herzog eating his shoe...the amazing Errol Morris.

Buy both Errol Morris: In Person and his latest film, Standard Operating Procedure, for only £12 - saving 33% on the regular ticket price.*

If you're not familiar with the Oscar-winning director, check out our In Profile feature here:
http://www.edfilmfest.org.uk/news/view/2038/in-profile-errol-morris/?from=all/1


Directors' Showcase:
The latest episode of EIFF TV rounds up some of the great films running in the Director' Showcase programme and we are offering you any six tickets from our selection for £30 - that's only a fiver each. Watch the video here: http://www.edfilmfest.org.uk/news/view/2041/world-class/?from=all/1


Not a web member?
If you're not already a web member, you're missing out on our twice weekly competitions to win tickets in our members only area, so what are you waiting for?
Join here: www.edfilmfest.org.uk/register

*Offer is only available in person at Filmhouse box office or by calling 0131 623 8030. Offer available on full price tickets until 4 June.