'E' is for “Edinburgh,” as in The Edinburgh International Film Festival, for today's addition to my A to Z challenge posts. This film festival is located in the United Kingdom and has been around for more than 60 years. It's held at an independently operated theater called Filmhouse Cinema and this year's Edinburgh International Film Festival is scheduled to run from June 15th to June 26th, 2011.

Steven Spielberg's “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial” premiered at this film festival among other notable films. Filmhouse Cinema has 3 screens, making it a cozy place to enjoy films such as the Italian selection with English subtitles, “The Man Who Will Come” (Now Playing, by the way!).

Since these last several days have seen the relaunching of Madlab Post themes that were stalled or collecting dust for a while such as the King Dong series, I'm also taking this opportunity to relaunch my Film Festival Wednesdays series starting with the Edinburgh International Film Festival highlight.

With that out of the way, I remember an online conversation with a young girl who lived down south while promoting one of my movies back in 2006 and was surprised when she told me that she wanted to see independent films but did not know of any film festivals in here area. Even though we were several states and thousands of miles apart, I could think of at least 3 festivals in her area that she could visit and could not understand why she had no idea that they existed.

I asked myself the following questions:

-Were these festivals not advertising enough?

-Was this particular movie fan just not that diligent enough to find out about where new movies are playing?

-Are most movie fans just unaware of or ignoring the media in which film festivals are advertised in?

I still haven't found the answers to these questions but would like to do what I can to help movie lovers find events such as film festivals in their area, where they can check out some obscure films and foreign films while also possibly meeting the actors and directors behind these movies.....something not often offered at your local cineplex. Seriously, when was the last time a huge star greeted you and said “thanks for watching this film” when you were at your local movie theater? We don't exactly expect Jake Gyllenhaal to greet us at the theater when we go to see “Source Code,” do we?

This is one of the many perks that make visiting film festivals so wonderful!

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