Light and dark: Top films and malt to kick off SDO2019 celebrations

Edinburgh Short Film Festival has been named Britain’s best film festival just as its director Paul Bruce is curating a selection of award-winning highlights for their Australian premiere as part of Bendigo’s Scots Day Out celebrations.

TAKE ONE Magazine judged the ESFF the pick of festivals in Britain for 2018, saying “Edinburgh Short Film Festival in detail revealed an insanely high standard.

“Our Best Festival Short winner, THE WIDER SUN, and two of the three runners-up, screened at the festival (BLUE CHRISTMAS won Best Scottish Short and FAUVE won Best Short). The audience-friendly format of successive weekends also won approval, in addition to guest programming from the Estonian Short Film Centre and IMCINE, the Mexican Institute of Cinematography.

“An eclectic mixture of shorts, thoughtfully programmed into thematic strands brought a wide variety of superb short films to the Scottish capital.” “We’re delighted and thrilled to have won TAKE ONE Magazine’s Best Festival award! TAKE ONE carried out informed, insightful and crafted coverage of the films and events at the 2018 ESFF and we’re glad they enjoyed the festival! It’s always extremely difficult to win awards in any field in the film industry, so we’re very proud and grateful to win the Best Festival award!”

Now the best of Scotland and Britain is coming to Australia on Friday 2 May in The Engine Room at Bendigo’s Capital Theatre where Scotland: Light and Dark will feature Edinburgh Shorts interspersed with an exclusive whisky tasting of the some the world’s finest and rarest single malts hosted by Craig Merson of The Whisky Company.

This will be the fourth year of the special creative partnership between ESFF – now the best in Britain – and one of Australia’s premier celebrations for traditional and contemporary Scottish culture SDO.

Bookings for the film and whisky double open next week.