Starting in September 2013, I joined a group of fellow young people as a Young Programmer for the Edinburgh International Film Festival. Each week, this involved meeting at Filmhouse to watch a selection of films and discuss the film festival with the goal of creating a strand curated and developed for young people including feature films, short films and events. This included writing for the festival’s program & catalog, suggesting events, watching and programming feature & short films as part of a team, hosting guests in Q&As & events, introducing films and representing the festival when required.

For the 2014 edition, this came together as ‘Teen Spirit’ with 6 Feature Films, 6 short films and a wide array of events running in the festival’s Youth Hub over the 2 weeks of the festival. This included films such as Finsterworld (2013), #ChicagoGirl (2013), Korso (2014), Emo: The Musical (2013), Schoolyard (2014) and Half Sour (2013).

For the 2015 edition, this was branded as ‘The Young and the Wild’ with 4 Feature Films, 8 shorts, a full program of events as well as a number of films within the festival we approved and championed for programming. This included films such as How to Win At Checkers (Every Time) (2015), The Sisterhood of Night (2014), Reunion (2015), See Me (2015) and Crooked Candy (2014). One of my proudest moments during this edition of the festival was hosting ‘A Focus on Cinematography’ which was a Q&A event including Seamus McGarvey and Oscar-Winner Haskell Wexler.