Oscar-winning actress joins growing support for plan to create £60m nine-storey cinema complex in Edinburgh
OSCAR-WINNING actress Tilda Swinton and Game of Thrones star Iain Glen have backed plans to create a new £60 million cinema complex in Edinburgh.
The Centre for the Moving Image (CMI), which runs the Filmhouse and the Edinburgh film festival, unveiled plans for a new home in March last year.
CMI hopes to secure planning permission from the city’s council later this year, which would allow work to start in 2023 if funding can be raised.
The project, which would transform Festival Square in the city’s west end, has secured the star backing weeks after new designs for the nine-storey complex were unveiled.
Chronicles of Narnia star Swinton, 60, who lives in the Highland town of Nairn, described the proposed new home as an “Enlightenment House” for Edinburgh.
She said the development was a
“bright and heartening horizon” at a time when cinema was being
“craved by audiences like never before”.
Swinton, a patron of the film festival, said: “At a time when we crave cinema like seldom before – its connections, its inclusiveness and internationalism, its thrills and compassion, its fantasy and transport, its narratives, its dreamscapes, its nourishment, its galvanising perspectives – the prospect of a new Filmhouse for Edinburgh is a bright and heartening horizon.”
She continued: “Edinburgh, her cine-dedicated populace and her countless perpetual visitors deserve a new Filmhouse, a new lighthouse, a new Enlightenment House to reflect the open eyes of this great capital city and her global outlook.
“This joyous proposal is a great good thing for us all to look forward to, to dream about and to start celebrating now.”
Downton Abbey actor Iain Glen, 59, who was born in Edinburgh, credited the Filmhouse with nurturing a childhood fascination with cinema.
He said its new building would become “a vital creative hub” for the Scottish screen industry if it was given the green light.
Glen said: “As a kid growing up in
Edinburgh and becoming fascinated in film, the Filmhouse always had the releases that I most wanted to see.
“I fully support the development of the New Filmhouse as a vibrant creative hub for the film industry in Scotland.”
The complex has already secured the backing of author and screenwriter
Irvine Welsh.
His latest film, Creation Stories, which charts the life of Scottish music mogul Alan Mcgee, is due to be unveiled within weeks.
Speaking after the latest plans were unveiled last month, the Trainspotting author said: “Edinburgh can’t remain bereft of cultural ambition. A custom-built Filmhouse would put the city on a par with some of the great cinema capitals of the world.
“It would be a marvellous resource for our community and provide a fitting home for the world’s oldest international film festival.
“Why settle for being an also-ran when you can be one of the very best?”