Paul Ridd, a long-term acquisitions exec at Picturehouse Cinemas, has been named director of the Edinburgh World Movie Pageant (EIFF).
Ridd joins Edinburgh in December from his present position as head of acquisitions at Picturehouse. His first version — the pageant’s 77th anniversary — will happen in August 2024. He’s taking over from Kate Taylor, who quietly left the pageant after main this 12 months’s smaller, one-off version as a part of the town’s wider cultural pageant.
As director, Ridd will likely be accountable for growing, growing, and working the trade, enforcing the fundraising technique, and turning in the cheap and a multi-year plan for the pageant. As well as, he’s going to paintings collaboratively with the board to guide the group’s general strategic course and sustainability, increase the tactic and imaginative and prescient, and construct a brand new workforce.
Picturehouse releases throughout Ridd’s time on the corporate incorporated Francis Lee’s God’s Personal Nation, Audrey Diwan’s Going down, Charlotte Regan’s Scrapper, and maximum just lately Justine Triet’s Palme D’Or winner Anatomy Of A Fall. Ridd has additionally acted as a program consultant to the BFI London Movie Pageant since 2018 and a world advisor for the Karlovy Range World Movie Pageant since 2019.
Ridd’s tenure will apply a chronic duration of turbulence at Edinburgh, which incorporated a short lived closure after its proprietor, the Centre for the Transferring Symbol, collapsed. Professionals on the CMI appointed directors in October 2022. On the time of management, a remark from the CMI stated a “absolute best hurricane” of emerging prices and falling admissions numbers because of the pandemic have been exacerbated by means of the present value of residing disaster. As a part of the CMI’s closure, its two celebrated bodily cinema websites, the Belmont Filmhouse in Aberdeen and Filmhouse Cinema in Edinburgh, additionally close their doorways. In a while after, the EIFF logo was once retrieved by means of Display screen Scotland, a countrywide investment frame, making an allowance for a scaled-back 2023 version. Kristy Matheson, Edinburgh’s closing everlasting director, was once in put up for simply over a 12 months. She was once named BFI fairs director in March 2023.
“We’re thrilled that Paul would be the new Pageant Director at Edinburgh World Movie Pageant,” stated Andrew Macdonald, Chair of Edinburgh World Movie Pageant. “Paul is movie and has the power and entrepreneurial talents to guide and champion the brand new, recent voice of EIFF. I look ahead to supporting him and the brand new workforce now and at some point.”
Ridd added: “’I’m past overjoyed to be becoming a member of EIFF at a an important level in its historical past. I purpose to guide the pageant right into a brilliant new long term with world-class movies, world-class filmmakers, and engaged audiences on the middle of the entirety we do. Within the coming months, I look ahead to assembling a workforce to ship the pageant, running intently with Andrew Macdonald and the brand new board to release one thing recent and other for the worldwide scene. I’m indebted to the extraordinary mentorship of Clare Binns those previous years and I purpose to copy her fierce willpower, hobby, and real love for cinema because the riding ideas of the pageant. Watch this area, and produce it on.”
