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other edinburgh festivals
more reasons to return to edinburgh!

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Edinburgh International Film Festival
The Edinburgh International Film Festival or EIFF is part of the Edinburgh Festival, which takes place every August. Established in 1947, it is the longest continually running film festival in the world. When it was started by the Edinburgh Film Guild (the oldest continually running Film Society in the world) it was only for documentaries. At the time there were only a couple of other Film Festivals in the world (Cannes and Venice). The festival shows a range of films from around the world and screens not only feature length films and documentaries, but also shorts, animations and music videos. The Grand Jury awards "The Michael Powell Award for Best New British Feature Film" while the audience can vote for the "Standard Life Audience Award" and a panel made up of first time film-makers judges the "Skillset New Directors Award." There are also several awards given to short films. All films shown are U.K. premieres although many are also European or International Premieres.

The Artistic Director since September 2006 is Hannah McGill, previously a film critic and cinema columnist for [[The Herald {Glasgow)|The Herald]] newspaper. Ginnie Atikinson is the long serving Managing Director. Sir Sean Connery and Tilda Swinton are the film festivals honorary patrons.
Shane Danielson, the previous Artistic director programmed the festival between 2002 and 2006

The Book and Jazz Festivals
The Book and Jazz Festivals, whilst smaller, also attract big names in their respective fields. These are more recently established offshoots of the main festival, but nevertheless have become equally popular.

Edinburgh International Book Festival
The Edinburgh International Book Festival began in 1983 and is now a key event in the August Festival season, celebrated annually in Scotland's capital city. Biennial at first, the Book Festival became a yearly celebration in 1997.

Throughout its 23-year history, the Book Festival has grown rapidly in size and scope to become the largest and most dynamic festival of its kind in the world. In its first year the Book Festival played host to just 30 'Meet the Author' events. Today, the Festival programmes over 650 events, which are enjoyed by people of all ages.

Since its inception, the Book Festival's home has been the beautiful and historic Charlotte Square Gardens, centrally located in Edinburgh's world heritage listed Georgian New Town. Each year the gardens are transformed into a magical tented village, which welcome around 220,000 visitors.

Edinburgh International Jazz Festival
The biggest jazz celebration in the UK takes place in Edinburgh this year from Friday 27 July – Sunday 5 August.

The Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festival is not only the oldest in Britain - the 2007 edition is the 29th - it is also the most diverse. Unusually, Edinburgh treats all jazz styles as equals, and offers listeners the opportunity to hear the entire 90 years of jazz history in a single day. From the original music of New Orleans and Chicago in the early 1920's to the cutting edge of contemporary jazz from New York in 2007 - and across the leading international jazz scenes, Edinburgh covers all the bases.

There are 101 events over ten days and audiences are expected to once again exceed 50,000.

Concerts take place in the Queen's Hall, The Hub, The Spiegeltent (and its new colleague in George Square, The Bosco Theatre), The Lot, The Royal Overseas League, The Jamhouse and The Minto Hotel.