... My Local Multiplex. Yes I do go there sometimes. Just to keep up with the current trends in popular mainstream cinema, you understand. Hey, it’s my job... And I do it in my spare time, such is my dedication. Whilst there the other week, I spotted a friend of mine who got all embarrassed on seeing me. The reason for the red face, she explained, was that she felt disloyal to Filmhouse (which she loves) by going to see a film, at another cinema, that she could have seen here. (Our timings didn’t suit, apparently!) But I was not in the mood to let her off the hook, so I ladled the guilt on even further by telling her we are very much reliant on the income from box office to support our hugely diverse programme, and if those who love us choose to go elsewhere.... Joking apart, we know you often have a choice, but we do love it when you choose here. We even have a (fairly) new ‘loyalty’ scheme to make it that much easier for you... (our Marketing Officer made me say that!)

And you’ll want to visit in December, oh yes, for our programme is bung-full of stuff you simply can’t see anywhere else! The festive season looms large (post-ironically of course) in our programme – White Christmas (brand new digital restoration), It’s a Wonderful Life, The Sound of Music, The Great Escape, A Matter of Life and Death and The Apartment – so come spend it with us!

There’s thrilling mountain action in North Face (Nordwand), as two German climbers become the great national hope of the Nazi party to be the first to climb that face of the Eiger; Rivals (Les liens du sang) sees top French stars François Cluzet and Guillaume Canet as two brothers on opposite sides of the law in 1970s France; in Aleksandr Sokurov’s latest, Alexandra, a tough elderly lady visits her soldier grandson at his camp in Chechnya; and there’s new prints galore with Vittorio De Sica’s long-unavailable, neo-realist masterpiece, fully restored, Bicycle Thieves (Ladri di biciclette), the return, by popular demand, of Marlon Brando and Vivien Leigh in Elia Kazan’s A Streetcar Named Desire, and Fredric March in the definitive, 1931 version of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

Dance-o-Rama! is a short season of ‘dance’ films to tie in with the city’s New Year celebrations, and we’ve a brand new, annual, documentary festival, Illuminations, put together by our very own Jenny Leask (who occasionally appears in this column as ‘Ed’!) who has made very good use of her many years programming the doc section of EIFF. But she’s all ours now!

And, oh yes, compliments of the season to you all!