Edinburgh – Day 6

Empire has just joined director Damien O'Donnell in bed. Well, not exactly in bed, more sitting on the edge. And it's not some hotel room scandal, as the bed in question is upstairs in the Indigo Yard bar. With posters on the wall (Jack Daniels, Slipknot) and a TV in the corner, it's recreating one of the sets in O'Donnell's new movie, Inside I'm Dancing, which has just received its World Premiere at Edinburgh. The latest from the director of East Is East and Heartlands focuses on the friendship of two young Irishmen, one with cerebral palsy, the other with muscular dystrophy. The film quickly gets over any PC/non-PC hurdles to create a fully rounded portrait of the boys with all of their humour, pain and selfishness on show. That it's in no way sentimental has a lot to do with a trio of performances at its centre - from Romola Garai, Steven Robertson and James McAvoy. All three are at the party, with McAvoy (soon to be seen in Wimbledon) making a quick overnight stop in his Scottish homeland before heading off to New Zealand this Thursday to continue shooting The Chronicles Of Narnia. When Empire leaves the bar and heads for a real bed, the DJ has cranked up the music and, yes indeed, inside they're dancing. You know, ninety per cent of the time, festivals are all about looking forward - discovering new talent, watching the next big thing. It's a relief to use that other 10% to pause and look back. Director Lindsay Anderson died in 1994 and, aside from This Sporting Life and irrefutable British classic If..., his cinema work is neglected in his home country. One of the highlights of this year's Edinburgh Film Festival was Malcolm McDowell's live one man show based on memories of Anderson and readings from his diaries and letters. For two performances only, McDowell - star of Anderson's If..., O Lucky Man and Britannia Hospital - held the attention of an audience in the Traverse Theatre, as he travelled from his first meeting with his mentor (who "looked like a Roman senator") at an audition for If..., through hilarious stories about Alan Bates, Richard Harris and the like, to a moving encounter beside John Ford's deathbed. "Stanley Kubrick was a good director," says McDowell, famous for A Clockwork Orange, "but Lindsay Anderson was a poet - and a great one." The day before, a panel of Anderson's friends and colleagues (including actor Graham Crowden and Mike Kaplan, producer of Whales Of August) shared fond anecdotes between rare screenings of two Anderson documentary shorts (Thursday's Children and The Singing Lesson). If the mood was more like a bunch of luvvies gathered for an interval drink at the theatre, that was no bad thing. Edinburgh's Anderson tribute was more about warm, personal reminiscences than a strictly critical and contextual analysis of his work. Leave that to books and film courses; this has been about keeping alive the memory of the man. And, at a festival where genuine cinema masters have been thin on the ground, it has been especially touching to have Lindsay Anderson walking among us. Flashforward Tips for Wednesday *The Professor (Filmhouse, noon) * The retrospective of work by neglected Italian director Valerio Zurlini continues with this 1972 film, starring Alain Delon as a university lecturer, who distracts himself from the troubles in his life by drinking, gambling and having an affair with a student. *Hamburg Cell (UGC, 7.30pm) * Arguably the most controversial talking point of the Festival, Antonia Bird's latest drama views the events leading up to 9/11 from the perspective of the terrorists who hijacked the planes. *The Machinist (UGC, 9.30pm) * Guilt, hallucinations and an emaciated Christian Bale fuse with Memento-style mind games in this Sundance hit, here receiving its UK Premiere.