Tilda Swinton: The Full Sundance Interview

Is there any film you tend to return to the most often?

Probably the film I've seen the most in my life is a Michael Powell/Emeric Pressburger film called I Know Where I'm Going. It's one of my favorites, and it's a film that I screen quite regularly. We had it dubbed into Mandarin when we had our film festival in Beijing.

Do you have another festival planned? I know you and Mark Cousins just did one in the Scottish highlands this past summer.

Only when nobody's expecting it. Everyone expects one this summer, and I can tell you that it's not happening. Just when everyone thinks that we're not going to do it, then it will happen.

Why is that?

The project is primarily and very importantly personal. It's very, very selfish and it has to be that way. It has to be self-serving for me and Mark Cousins, because our first adventure was at the Ballerina Ballroom in Nairn, and that was just a complete experiment. I mean, they all feel like experiments, and that's one of the reasons I don't want to repeat them when they're expected. It's an experiment in making cinema in a place where there is none, and screening films that most of the people coming to the cinema would never have seen before and would never be able to see in any other way.

You have to be quite overwhelmed that old ladies and fishermen and children would queue up and sell out screenings of the Bill Douglas trilogy or Fellini's 8 1/2. This idea that people won't read subtitles unless they've been to film school is nonsense, and that was really an astonishment to us, this feeling of an active audience. We made not only a festival of films, but we made a cinema audience where there hadn't been one before. One of the things that was most gratifying about that first festival is that the village of Nairn, where I live, has now started its own film society.

And that was independent of you?

Absolutely independent. Well, I'm its godfather -- godmother? -- godfather. That was exactly our point, to encourage and inspire people and let them know how easy it is. You just need a projector and a bunch of DVDs and you've got over a hundred years of film history to draw on -- and Bob's your uncle!

You're a veteran of other people's festivals, including Sundance. How do they compare with yours?

I love film festivals and I always have. I was brought up as a cineaste through film festivals. We have what I think is the most perfect festival experience, which is that we don't have to sell anything to anybody and we can show our favorite films. We don't have to make any money or reputations, and we don't have to pacify any studios. We have no press release and no journalists who don't see the films. It's kind of perfect, so whenever I come to a film festival after one of ours, I feel very sorry for the people who run them. [Laughs]

[Photo Credit: Matt Carr/Getty Images]

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