@ Filmhouse, Edinburgh, on Fri 20 May 2016

Neu! Reekie! & A Kind of Seeing / Scotland / 2016 / 90 mins

Edinburgh’s avant-garde poetry darlings Neu! Reekie! have teamed up with A Kind of Seeing to curate a cinematic ode to Auld Reekie. Inspired by Mark CousinsI Am Belfast, We Are Edinburgh is a three-act city symphony for Scotland’s capital. Featuring live poetry from T.S. Eliot Prize winner Don Paterson and Granta British Young Novelist Jenni Fagan with musical accompaniment from Eyes on Others and trance music pioneer FiniTribe, this film showcases Edinburgh in all of its high-brow and underground glories.

Neu! Reekie! describe the film as a “poetic mosaic”, one that ties together “fragments of the city”. You can see why. Where I Am Belfast shows that Belfast has more to it than sectarian conflict, We Are Edinburgh unveils the unseen clashes that make up the city. Images of pristine ladies in white gloves traversing Princes Street are held up against Leith slums full of dishevelled children and collapsing buildings. We see the divide between Old Town and New Town, the privileged and the impoverished, the English and the Scottish, and ultimately between Edinburgh and the rest of Scotland.

A greater departure from I Am Belfast is the Edinburgh team’s use of archival footage. Rather than cast an actress to play the city, We Are Edinburgh lets real Edinburghers from all walks of life tell their own stories. This is typical of Neu! Reekie!, who constantly undermine the separation between high and low art. There is no special artist to claim Edinburgh as their own (not even a cameo from Hugh MacDiarmid can manage that). The message is clear in We Are Edinburgh. The city is all of ours.

The team do a fantastic job of shining a light on the Edinburgh that people live in, rather than the romantic landmark that tourists fantasise about. Images on the screen share in-joke after in-joke – references to the trams, exact change on the buses, and the unbearableness of the military tattoo provoke knowing chuckles from the audience. This is not necessarily a film that everyone will “get” (although the combination of amateur and professional footage is certainly watch-worthy). It appeals instead to a specific Edinburgh humour.

By showing their “new Edinburgh” – a “Neu! Edinburgh” if you will – Neu! Reekie! have touched on the familiar contradictions inside Edinburgh’s identity. At once humorous and touching, atmospheric and blunt, familiar and strange, We Are Edinburgh’s testament to every Edinburgher’s home city is spot on. For now, this is a one-off event, though the team may return with similar projects.