Lynda Myles was the first woman to lead a major international film festival when she directed the Edinburgh International Film Festival from 1973 to 1980. Her pioneering programming brought together in-depth retrospectives of Hollywood directors like Douglas Sirk and Raoul Walsh alongside the then very new German Cinema, contemporary American Avant Garde and early works of the likes of David Cronenberg and Martin Scorsese.

In 1972 she, along with Laura Mulvey and Claire Johnston, held The Women’s Event. A champion of emerging and enduring talent, she premiered and then screened Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles three times over her tenure. She would go on to coin the term “The Movie Brats” in her book of the same name, co-written with Michael Pye.

This documentary is at once relaxed and thrilling, with director Mark Cousins positioned as friend rather than interviewer, and Myles’s remarkable career described in her own words reflects on films that have inspired her, and adventures in the film culture she helped shape.

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