The Edinburgh Short Film Festival grew out of the Leith Short Film Festival which was established in 2005, as the film arm of the Leith Festival.

From 2005 to 2010 the Leith Short Film Festival held screenings across Leith and was noted for diversity in it's programming, from screening the first film made in Somalia for 20 years ('Charcoal Traffic') to holding mutual film screening sessions with the Italian short film festival ‘Arrivano i Corti’ in Montelanico, Italy. We have also provided networking opportunities and worked with the Edinburgh International Film Festival to provide a free-to-access workshop
aimed at film-makers.

The Edinburgh Short Film Festival launched in 2011 and has quickly grown from 4 nights of screenings in 2 venues to 10 nights at  5 venues in 2013.In 2014, the Edinburgh Short Film Festival will be in its fourth year having grown very quickly in consecutive years from 4 nights at 2 venues in 2011 to 10 nights at 5 venues in 2013.
 

We began by screening to about 150 attendance in total in 2011 and this year we had a total number of 401 visitors.
For  2014 we are planning to work closely with STV and the new freeview city channels for Central Scotland, ETV (Edinburgh TV) & GTV (Glasgow TV) with a view to the new channels showcasing some of the best films of next year’s Festival and covering some of the events themselves.

We have also held meetings with Shanghai-based film organisation, KanKan Media with a view to the film centre in Shanghai hosting 3-4 nights of the Edinburgh Short Film Festival in Shanghai following the next ESFF festival in June 2014. This is an exciting opportunity to talk Scottish films and film-makers to China next year and showcase Scottish shorts in the centre of Shanhai.
 

Submissions for the 2014 edition open on Dec 1st 2013.