Cycle 16 Alt-w Production Award - Leigh Bagley
leighbagley.com

30th October 2026 to 29th January 2027. FREE
Level 2, EFI, 1 Lauriston Place, Edinburgh EH3 9EF

What happens when a graphic system originally designed to organise time becomes a mechanism for generating the experience of time? Inspired by French designer Jean-Pierre Vitrac's iconic perpetual wall calendar, this new moving-image artwork transforms its graphic structure into a chronographic animation that explores pattern and rhythm.

Cycle 16 Alt-w Exhibition Award - Étienne Jacob
bleuje.com

1st September to 28th November 2026. FREE
Music Hall, Union Street, Aberdeen AB10 1QS

Built using algorithms, mathematics and digital processes, these animations embrace the creative constraints of the Graphics Interchange Format (GIF). They can be enjoyed without explanation, while revealing extraordinary complexity beneath their elegant simplicity.

Saturday 5th December 2026, 7:30pm. £15
Lauriston Castle, 2 Cramond Rd S, Edinburgh EH4 6AD

Based on the 1925 novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, this Academy Award-winning tour-de-force was co-written and directed by Baz Luhrmann. His inimitable style envelopes an ensemble cast that includes Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Carey Mulligan and Elizabeth Debicki.

In the Summer of 1922, young writer Nick Carraway moves to a small groundskeeper's cottage on Long Island. His neighbour is mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby, who hosts extravagant parties in his magnificent mansion next door. Nick soon sees the deceit and shallowness of it all.

Saturday 15th August 2026, 2:30pm. FULLY BOOKED
Lauriston Castle, 2 Cramond Rd S, Edinburgh EH4 6AD

'Faust – A German Folktale' (1926) is a silent fantasy film directed by F. W. Murnau that draws on older traditions of the legendary tale of Faust, as well as on Goethe's classic 1808 version. With technically elaborate special effects, it is a masterpiece of German Expressionist filmmaking.

Mephisto is a demon who wagers dominion over Earth with an archangel. He bets he can corrupt a righteous man's soul and destroy all that's divine in him. He beguiles an old alchemist by the name of Faust into selling him his soul, leading the despairing man into a downward spiral.

Saturday 11th April 2026, 2:30pm. FULLY BOOKED
Lauriston Castle, 2 Cramond Rd S, Edinburgh EH4 6AD

In 1926, Lauriston Castle was bequeathed to Scotland by its last private owners, Mr. and Mrs. William Robert Reid. We're marking the centenary of the bequest with a series of special film screenings of titles both made and set in the 1920s starting with 'The General' (1926).

Co-directed by Clyde Bruckman and star Buster Keaton, this silent comedy was inspired by the true story of the Great Locomotive Chase that occurred during the American Civil War. Expect audacious set pieces and Keaton performing his own stunts as train engineer Johnnie Gray.

Cycle 16 Alt-w Production Award - Daira Ronzoni
dairaronzoni.com

1st April to 31st May 2025. FREE
Music Hall, Union Street, Aberdeen AB10 1QS

Beneath the burning desert sun, metallic roots twist, a feathered snake glides, and arms of water flow through an Earth tree, glistening with fireflies. On motley rocks corn sprouts as mushrooms take root. Night falls, stars shimmer, and branches of Araucaria extend spiked arms in search of an embrace. Quaresmeira flowers bloom as the Spider Goddess scatters seeds in this virtual landscape.

Cycle 14 Alt-w Production Award -
Robert Powell
@robert_powell_artist

1st August to 2nd November 2025
. FREE
Edinburgh Printmakers, 1 Dundee Street EH3 9FP

The chronoscope is designed to not only tell the time but also convey how, why and what time really is. As each slender slither of time bursts into being, the chronoscope gauges the exact nature of that particular moment and visualises it. (It is no wonder that the chronoscope sometimes runs a little slow.)

Cycle 14 Alt-w Production Award -
Frances Priest with Sam Healy
francespriest.co.uk

6th April to 2nd June 2026. FREE
Level 2, EFI, 1 Lauriston Place, Edinburgh EH3 9EF

Motifs from the realm of neoclassical architecture dance and evolve on screen, tracing a journey from the ancient, analogue and physical, to the modern, digital and abstract. Craft techniques such as tiling, mosaic, marquetry, weave and stitch all originated as mathematical pattern structures and here are brought full circle, ‘re-encoded’ as algorithms.

Cycle 13 Alt-w Production Award - Ray Interactive
Sam Healy & Brendan McCarthy

1st December 2025 to 3rd February 2026. FREE
Level 2, EFI, 1 Lauriston Place, Edinburgh EH3 9EF

In this map of the stars directly above Edinburgh Futures Institute, updated live as time passes, the incoming light generates unique abstract animations. By taking this stellar data set and a computer algorithm called reaction/diffusion, they literally bring the heavens alive.

Restless, vital patterns emerge looking like cells, fingerprints, fungi, animal markings or brain cross-sections. They remind us that all life originates in the stars. Each iteration hints at the fragile balance between growth and death on which beauty, harmony and meaning depend.