Who is Lynda Myles?

Shining the spotlight on a trailblazer

To the Gordon Aikman lecture theatre in Edinburgh University’s George Square to attend a friends and family viewing of “The Lynda Myles Project: A Manifesto”, which my sister Susan Kemp directed.  Lynda was the first female director of a film festival anywhere in the world and later produced some iconic movies. 

At the only slightly more glamorous Cannes Film Festival which got going the same day, Greta Gerwig’s arrival was pictured on the Guardian’s front page. Gerwig is the first American female director to be president of the Cannes jury. Female directors are still comparatively rare - but women’s contribution behind the scenes is increasing steadily. 

Back in the 70s, Lynda was one of the trailblazers who made a path for Greta et al to follow - and widen. But Lynda’s contribution is in danger of being sidelined from the story now - something the Lynda Myles Project seeks to address.  

A movie education

Lynda brought a depth of knowledge and a love of French cinema in particular to her leadership role, creating vibrant Edinburgh International Film Festivals, which featured one of the first-ever women’s events at a major film festival, in 1972, retrospectives, and most of all a passionate engagement with the world of ideas.  

In 1968, then aged 21, Lynda and her then partner David Will were brought in to help organise the EIFF. Murray Grigor invited the pair after they criticised the festival in a lively but excoriating letter to the Scotsman: “The EIFF may be second only to Venice in size but it is second only to none in its dullness”. 

Back in the heady days of flower power, as the Boomer generation inherited the post-war world early from their war-weary parents, Lynda and David took over the film club at Edinburgh University as undergraduates. They screened several movies a week and read widely - Les Cahiers du Cinema and other mould-breaking criticism. Lynda wrote programme notes for each screening and there were endless discussions and arguments about what they saw. 

The memorabilia and footage from those days before streaming reminded me that going to the pictures last century was an event, providing food for thought and discussion for days. A comparatively rare treat,  it stuck in the mind. We still do talk about films and TV of course - our family dinner afterwards was dominated by arguing about the current controversy about Baby Reindeer - but movie viewing has certainly changed. Like most people perhaps, I consume a lot more moving image today - perhaps too much, and most of it half-digested. 

In a Q and A after the event, Lynda said she felt that film festivals today are dominated by discussions about technical and commercial aspects, the business of film. “We don’t talk enough about the aesthetic, the why, the reasons for making and watching a film.” 

Making movies

The first part of Lynda’s career was centred around collecting and curating films and creating events, which involved meeting and collaborating with the best filmmakers of the day and discussing with them the ingredients that combine into the magic of a great movie.

After the best part of a decade as leader of the EIFF and a stint at Berkeley, Lynda became a film producer. She produced some iconic movies of the day - she had a role in “Paris, Texas” and was the lead producer of ”The Defence of the Realm” and “The Commitments”. Lynda spent more than two years on a fruitless hunt for funding for this last one - until she got the director Alan Parker on board. The next day, she got a phone call from someone offering $8 million for “The Connections”.

In the last part of her career, Lynda was a teacher at the Film and Television Institute, where she mentored some of today's notable directors, including Rose Glass, director of “Love Lies Bleeding”.

Roots in Arbroath

By this point in the doc, I had become curious about Lynda’s background. She speaks in what we used to call Received Pronunciation, like the older Royals, so it was a surprise to find she is a child of Arbroath, with fond memories of pageants that celebrated the signing of the eponymous Declaration.  

Lynda’s parents were Fabians, her father was an architect who died aged 55 and she has fond memories of sitting next to him while he played the organ in various churches. The death of her older sister when Lynda was a baby cast a long shadow over her childhood and she recalled weekly visits to the cemetery. It was a simple, and perhaps a little dull existence, enlivened by weekly visits to the Saturday morning pictures. 

Did you feel invisible?

In a poignant moment in the Q and A, a young friend asked Lynda if she had felt discriminated against and ignored at the time. Her immediate response was to say gracefully, that she had been tremendously lucky.

And of course, she must have felt she had broken free. The second-wave feminists of the 60s and 70s didn’t compare themselves to the women of today - their yardstick was their mothers' generation who had been back in the box of a very narrow and constrained idea of femininity. 

However, on prompting, Lynda admitted that yes, she was angry when Quentin Tarantino liberally quoted from the book she co-wrote with Michael Pye “The Movie Brats” - the title coining a phrase that stuck - but mentioned only Pye’s name - “The bits he quoted were all ones that I had written.”

And she was annoyed when a journalist accused her of racing Alan Parker to the stage to make a speech on receiving a BAFTA for “The Commitments” - it was the fifth one of the night and she was the producer who had carried the project during those lean, unfunded years. 

Susan said she was quite shocked on Lynda’s behalf to get a ‘who is she?’ response about the Lynda Myles project from Edinburgh’s International Television Festival - which Lynda founded. 

Looking for Lynda’s legacy

At the opening of the Cannes Festival last week, Gerwig told the assembled audience: “I hardly know how to thank this festival for giving me such a great honour. I love cinema and this is holy to me…I love nothing more than sitting in the dark and feeling a movie begin that is going to take me somewhere that I don’t know and could not have predicted…and to get to discuss it and think about it and wrestle with it… I can't wait to share these films with you.” If we trace the winding path to Gerwig’s ascension to the Presidential honour at Cannes 2024, it certainly goes through the Edinburgh Film Festivals of Lynda’s tenure.

It would be a shame to let this story be forgotten - as so often happens for women trailblazers. The “Manifesto” puts that to rights, drawing out the lessons Lynda has learned from her long experience in different roles within the film world, as collaborator, curator, communicator and mentor. It has been shown at the EIFF and at the Dublin Film Festival. 

Perhaps I am biased, but I would have thought the “Lynda Myles Project”  would find an enthusiastic audience on BBC Scotland or BBC Four but they are apparently not interested. After all, who is Lynda Myles? 

Watch the trailer here