For 21 years, Hamish McAlpine's Tartan Films has been bringing edgy alternative cinema to our cinema screeens and television sets. Chris Neill talks to him about titles such as Irréversible and Ringu, as well as extreme cinema and the salvage of Donald Cammell's final film.

Due to its fierce individualism and cutting-edge sensibilities, Tartan Films is one of Britain's leading distributors of independent cinema. Its president is Hamish McAlpine who got into the distribution business in the early eighties releasing such arthouse classics as Seven Samurai and The Battle of Algiers through his video label Capstan. 'I was trying to buy the rights to new films which I found very difficult as distributors often wanted more for the video rights then what they paid for the entire rights for the film' says McAlpine, while his friend producer Don Boyd complained that 'distributors always wreck a film while, alternatively, if it makes a profit they steal all the money'. The two men began a distribution company, 'We brought in another Scotsman to run it and we decided to call ourselves Tartan Films, as we were all Scottish in one way or another'.

That was 1984, and now 21 years later Tartan films has extended into an ever-growing empire. Last year the company expanded its network into the American market, releasing titles such as Chan-wook Park's Oldboy and Michael Winterbottom's 9 Songs. McAlpine has also been involved in several film productions, including Bundy and The Hillside Strangler.

I spoke to Hamish McAlpine during this year's Dublin International Film Festival, where Tartan were being honoured with a season of films reflecting their unique and occasionally daring output. Among the films shown was Andrew and Jeremy Get Married, a recent documentary directed by Tartan co-founder Don Boyd.

The full article is printed in Film Ireland 104.