Inaugurating discussions of an oral cinema: Placing the translation-to-screen of Scottish community oral storytelling traditions within a wider frame of global filmmaking practice

Abstract

This article seeks to inaugurate the global frame of an oral cinema: a cinema that, to a significant extent, is defined by its relationship to community oral cultures. Whilst the case studies featured are largely those arising from Scotland – in particular Simon Miller’sSeachd: The Inaccessible Pinnacle(), Timothy Neat’sPlay Me Something() and the author’s own filmMysterious Object(currently in post-production) – discussion deliberately reaches outwards to a global, comparative frame drawing upon the more sophisticated treatments of orality in the West African cinemas of Gaston Kaboré and Ousmane Sembene and the Inuit cinema of Zacharius Kunuk. Whilst alive to the dangers of homogenization and destructive, western-led universalisms, this article ultimately attempts to establish a space for utopian montage (), wherein divergent yet mutually resonant traditions within world cinema may be co-positioned in order to explore aspects of shared practice and solidarity.