The Eclipse of Scottish Cinema

Abstract

The 1990s marked the beginning of a period of unprecedented film production activity in Scotland, part of the wider outpouring of artistic expression – notably in literature, theatre and painting – that occurred in the aftermath of the 1979 Scottish Assembly debacle and which came to constitute a kind of cultural devolution in the absence of political self-determination. The ‘new Scottish cinema’ provided a steady stream of films like Rob Roy (1995), Trainspotting (1996), Small Faces (1996), Regeneration (1997), My Name is Joe (1998), Mrs Brown (1998), Orphans (1998) and Ratcatcher (1999). These were underpinned by a fledging infrastructure that included significant new sources of finance for feature development and production, short film schemes designed to develop new talent and encouragement and assistance for incoming international productions. Therefore, it is all the more disappointing that since the achievement of political devolution in 1999, this creative energy and excitement has largely dissipated with the result that there is now less funding available for Scottish film-making than in the period before the return of a parliament and executive to Edinburgh. This article explores the implications of this ‘cultural eclipse’, exploring the power of the moving image to contribute in powerful ways to national projection and identity and charting the ways in which cinematic representations of Scotland have changed and developed before considering some of the reasons why the creative energy of the 1990s was subsequently dissipated. This state of affairs is contrasted with the success of film and television in Denmark, another small European nation that has adopted a markedly more enlightened approach to policy-making and institution-building.