Scottish Film Research Articles

The beautiful and the damned: Depictions of Scottish childhoods in Small Deaths and Gasman

This article explores the function of poetic child realism in two of Lynne Ramsay’s short films, Small Deaths (1996) and Gasman (1998). Investigating the role of the orphaned child embedded in Scottish film culture, this article considers the ways in which the intersection of social and familial realities is portrayed through the subjective viewpoints of female children. Through an examination of the films’ aesthetic and narrative elements, alongside a discussion of the role of industrial iconography and spaces, I argue that Lynne Ramsay’s films deviate from and subvert a traditionally masculine and patriarchal representation of working-class Scottish life on-screen.

Exploring the place of animation and the role of the classroom-based film-maker within a wider field of Scottish moving image education

This article explores animation as a popular mode of moving image education in the wider field of Scottish film education, through a discussion with film education practitioner Jonathan Charles. It reflects on Jonathan’s pedagogic approach to film education, the way in which it is shaped and aligned with changing institutional and funding imperatives, and the affordances of animation, through a detailed look at a film-making project with a primary school in West Lothian, Scotland. It reflects upon the challenge to maintain in-depth film experiences for young people, with training and working with teachers to allow film experiences to be scalable and multiply to reach a wider range of young people. The article also discusses the drive to give young people agency throughout the film-making process, and how film education practitioners and teachers can best facilitate that.

Scottish Cinema’s Understated Linguistic Diversity: A Brief Overview of the Scottish Film Industry

Scotland’s cultural revival of the last decades has been accompanied, in Scottish film, by an exponential increase in Scottish productions and co‑productions. However, the optimism with which we might greet this development is somewhat mitigated by a perceived lack of diversity.Researchers generally concur that the dominant discourses and representations of modern Scotland in film are of white urban working class heterosexual male experience (Sillars, 2009; Martin-Jones, 2009; Hill, 2000; Lea et Schoene, 2003; Morgan, 2003; Neely, 2008), despite the decline of the industries, growing unemployment and evolving demographics. Seldom noted but directly related and relevant is that the rich heterogeneity present in the set of language varieties known as Scots (whose status as a distinct language rather than as a ‘deviant’ variant of English has been steadily undermined since the Union of the Crowns) is also lacking, so that Scots is now a language that is often only spoken at the margins of Scottish films, and increasingly limited to stereotyped comical characters. Hence the multilingualism inherent throughout Scotland, where both Scots and English are widely spoken, is undervalued. However, this has not always been the case, as we will see with reference to the films of Douglas’s childhood trilogy (1972–1978), predominantly in Scots, and Radford’s Another Time, Another Place (1982), unique in Scottish film history as a bilingual film in Scots and non-subtitled Italian.Given the dominance of the three myths of Scotland (Tartanry, Kailyard and Clydesideism), coupled with the prevalence of English as a commercially viable and culturally dominant language of cinema, Scotland’s multilingualism is rarely showcased, but nevertheless a handful of filmmakers have brought either community languages (such as Urdu, Punjabi or Polish) or foreign languages (such as German, Italian or Arabic) to Scottish screens. In these films foreign languages are linked to the politics of power, and brought to rural Scottish communities as a consequence of war, whilst the presence of community languages are to be found in films that explore diasporic communities and syncretic ‘new’ ethnicities, particularly in the urban setting.The centrality of multilingualism in shaping and informing our evolving cultural identities and inter-cultural relations is often overlooked, to the extent that even when linguistic plurality is present in films, it is often passed over ‘in silence’. Accordingly, none of the Scots language films that will be discussed in this article are recognised as such in their technical production details in the industry. Similarly, the fact that filmmakers such as Douglas, Loach, Radford and Ramsay value foreign languages such as Arabic (Douglas), Italian (Radford), German (Douglas), Spanish (Ramsay), Urdu (Loach) has gone largely unnoticed. To understand and encourage further expression of multilingualism in Scotland, we might perhaps begin by admitting the linguistic diversity which already exists.

Neoliberal-Spotting: Reading the Socioeconomic Symptoms ofTrainspotting(1996) andT2: Trainspotting(2017)

The signature Scottish film Trainspotting (1996) and its continuation T2: Trainspotting (2017) vibrate with symptoms of the United Kingdom’s post-1970s neoliberal economic program. Trainspotting channels neoliberal Thatcherite subjectivity in the relative eclipse of class consciousness and the ensemble of characters’ concerns with (licit and illicit) consumption—albeit, with contradictory elements that implicate the film’s highly stylized evocation of poverty and marginality. Twenty years later, in T2: Trainspotting, Edinburgh is constructed as transformed by neoliberalism’s convulsions that also drive intensified globalization, manifested by the Bulgarian immigrant (quasi- femme fatale Veronika) and the film’s tourism motif. T2 presents the ravages of the neoliberal regime on the ensemble of now middle-aged men (but not “phallically sufficient”) men while also cross-examining the dead-end of Brexit populism. In its closing, T2 retreats from critique into traditionalism in answer to what troubles the U.K., 40 years after the launch of neoliberalism.

The gendered impact of caring responsibilities on parents’ experiences of working in the film and television industries

ABSTRACT Caring responsibilities are often cited as a key reason for continuing gendered inequalities across the film and television sector. However, there is little detailed analysis of precisely how caring responsibilities impact upon parents’ experiences of work in this field. Further, in a context in which women are disproportionately affected by caring responsibilities, it is not surprising that existing studies on the issue of care have tended to focus exclusively on women and motherhood. This female centricity risks replicating the essentialist notion that care is or should be a women’s responsibility and obscures the fact that many men working in the sector are also parents. By drawing on one-to-one interviews with both men and women who work in Scottish film and television, this article will explore the specific gendered dimensions of the ways in which men and women discuss the impact of childcare on their experiences of work.

Macbeth Films and Locations: From a Scottish Tragedy to a Scottish Film

Macbeth Films and Locations: From a Scottish Tragedy to a Scottish Film

The “Family Film” as Amateur Production Genre: Frank Marshall's Comic Narratives

The “Family Film” as Amateur Production GenreFrank Marshall’s Comic Narratives Ryan Shand (bio) [End Page 1] Frank Marshall (1896–1979) was one of the most well-known figures in postwar Scottish amateur film culture. He was involved in developing the remarkable infrastructure that amateur cinema enjoyed in Scotland as the first chairman of the Scottish Association of Amateur Cinematographers (SAAC) when it was formed in 1949 and as a member of the board of the Scottish Film Council until 1972. Tom Clark, former secretary of the SAAC, compared Marshall’s central role within amateur filmmaking in Scotland to the influence that John Grierson exerted on the professional industry.1 Furthermore, Frank Marshall was one of the most active participants in postwar Scottish amateur film culture, responsible for making approximately seventy-seven short films. One recurring preoccupation within this vast body of work was what then was known to its practitioners as family films, a category featuring family members, close friends, and/or pets, which tend to be shot either at the filmmaker’s home, in his or her garden, or on vacation. Family films can be either fiction or nonfiction. Marshall’s family films, in particular, expand moments captured in private cine recordings into planned linear comic narratives. These films provide an opportunity to examine the intersection between the domestic focus of the family as subject and the aesthetic expectations for the genre that prevailed at amateur cine contests. I will show that the family film was championed as a hybrid form that could be celebrated as the emblematic genre of amateur cinema. Examples of family films, in particular, those of Marshall, were recurrently employed by the movement’s champions and critics to illustrate the distinctive nature of the sector to wider audiences. Marshall’s reputation in turn encouraged other amateur filmmakers to attempt their own variations on the genre as it became a formalized category in amateur film competitions, both in Scotland and internationally. This case study demonstrates that some aspects of methodologies that have been developed to analyze commercially released feature films may also be applied to the creative works of nonprofessional filmmakers. Marshall’s amateur films raise questions of authorship, genre, and pragmatic analysis—approaches that have been well rehearsed in studies of feature films. Dana Polan reminds us that studies of authorship require critical engagement with archival resources to provide historical context: A related aspect of auteurism today has to do not simply with the reincarnation of older auteurist methods but their refinement or even transformation. . . . New advances in historiography (for example, the potentials that gritty archival work offers) have led, in contrast, to a greater concreteness and detail in the examination of just what the work of the director involves.2 [End Page 2] Frank Marshall, accordingly, may be studied as an example of an amateur auteur—that is, as a director who exhibits stylistic continuity but is also significant because he or she influenced a particular genre of film.3 In both the amateur film press and in later archival cataloging, a film “in the Frank Marshall style” is shorthand indicating peculiar personal idiosyncrasies and certain generic qualities that other filmmakers sought to replicate and refine.4 Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Frame enlargement from ARP: A Reminder for Peacetime (Frank Marshall, 1940). The Marshall family from left to right: Muriel, Chrissie, Nairn, and Frank. From the collection of the Scottish Screen Archive at National Library of Scotland copyright NLS. Marshall’s films are often centered on his immediate family: his wife, Chrissie, daughter Muriel, son Nairn, and, later, his grandchildren.5 Most of his films are variations on a few familiar themes that give them a distinct authorial signature. The comic narratives that incorporate these domestic preserves are slight tales spun around small incidents that disrupt the tranquility of home life in Whitecraigs (a suburb on the south side of Glasgow) before equilibrium is happily restored. The mode of production specific to amateur cinema meant that “cinedads,” as George Wain called them, could integrate family members into their films as a pragmatic way to recruit and retain actors.6 Children are readily available and often can be...

The 68th Edinburgh International Film Festival.

Despite celebrating its 63rd birthday with a stupendously underwhelming Opening Night film (Sam Mendes' Away We Go ), the Edinburgh International Film Festival isn't ready for retirement yet. Allegedly a comedy, Away We Go is yet another shoe-gazing mope through the lives of a couple of middle-class, thirty-something slackers and the existential crisis they face as they try to get to grips with adulthood and figure out the best place to settle down and spawn. Directed on autopilot by Sam Mendes, Away We Go is the type of laid-back, unfunny, comedy mumbleathon normally made by earnest young indie directors and starring earnest, young indie actors with names like Zooey. Full of the kind of loveably eccentric kooks you'd cheerfully garrotte if they existed anywhere outside of smug, self-satisfied films like this, Away We Go is like being stuck at a dinner party full of Guardian columnists. And not the fun ones like Charlie Brooker. No, we're talking about the whiny, spoilt ones like Lucy Mangan. Hopefully at some point in the future, some genius will decide to programme Away We Go as one half of a double bill with Sam's recent laugh-fest Revolutionary Road . Far funnier was Justin Molotnikov's dark, little Scottish film Crying With Laughter . Equal parts black comedy and Cape Fear -style revenge thriller, Crying With Laughter charts the worst week in Edinburgh stand-up comic Joey Frisk's (Stephen McCole) life as a chance meeting with old school friend Frank (Malcolm Shields) leads to him being made homeless, framed for attempted murder, and involved in a kidnapping as old scores are settled and the guilty are punished. Scots actor Stephen McCole is fantastic as the put-upon comic and his performance is hilariously un-PC and subtly vulnerable with Shields a sympathetic, if relentless, villain and the final revelation, while …

Learning Playtimes: A Century of Children’s Games and Rhymes

Learning Playtimes: A Century of Children's Games and Rhymes. http://www.bl.uk/ playtimes (accessed November 11, 2011).Learning Playtimes, the website of the British Library for children's playground games and songs since the 1900s, constitutes one of the most interesting Web resources that present and elaborate children's culture in an innovative and fascinating way. The webpage has an extremely elegant design featuring pictures, films, and audio clips in Britain since the 1900s. The quality of the media uploaded is excellent-a technical feature of the website that makes it valuable for private but especially for public use, as intended- giving a highly aesthetic impression. The site has a very solid construction, easy to navigate through, with clear entry points for the user that help him to go forward and backward without getting lost. This webpage is a part of an exciting project funded by an Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC ) grant under the Beyond the Text program, which intends to preserve British national culture, to trace its changes and continuities and explore parts of children's lives that represent their contemporary culture, such as computer games and the Internet. The webpage is one of the media products of the project along with a documentary film.T he site is hosted by the Knowledge Lab (University of Birbeck) and is the result of the collaboration between the Universities of London, Sheffield, and East London with the British Library, a cooperation built upon the Opie Collection. The collections of children's games and songs of the two folklorists Iona and Peter Opie at the British Library introduce only a part of the footage contained. A variety of collections like the ones of Father Damien Webb, the Pitt Rivers Museum, Bodleian Library, Archives of Cultural Traditions at the Sheffield University, The British Film Institute, Kathryn Marsh's collection, Siren Films, and the Scottish Film Archives were used to offer related material. Contemporary performances have also been filmed for two years in two primary schools, the Christopher Hatton School at London and the Monterey School at Sheffield, containing re-enactments of parts of contemporary everyday culture, such as pop songs, theme tunes, and game shows.The home page welcomes you with a flow of children's photos playing and singing. It is divided into two parts, one of browsing games and another called, "Kids' Zone." The first part introduces the viewer to the categories of games presented and includes pretend play, singing and dancing, playing with things, runningaround games, skipping games, counting out rhymes, clapping games, ball games, jokes, and rude rhymes. Every category has subcategories accompanied by a variety of media and a researcher giving an oral presentation of the concept of every section. …

Blurring Borders: Scottish Cinema in the Twenty-First Century

More and more often, to watch and think about twenty-first-century Scottish cinema is to be transported beyond a single set of territorial and cultural borders. Yet, from the late 1970s, academic discussion of Scottish film traditionally saw the representation and reformation of national identity by indigenously based film-making talent, the creation of ‘alternative discourses . . . adequate to the task of dealing with the reality of Scottish life’ (McArthur 1982: 3), as an evolving local production sector’s main raison d’etre. Such priorities undoubtedly cast helpful light upon the defining characteristics of earlier eras within Scottish film history. They also provide a valuable reminder of a vibrant national cinema’s capacity to engage domestic audiences in shared processes of discussion and self-definition. Yet with each passing year, the idea of a deliberate, dominant and didactic focus on the question of nation seems less and less applicable to more and more of the cinema which contemporary Scotland produces. This is not to say that belief in Scottish cinema’s capacity ‘to play an important role at the heart of a revitalised national culture in reflecting the diversity of contemporary Scottish experience’ (Petrie 2000a: 226) ought to be junked overnight. It is, though, to argue that criticism must be prepared to acknowledge and explore the full range of contemporary Scottish film-makers’ creative and cultural ambitions. The latter both include and extend beyond the desires of an inwardly focused celluloid commentariat.

Critical distance: How a mental health arts and film festival makes audiences think

Background: This article draws on the views of audiences who attended the Scottish Mental Health Arts & Film Festival of 2010 and examines the impact of the festival on audiences' perceptions regarding the arts and mental health. Method: Structured exit interviews were conducted with 53 festival attendees, immediately following festival events at a variety of arts venues. A number of themes were extracted from the interview transcripts via thematic analysis. Results: These themes underscore the utility of the arts for exploring issues pertaining to mental health. For example, interviewees commented on how the arts could be applied to working practice in mental health, and described the gains afforded from sharing personal experiences of mental health through art. Themes regarding the arts' potential for encouraging reflective thinking and changing attitudes were also noted, with particular reference being made to stigma and mental health. The limitations of the study are discussed, alongside future directions for similar research on the impact of cultural activities for social change. Conclusions: Presenting an arts programme that is themed without being message-laden can impact on thinking around mental health that is more empathetic and understanding.

"The Heads and Tails of the Kingdom": Mrs. Brown and Devolutionary Scotland

This paper takes as its subject the 1997 film Mrs. Brown, an indigenously produced Scottish film that was nominated for several major awards and found audiences around the world. Despite this popular success and critical acclaim, the film has yet to find an adequate place in histories of Scottish cinema. The paper argues that the film mobilizes the generic practices of the so-called heritage film to construct a national allegory about Scotland and its relationship to the United Kingdom. This reading of the film is then situated against the film's historical backdrop which saw the passage of the second devolution referendum in Scotland, a measure that would lead to the nation's political devolution from the United Kingdom. The paper then concludes by arguing that such an understanding of its relationship to these larger generic and historical contexts means that Mrs. Brown is indeed a very important Scottish film that deserves greater consideration within the emerging canon of Scottish cinema.

The Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival ‐ promoting social change through the arts

Now in its third year, The Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival is fast becoming a significant cultural annual event, which aims to achieve social change through the arts. Through innovative programming of arts events, the Festival explores the relationship between mental health and creativity, celebrates the artistic achievements of people with experience of mental health issues, and promotes positive mental health and well‐being. It aims to promote the rights and recovery of people who experience mental ill health, while exploring mental health and inequalities that affect us all. The multi‐arts Festival focuses on audiences' existing interests in film, theatre, comedy, music, literature and visual arts to tackle stigma and engage people.

"Stands Scotland Where it did?": Re-locating and Dis-locating the Scottish Play on Scottish Film

Shakespeare’s Macbeth is a problematic fiction of 11th century Scotland constructed from the viewpoint of an early modern English playwright, chiefly through his reading of a black legend that developed over 400 years of violent re-arrangement of national powers and cultural and political identities in Great Britain. Given the questionable but common expectations of “realism” that cinema often invites, films of the play purporting to be "faithful to the original" have attempted to locate — or more significantly and accurately, to re-locate — Shakespeare’s fiction in "authentic" settings. A version of the "Scottish play" making such a claim was filmed by director Jeremy Freeston in Scotland in 1996. Using contrasting perspectives, on the one hand this paper explores how, when viewed merely from a "theoretical/filmic" approach, Freeston’s Macbeth may very likely be found "foul", while on the other, if approached from a broader, "cultural", stand, it turns out rather "fair".

Film and History: An Interview with Janet Mcbain, Curator of the Scottish Film Archive

In November 2006, Janet McBain was awarded a Scottish Bafta by the Scottish section of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, for ‘outstanding contribution to film in Scotland’. Janet has been the archivist since its foundation in 1976. Here, she talks with the editor about her archive and her own contribution to the development of historical preservation and research into film in Scotland.

Poetic child realism: Scottish film and the construction of childhood

With this essay I suggest a move towards poetic realism in the representation of children in Scottish movies. After a brief discussion of the landscape context of film geographies I turn to the roots of Scottish film realism in British Free Cinema, with specific reference to filmmakers’ use of landscape and place‐characters. I then argue that Scottish filmmaker Lynne Ramsay moves most fully towards the context of poetic child realism. Ramsay frames and foments a quirky poetic realism with non‐professional child actors placed in carefully crafted landscapes to create important moral and social stories that evolve from a series of shocks and an emotive collision of ideas.

Poetic child realism: Scottish film and the construction of childhood

Abstract With this essay I suggest a move towards poetic realism in the representation of children in Scottish movies. After a brief discussion of the landscape context of film geographies I turn to the roots of Scottish film realism in British Free Cinema, with specific reference to filmmakers’ use of landscape and place‐characters. I then argue that Scottish filmmaker Lynne Ramsay moves most fully towards the context of poetic child realism. Ramsay frames and foments a quirky poetic realism with non‐professional child actors placed in carefully crafted landscapes to create important moral and social stories that evolve from a series of shocks and an emotive collision of ideas.

Subjects and Sequences: A Margaret Tait Reader (review)

Reviewed by: Subjects and Sequences: A Margaret Tait Reader Ryan Shand (bio) Subjects and Sequences: A Margaret Tait Reader Edited by Peter Todd and Benjamin CookLux, 2004; Columbia University Press, 2006 The films of Margaret Tait have been undergoing critical rehabilitation in Scotland since they were the focus of a retrospective at the 2004 Edinburgh International Film Festival. Not so much forgotten as never discovered by [End Page 107] Scottish critics, these short animations and documentaries impressed those who knew of her only as a poet, or as the director of the feature film Blue Black Permanent (1992). It was known that Tait had written other feature film scripts, but it was the short films that she left behind after she passed away in 1999 that took many by surprise. Ironically for an artist who spent most of her days on the island of Orkney (north of the Scottish mainland), she had a loyal following not in Glasgow or Edinburgh but in London. There she was embraced by figures from the avant-garde film community, who saw in her a kindred spirit. The efforts of these London filmmakers, programmers, and critics led to the 2004 retrospective and subsequent touring program around Britain and beyond that the films eventually came to light. These individuals raised the money to enable a full restoration of the films by the Scottish Screen archive that has resulted in impressive new viewing prints. In parallel to these restoration and exhibition activities came a beautifully designed book, Subjects and Sequences: A Margaret Tait Reader, published by the London film collective LUX. Edited by Peter Todd and Benjamin Cook, this collection aims to demonstrate the close ties between Tait's poetry and her film practice, as well as to encourage future research into these highly distinctive films. In this regard the book is an important contribution to critical and scholarly debates. There is an informative account by Janet McBain and Alan Russell (of the Scottish Screen archive) on the technical challenges in restoring films that were constantly being altered and changed right up until Tait's death. The archivists also encountered problems in discerning Tait's artistic intentions, which were sometimes not entirely clear due to the existence of multiple and varying copies of the same film. This problem of the artist's approach to her work also dominates the most entertaining section of the reader, in which excerpts from Margaret Tait's press and television interviews, selected by David Curtis, are published in a chapter entitled "In Her Own Words." Tait's insight, modesty, and humor are in full evidence when discussing her resistance to being labeled an avant-garde filmmaker: I don't see that it's a term one can use of oneself anyway. How can anyone say such a thing of themself (sic)? Besides that, there's something too limiting about the idea of the avant-garde—as if at all costs you must be making innovation. Cinema itself is an innovation of this century, and within the mainstream of it, the most astonishing things have been achieved. It bowls me over. It really does. But do you mind your films being called avant-garde by others? Oh, well, no! How could I mind that? It's not the only thing they've been called, though. (95) This is a constant theme in Tait's interviews—her desire to escape easy categorization at all costs. She is similarly critical of the documentary film movement, a tradition that is particularly strong in Scottish film culture (93). Her films, from reputation alone, seem to exist outside of all established canons and, moreover, are seen too rarely to correct such claims. While this collection aims to remedy this critical neglect, Tait's attitude (understandable for an artist constantly trying to challenge and outdo herself) is adopted by some of the essayists in the collection, with mixed results. Margaret Tait is sometimes depicted as a completely unique artist, outside of history and specific film movements, and this is where I have some reservations about the collection. It is that Margaret Tait's work is clearly valued greatly by editor Peter Todd, a filmmaker and programmer who knew her...

Orphans, a Work of Minor Cinema from Post-Devolutionary Scotland

This work uses a methodology derived from the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari to examine Orphans (Peter Mullan, 1997). This approach illustrates some of the ways in which the current political and industrial situation in post-devolutionary Scotland has effected the cinematic representation of Scottish national identity. Although I am not suggesting that all recent films produced in Scotland construct national identity in the way that Orphans does, it will be shown that its aesthetic renegotiation of social realism (an aesthetic derived from the British documentary-realist tradition) reflects the current renegotiation of identity in which both Scotland, and the Scottish film industry, are involved. Deleuze's theory illustrates how Mullan's film performs a minor action on an aesthetic which has previously been used to create an Anglo-centric, consensual view of British national identity, and how, in doing so, it aids the recreation of Scottish national identity after devolution. Thus, Orphans' textual renegotiation of social realism parallels the nation's, and the film industry's, attempts to recreate a sense of Scottish national identity, in relation to the vestiges of Britain.

The uninvited guest: mother/daughter conflict in feminist gerontology

In this paper, I argue that the tensions between generations of women—particularly mothers and daughters—can be used to initiate change and growth for both generations. I introduce the subject of developmental conflict between women through fictional images from a Scottish film called The Winter Guest and then show how these conflicts have occurred in my own ethnographic research on older women. I argue that feminist gerontologists need to be working—always on the personal and professional levels—to recognize, explore, understand, critique, and theorize generational differences among women. Otherwise, we are at risk of promoting the very sexist and ageist attitudes that we are ostensibly working against. My aim is to alert readers to the generational conflicts that can occur in empirical research, as well as in the politics and theorizing of academic feminism, when women act unconsciously from generational positions or “age identities” that precondition them to challenge and resist each other. I conclude that mothers and daughters need alternative models for relating to one another outside the “family plot” and suggest that life story groups might help us develop these collaboratively.