Arts Journal film reviewer CATRIONA PAUL takes a retrospective look at the films of Orcadian poet, artist and film-maker Margaret Tait
 

Born in 1918 in Kirkwall, Orkney, poet, artist and film-maker Margaret Tait spent much of the next eighty years studying, travelling or working overseas – both in the UK and further afield. However, there is little doubt that she always regarded the island as home, basing her studio there, and choosing Orcadian people and places as the subject of much of her work. A retrospective of her films at this year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival reveals an artistic and cultural collection of enduring interest.

Educated in Edinburgh where she qualified as a doctor, later serving in the Royal Army Medical Corps in the Far East during the war, then working as a locum around the UK, before living as an artist in Edinburgh and a film student in Italy – all this time, Buttquoy House in Orkney remained her “permanent address” and somewhere she returned regularly. The remoteness of the island provided an environment in which her creativity flourished independent of the male-dominated, traditional film industry. However, distance and independence meant that Tait’s 30-odd films have not been widely seen beyond screenings at a handful of film festivals.

The retrospective of work shown at the EIFF represents the culmination of a long-term project to restore original film stock which have deteriorated over the years. A film exhibition will launch in London on 16 November before going on tour nationally and internationally. Two programmes of films will show – the first including film portraits of Hugh MacDiarmid, amongst others, and film poems, made both in Rome and Orkney. The second programme focuses on people and the places they live.

The collection continues with Happy Bees (1955), “intended to be an evocation of what it was like to be a small child on Orkney; when, one (wrongly) remembers, it was sunny all the time and everything was bursting with life” (MT). Both pieces are accompanied by traditional music, performed by the Orkney Reel and Strathspey Society, adding to the evocative nature of the films.

“The remoteness of the island provided an environment in which her creativity flourished…”

 The significance of Margaret Tait’s work is two-fold. Her willingness and ability to explore the medium of film to communicate and create meant an alternative stream flowed alongside commercial film-making. But perhaps her most enduring legacy, especially for the people of Scotland, will be her work as an ethnographer – recording and honouring a way of life that has already changed.

Landmakar (1981) and Big Sheep (1966), (shown at the EIFF but unfortunately excluded from the touring programme), are two of Tait’s longer works. The former focuses on the Orkney crofter Mary Graham Sinclair, Tait’s neighbour at Aith. Big Sheep was filmed in Sutherland, (where Tait lived for a time), and echoes with the memory and impact of the clearances whilst documenting life there in the 60s. Other work records changes in Edinburgh, On the Mountain, and back in Orkney, Aspects of Kirkwall: Some Changes is a series of five films made between 1954 and 1981.

Margaret Tait died in 1999, aged 81. Her husband, Alex Pirie, deposited her films and negatives with the Scottish Screen Archive. Their subsequent restoration and screening reveals both a remarkable artistic and cultural legacy and a fascinating individual.

For further information on the EIFF, see www.edfilmfest.org.uk

© Catriona Paul, 2004