The Broch, Fraserburgh, 25 March 2006

Katie is left alone in 'Born to Run'.

LIKE ANY NAME, Fraserburgh means different things. To me it’s still the place where strawberries grew abundantly at the back of West Road, where grapes spilled out from glasshouses near the Toolworks. For others it’s Vessels For Sale or the high bows, impossibly huge, that turned that steep corner into one of the few shelters from the weight of the North Sea. And others can’t pass the images of the sad newer name of drug problems.

On the 25th March I was lucky enough to be in The Broch [as the town is known locally] at the launch of big screen projection in the Dalrymple Hall. It is a result for 4 years of fund-raising by the Junior Arts Society and the support, per head of population, was impressive. Folk turned out on a raw night to celebrate a positive initiative.

The movie house was the main focus of all our small towns, for more than one generation. For me it was the ninepenny seats in Stornoway’s own Art Deco palace. My father spoke too of sneaking up to classier seats in the Broch’s own joint. Before the bingo.

The programming was a courageous show of community confidence with 3 short locally-made videos exploring the changes in the town or using its stunning surf-beach as a backdrop for entertainment.

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If this film – and the whole evening – isn’t a positive sign of recovery in Fraserburgh, I don’t know what is

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John McKay’s 1996 short, “Doom and Gloom”, which of course is anything but, reminded us of all these fine Scottish-made shorts which don’t get screened often enough. The Pennan background is perfect for the comic play of light and dark, stereotype and imagination. The East Coast goes Mediterranean, imagine if you will.

But the strongest courage and the strongest work of the evening was the premiere of a new film by Scott Graham. Produced by Alice Stilgoe and supported by Peacock Visual Arts, Scottish Screen and Broken Spectre, this is a confident and moving work. Graham does more within a tight format and budget than most directors with films on current general release. “Born To Run” has the tautness of a George Mackay Brown short story but with a Raymond Carver edge to it.

Most of it is done with imagery, soundtrack and beautifully controlled acting. There is very little dialogue and it’s all understated. The boat docks and father and son are ashore, still in their seagoing fluorescence. The father swings in to The Ship Inn and the son goes home for his tea. He returns his mother’s hug but he is ashore with time tight and things to do. The wheels are primed in a shiny body with big power ready to purr. The sounds pump and the baseball cap comes down like a visor.

There’s the girlfriend, starkly beautiful with red gloss lips, distant through the glass of the kiosk she is working at. Back home, the mother is restless, going through old images – a formerly fast car as the focus of the ambitions of one generation back. When the mother walks down to the kiosk for fags the parallel is explicit. The two woman, a generation separate, look uncannily alike. The machine is still under wraps in the garage but it’s the relationship that has stalled.

The father is finishing his serious drinking. A can for the road. He says little but he is in pain. Tension mounts as he comes home. His wife is still down the road but his son is home. And then she comes back. The few words exchanged say all there is to be said. They’re still holding together.

This is a perceptive and well-made work where the restraint allows the emotion to come out and convince. If this film – and the whole evening – isn’t a positive sign of recovery in Fraserburgh, I don’t know what is. Any readers active in film-clubs or film-programming, please do your audience a favour and book this short. The producer can be contacted at: alice_stilgoe@hotmail.com

© Ian Stephen, 2006