Films by Bill Forsyth, Colin Kirkpatrick and Mark Jenkins are to feature in a special season highlighting Scottish filmmaking organised by the Pier Arts Centre in Stromness.

Films will be shown in the gallery at events over the next month culminating in the première of a new film, The Imaginary Worlds of Scapa Flow, by Mark Jenkins at the Cromarty Hall in St Margaret’s Hope on 1 September.

Bill Forsyth visited Orkney several times in the 1980s and 1990s and shot Andrina, a film based on the George Mackay Brown short story, in the islands for the BBC in 1981. Forsyth was photographed several times by the late Orkney photographer Gunnie Moberg and one of these portraits is currently on display at the Pier Arts Centre.

Carol Dunbar, Education Officer at the Pier Arts Centre explained, “We have been thinking about how best to support the exhibition of Gunnie’s work and felt that a screening of one of Bill Forsyth’s most iconic films would be highly appropriate. The exhibition of portraits is a remarkable body of work – the calibre and range of writers and artists that Gunnie photographed and the particular rapport that she established with her subject is pretty unique.”

That Sinking Feeling, Forsyth’s first feature film from 1979, will be screened at the Pier Arts Centre on Thursday 16 August at 7 p.m.

Bill Forsyth is best know for classic films including Gregory’s Girl (1981) and Local Hero (1983) but That Sinking Feeling, a comedy set in Glasgow using young actors from Glasgow Youth Theatre, was the film that established the writer and director as a startling new voice in Scottish filmmaking. The film has recently been re-mastered and is now distributed through the British Film Institute.

A special day long presentation of a short film by Orcadian artist and filmmaker Colin Kirkpatrick will take centre stage on Saturday 25 August in the gallery. The film, The Cowboy and the Spaceman, takes up the well known economist and philosopher Kenneth Boulding’s image of Spaceship Earth, and contrasts the archetypes of cowboy and spaceman.

Commissioned by Peacock Visual Arts in Aberdeen in 2006, the film highlights some of the ecological and ethical issues surrounding stewardship of the earth’s natural resources.

Screenings of the film will take place continuously on Saturday 25 August from 10.30 a.m. to 5 p.m.

A new film by Stromness filmmaker Mark Jenkins, commissioned by the Scapa Flow Landscape Partnership in collaboration with the Pier Arts Centre, will complete the short season of screenings.

The Imaginary Worlds of Scapa Flow is a creative docu-drama inspired by memoirs of service men and women based in wartime Orkney. The memoirs have been sourced from three remarkable publications: ‘Scapa Flow’ by Malcolm Brown & Patricia Meehan, ‘Sky Over Scapa’ by Gregor Lamb, and ‘Bloody Orkney’ by Virginia Schroder.

Thirty three local people took on roles as crew, actors and voice-over artistes. Filming took place in many locations around the coastline of Scapa Flow, and in the Cromarty Hall as a studio for interior filming. The original soundtrack for the film has been composed and played by Orcadian James Watson.

The project was organised by the Pier Arts Centre with support from the Scapa Flow Landscape Partnership Scheme and funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund, Orkney Islands Council and the Scottish Government and the European Community Orkney LEADER 2007-2013 Programme.

The Imaginary Worlds of Scapa Flow will be premièred at 8 p.m. on Saturday 1 September at the Cromarty Hall in St Margaret’s Hope.

Admission to all screenings is free but space is limited for The Imaginary Worlds of Scapa Flow and That Sinking Feeling and booking is essential – contact the Pier Arts Centre on 01856 850 209.

Source: Pier Arts Centre