WORDPLAY is co-ordinated by Shetland Arts but curated by local volunteers (this year’s team were Christine Hughson, Matthew Wright, Genevieve White and Laura Friedlander). They created a range of readings, events and workshops for children and adults alike.

Steven Appleby (© Dave Hammond)

Puppet State Theatre’s The Man Who Planted Trees seemed to have dazzled all who saw it [and rightly so – Ed.], and Louis de Bernieres was very popular and warmly received. The highly acclaimed author of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin spoke of his current departure from stories set abroad, and how he is exploring the exotic lunacy of his homeland.

He read us tales of England that were hilarious but also very sad. His acute sense of ‘home’ struck a chord with the assembled audience, and his observations on how places and the peoples who inhabit them change was very poignant and personal.

Crime writer Ann Cleeves’ two-hander with darkly comic Crime Scene Investigator, Helen Pepper, on Saturday was scintillating. The Q&A session soon veered off the subject of literature onto forensics, crime and dead bodies. Disturbing but fascinating stuff! Cleeves also spoke of her thirty-year love affair with Shetland, the setting for her highly successful crime novels, The Shetland Quartet.

Shetland-based writers were represented in several ways. TS Elliot poetry prize winner Jen Hadfield lives on the island of Burra. Her gentle, somehow mischievous, manner made her poetry readings a pleasure to listen to.

Gordon Dargie teamed up with visitor Kevin McNeill (bestselling author of The Stornoway Way, and about to cycle the Danube for charity – check his website below) for some readings, while Tom Morton, Donald McDonald and Donald S Murray spoke of the importance of place in their work.

John Cumming, Laureen Johnson, James Sinclair and Lise Sinclair read from a work in progress developed in collaboration with Shetland fishermen. Young writing in Shetland was also on show with the presentation of the Young Shetland Writer 2009 Awards, this year’s winners were Rona Learmonth, Bethany Byrne-McCombie and Peter Ratter.

Workshops included Mark McCrum on the ‘Nuts and Bolts’ of being a writer, poetry with Gerry Cambridge and Keith Brumpton’s drawing workshops for young people. Mairi Hedderwick delighted children with her tales of Katie Morag, and also spoke about her work for adults,

A Highland Journey. The buzz and banter of children could often be heard as they spilled out of various workshops and readings into the corridors of Islesburgh Community Centre, the heart of Wordplay. The Gruffalo’s 10th Birthday party was by all accounts a particularly lively event!

Steven Appleby is a cartoonist for The Guardian and The Times, and a broadcaster, animator and writer. His books, short films and drawings make for a marvellous journey into his own world, his ideas about identity and the sparkling content of his surreally-stuffed head. His multimedia talk was magic and the audience took a real shine to him.

Artwork by Shetland artist Andrew Morrison hung on the walls of Islesburgh. It was somehow as if they had just quietly slipped in. Luckily they were spotted by many visitors. It was bold, bright new work.

Gerry Cambridge is a photographer as well as a writer. He showed some extraordinary natural history shots. The acidic colours and skewd scale of intricate close-up details of insects and flowers made for other worldly images.

There is always a special feeling when people from other places come here and encounter Shetland hospitality. All the visitors I spoke to were taken with “the friendliness of the people”. And in turn we have our horizons broadened by exposure to new writing, films and the extraordinarily talented people who want to visit us and share their ideas and passions.

As someone who works with screen and word, it is good to see that audiences are up by thirty percent. If people feel welcome the more likely they are to turn up for a look and a dose of informality usually helps. One attempt at this was the addition of a joint Screenplay and Wordplay Festival Club in Islesburgh Community Centre, allowing people to mix with the visitors in a relaxed atmosphere.

Shetland Arts’ Gwylim Gibbons thinks that: “The friendly open feeling of the festival amongst visitors, audiences and participants make Wordplay and Screenplay very special.”

Such personal exchanges are always memorable. I stopped to pick up a strolling, solitary and slightly damp Louis de Bernieres one wet afternoon. We spoke about the weather, of course. I did wonder what the man who is famous for stories set in warm, bright climes made of Shetland on this dark, rainy day. So, it was good to encounter him singing along with local musicians in the Festival Club later that night. I think he was having a warm and jolly time.

Wordplay runs at the same time as Screenplay, Shetland’s film festival. Like the countless musicians who have visited for one of Shetland’s world renowned music festivals, high-profile filmmakers and writers are now discovering that a Shetland festival is a unique thing.

The mix of screen and word is part for what makes this a special event but is also the part that attracts most comment locally. Simply because people often want to attend events in the two festivals that are on at the same time. So, should the two be separated?

Gibbon’s considered this question: “I feel the way in which writers and film makers come together during the festival provides opportunity for creative exchanges that are rare in the Festival circuit. Where else can you find the likes Terence Davies and Louis De Bernieres chatting away, or high level TV producers like Foz Allan and writers such as Ann Cleeves coming together?”

True, and on top of that having a choice of things to do is a treat, a novelty indeed, for local audiences. Maybe just less of a clash between some of the word and screen events for us punters then?

Gwilym again: “There is of course a challenge in how we programme the Festivals together and we will continue to tweak and review how that is done. The opening of Mareel in 2011 will add a whole new dimension to the festivals in that we will be able to host both under one roof and potentially spill over into spaces in adjacent building as the events grows.”

© Karen Emslie, 2009

Links

• Wordplay
• Screenplay
• Shetland Arts
• Karen Emslie
• Kevin MacNeil
• Kevin MacNeil for Cancer Research
• Kevin MacNeil for Macmillan Cancer Support

Associated Page

• Screenplay Review
• Wordplay Photo Gallery

SHETLAND’S film and book festivals, Screenplay and Wordplay, had the islands in creative mood with a programme of events and screenings that stretched from Fair Isle to Unst.

Willem Cluness introducing 'Böd' (© Dave Hammond)

Celebrated film critic Mark Kermode kicked off Screenplay with a trip to the UK’s ‘most northerly cinema’, on Shetland’s northernmost island, Unst. It has a famously eccentric, decorated bus shelter where the cinema was set-up and the story made the national news with its quirky take on film, Shetland-style.

Kermode, along with Linda Ruth Williams ,are the passionate visiting curators behind Screenplay. They love film and, luckily for us, they love Shetland. Linda explained that they work for months in advance with Shetland Arts staff to bring together the programme of screenings and events: “I love to come to Shetland. It takes nine months to set up Screenplay, and it is surreal when we actually get here. We arrive and jump in at the deep end”

Terence Davies is the director of Kermode’s Best Film of 2008, Of Time and The City, and he does not like to travel. He is not a good flyer and doesn’t particularly like boats. This makes Shetland a somewhat challenging destination.

Kermode impressed upon Davies how special an event this is and the director agreed to venture north. But it was only when they met at Edinburgh airport that Kermode “knew it was going to be OK”.

Davies’ films gave this year’s festival a unique tone. Along with Of Time and The City, they included House of Mirth and The Long Day Closes, all introduced by the director. A true treat for the Shetland audience.

The films are elegantly gloomy and extremely poignant. By contrast, the man himself came across as a jolly soul in the flesh and regaled us with tale upon outrageous tale during a question and answer session in Lerwick’s Garrison Theatre.

International films included the animated Waltz With Bashir. In this film Ari Folman creates a curious and deeply disturbing world of animation set upon live footage. The film seeps into cracks in the fragile reality and disrupted memories of a massacre in the minds of two men who had been conscripts in the Israeli Army. A sombre audience quietly shuffled out into the night after that one.

Frank Hurley’s silent epic South tells the story of Ernest Shackleton’s Antarctic expeditions between 1914 and 1916 and was shown in Fair Isle, Lerwick and Unst. Dean DeBlois’ Heima played to a large late-night audience who chilled out to the sounds of Sigur Rós and mesmerising footage of Iceland.

Short films from the National Film Board of Canada demonstrated what can happen when a nation has a long term and supportive attitude to its filmmakers. And Hayao Miyazaki’s Howl’s Moving Castle made the trip to Fair Isle and Lerwick where it delighted audiences of many ages

Scottish films included Simon Miller’s Seachd: The Inaccessible Pinnacle, which was the first feature-length Gaelic film to gain theatre release, and Charles-Henri Belleville and Tim Barrow’s The Inheritance, made in eleven days and for £5000. Both prove what can be done in Scotland with big imaginations and a lot of ambition.

Home Made was a jam-packed night featuring over two hours of short films from Shetland. There was love, explosions, tragedy, tears, comedy, fantasy, sci-fi, gore, imagination and special effects in bucket-loads. The packed theatre was buzzing with reaction, laughter and clapping.

Maddrim Media is a group of young Shetland film-makers. Their films were up first and they had submitted everything from spoof comedies to surreal horror.

Harry Whitham’s Doll Tears was a silent film presented in its original form, whereby the images on screen are accompanied by live music, in this case played and composed by Harry. Using film to explore clothing and fashion he combined haunting music, elegant visuals and Victorian macabre with a hint of a story. A stunning little film.

Willem Cluness’ Böd also had glimmers of magic. This horror flick milked some clichés and upended others. It was a teen slash movie with comic quirks, Shetland-style. It was brash and lo-fi, but just oozed that slippery sense of something big brewing in an imaginative and creative young mind.

Notable too was the short and poignant Sugar Bricks by Aidan Nicol and Roseanne Watt which juxtaposed the sweet, innocent pleasures of confectionary with domestic aggression. It was very sad.

Love Letters in The Sand, also by Aidan Nicol, was like a love letter to the stunning land and seascapes of St. Ninian’s Isle in Shetland’s south end. There was some beautiful cinematography and a delightful sense of timeless romance. AMOC by Matthew Nicolson was a story with a twist in the tail that made subtle, clever use of sound to disturb and unsettle.

Made in Shetland was the adult section – age not content! Like Maddrim, this was varied in terms of cinematography and storytelling but it was enormously exciting to see the sheer range of films being produced in Shetland.

A new film group called Bigger Than The Bag showed several films. Be My Little Echo by Andrew Lindsay was striking piece in a dark, unsettling way.

Knit by Hilary Seatter combined animation and textiles, and had some interesting ideas and drawings.

There were two films by Philip Taylor, both meditative and powerful. Your Papers, Please looked at identity and menacing bureaucracy, while North was starkly beautiful, apocalyptic and terribly lonely. Well-produced and thoughtful work.

To see Shetland represented and imagined in so many ways on the big screen was striking. There were beaches, sea, boats, crofts, landscapes, town, country, an exploding bank, a doctors’ surgery – it goes on and on. The islands’ beauty but also their darkness and complexity were stunningly portrayed.

Several nights later Terence Davies charismatically urged us to protect and celebrate or own culture, and to look with filmmakers eyes to Europe, not America. His sparkling tirade rang true with many and brought applause from the audience.

It was interesting to consider this alongside the opinions Anne Mensah, Head of Independents for the BBC, had expressed during the panel discussion, Small Screen: Big Ideas on Friday night. Mensah had spoken enthusiastically about aspects of American styles of programme making.

For a few evenings, then, Lerwick sizzled as a hotbed of influential opinion on film and television-making of national import. The ideas that were aired here in Shetland were certainly food for thought.

Another Small Screen: Big Ideas panellist was crime writer Ann Cleeves, who has had a thirty-year “love affair” with Shetland. The islands have, in her own words, “changed her life”. The success of her Shetland Quartet of books has seen her writing published in dozens of languages and she has just sold the option to bring her work to screen.

Shetland Arts’ Kathy Hubbard has long been central to the success of Screenplay, and reflected on this year’s event: “The festival went even better than I had hoped for, and the mixture of old films, relatively new films, archive and silent film, animation and music film seemed to go down well with a range of audiences. The outreach sessions were particularly rewarding, with schools, care centres, community halls and even a bus shelter in the mix.”

Linda Ruth William’s and Mark Kermode’s genuine affection for Shetland is palpable and I suspect will become regarded as having been very important for the development of film in Shetland in the future.

Locally made films are on the up and more filmmakers are being encouraged to come to the islands to visit and, importantly, to make work. Shetland’s incredible light and extraordinary land and seascapes have long been a pull for those of the visual persuasion.

A local production company were recently working on a documentary for Arte Europe about the people behind the emergency services in Shetland. Filming had taken place in May and the crew were back in Germany when a panic call came in, a vital scene of an injured canoeist was missing.

A canoe and boat were scrambled that morning, HD film shot and the rushes transmitted by broadband upload to Berlin that night. They were in the final cut by the next morning.

The ease of getting things done quickly (i.e. we need a canoe and a boat now – fine, I know a man….) in a small communities and clever use of new technology make serious film-making in Shetland, and across the Highlands and Islands, a real opportunity to be grasped.

Events like Screenplay help to encourage and develop such opportunities for local and visiting talent alike. The weekend left local audiences buzzing and I heard quite a few leaving the Shetland screenings saying that they were off to make something to submit next year.

© Karen Emslie, 2009

Links

• Screenplay
• Wordplay
• Shetland Arts
• Karen Emslie

Associated Pages

• Wordplay Review
• Screenplay Photo Gallery

The latest segment of the Inverness Old Town Art project also hits the streets this month, and I do mean that literally. Re-Imagining The Centre takes up where the original event of that name left off in 2006, and aims to both celebrate the creation of new outdoor public arts spaces in the old town, and to ask where the city might go from here in the field of contemporary art.

That question will be addressed – along with many others – in the associated Invernessian Clanjamfrey event, which incorporates a free public lecture by Johannesburg-born artist Neville Gabie in Inverness Cathedral.

Later in the month Inverness will also be the venue for the completion of the relocation of Highland Print Studio to its former premises in Inverness, newly refurbished for the purpose. The Studio has been rather hidden away in its current location on the Longman estate, and this return to a more visible presence is a welcome one.

Up in Shetland, meanwhile, they have two festivals running simultaneously in early September, the Wordplay and Screenplay events at the Islesburgh Community Centre in Lerwick. Caithness has its own Arts Drama Festival in the opening week of the month, with a new play from Grey Coast Theatre as its centrepiece.

The play’s author and founder of the company, George Gunn, has announced that he is standing down as Artistic Director of Grey Coast. His commitment to the company and to the theatre arts in the Highlands & Islands has been a huge one, and we feel sure that he will continue to make his trademark no-punches-pulled contributions in whatever form he now chooses. We wish both George and the shortly to be reconstituted Grey Coast well.

Over in the Isle of Bute, Puppet Lab’s Big Man Walking project  – one of the few successful contenders for the Scottish Arts Council’s initial batch of Inspire funding earlier this year – will rise from his slumbers and make his public debut. Although based in Edinburgh, Puppet Lab’s Symon Macintyre is from Nairn, and has a strong track record in both puppet-based and more conventional theatre, including The Big Shop project in Nairn and Inverness.
These are only some of the highlights of an arts scene that remains both busy and vibrant, despite the difficult economic circumstances currently prevailing. There is little of great cheer emerging to suggest an up-turn is imminent, and reports that Highland Council have more substantial cuts in the offing – and are considering changes to the licensing system that may price festivals like Tartan Heart out of the market – do nothing to lift the gloom.

Happily, as the foregoing – and only partial – list of impending highlights suggests, there are still many reasons to be cheerful, including the imminent release of a new album by Uist piping maestro Fred Morrison, the subject of this month’s interview. And our critics will be out and about as usual in the course of the month ahead, so keep checking back for news and reviews.

Kenny Mathieson
Commissioning Editor, Northings

Kenny Mathieson lives and works in Boat of Garten, Strathspey. He studied American and English Literature at the University of East Anglia, graduating with a BA (First Class) in 1978, and a PhD in 1983. He has been a freelance writer on various arts-related subjects since 1982, and contributes to the Inverness Courier, The Scotsman, The Herald, The List, and other publications. He has contributed to numerous reference books, and has written books on jazz and Celtic music.