There And Never Again
Margret Tait 100 commissions
Commissioned short films from international talents, Scotland-based artists and filmmakers that celebrate the life, legacy and approach of Scotland’s filmmaking pioneer Margaret Tait (1918–1999) on the 100th anniversary of her birth. Curated by Sarah Neely.
Programme:
Margaret Tait Three Portrait Sketches, c.1951. 16mm transferred to digital, 5 min 56 sec. Early experiments in portraiture.
Richy Carey & Wendy Kirkup The Forest of Everything, 2019. HD video, 5 min 4 sec. Influenced by Margaret Tait’s Aerial (1974), Kirkup, Carey and thir children played with the materials around them; light, water, air, earth and trees.
Morag Mckinnon Never The Same, 2019. SD video, 6 min 43 sec.
A document of the last visit to her grandmother’s house before she moved in to a retirement home.
Peter Todd A Spoon, 2019. 16mm transferred to digital, 2 min 30 sec.
Images gathered into a film. Images from earlier works and some new.
Ali Smith & Sarah Wood The Bravest Boat, 2019. HD video, 10 min.
In the light and the dark of the 21st century, this film celebrates the legacy of Margaret Tait’s time in postwar Italy and the origin of her filmic vision.
Matt Hulse On Returning (1989–2019), 2019. Super 8mm transferred to digital, 4 min.
Rephotographing a scene, shot for shot a previous film, revisiting the same location (Isle of Mull)
Mark Cousins You With Your Fresh Thoughts, 2019. HD video, 1 min 56 sec.
A moment on Rose St, Edinburgh, where Margaret Tait used to live.
Alexander Storey Gordon Shoe Leather, 2019. HD video, 6 min 36 sec.
Created in response to Margaret Tait’s film My Room.
Catherine Street Allegory of the shivering light, 2019. HD video, 5 min 6 sec.
An abstract poetry-film made in response to Margaret Tait’s poem ‘Light’.
Luke Fowler Houses (for Margaret), 2019. 16mm, 5 min.
Filmed in Tait’s native Orkney, Fowler creates a record of her life and work through images of her past dwellings, filming locations and notebooks.
Ute Aurand, Glimpses from a Visit to Orkney in Summer 1995, 2019, HD Video, 4 min 26 sec.
Margaret Tait Garden Pieces, 1998. 16mm, 11 min 30 sec.
Tait’s last film.
Greg Pope. 