We recently caught up with Director of HippFest Silent Film Festival, to
hear about her role in cinema and how she came across our opening
night film ‘The Rugged Island: A Shetland Lyric”.
This powerful film will screen at this year’s Sea Change Film Festival with
a live accompaniment of a new music score from award-winning Fair Isle
multi-instrumentalist Inge Thomson, with Shetland-born Catriona
Macdonald – considered one of the world’s leading traditional fiddle
players.
How did you come across The Rugged Island: A Shetland Lyric?
As the artistic director of Scotland’s silent film festival, HippFest I’m
always on the lookout for Scottish stories and Scottish creatives from
cinema’s silent era. I was lucky enough to see this beautiful film about
Shetland crofting life at the British Silent Film Festival in Leicester in
2017. Jenny Gilbertson made the film on the cusp of the transition to
sound and was persuaded her work would have more chance of
commercial success if she released a follow up sound version with voice-
over narration and a synchronised score. Jenny worked hard to raise the
money for this, and was proud of the music commission, but for me some
of the charm and authenticity was lost in the talkie version – not least
because the voice-over replaced the local dialect of the intertitles and was
a man’s 1930s-BBC-style Received Pronunciation accent. The Gilbertson
family have been keen to honour Jenny’s artistic intentions but gave their
consent for a new musical interpretation to be created so that new
audiences could discover the silent version – in a nod to the way the film
might first have been experienced. With the family’s blessing I was able
to approach Inge Thomson – herself from Fair Isle – with the invitation to
create the new music. Inge’s resulting composition, with fellow Shetland
musician Catriona Macdonald, is perfectly in sympathy with the film, and
I’m sure Jenny would be gladdened to know her extraordinary work has
been brought to new life in this way.
How did Jenny Gilbertson come to make The Rugged Island: A
Shetland Lyric?
Jenny (nee Brown), was newly graduated from teacher training college
and determined not to be constrained by society’s expectations at the
time. She arrived on Shetland in 1930 to stay with crofter friends with
whom she had holidayed as child, with her prized new possession – a
second hand 16mm camera. The film she shot of their lives over the
ensuing 12 months so impressed John Grierson – the pioneer of the
documentary film in Britain – that he encouraged Jenny to return to
Shetland and to make more films – but on 35mm film this time. Grierson
purchased her short films for the GPO Film Library where they were
distributed alongside celebrated classics like NIGHT MAIL.
It was John Grierson who encouraged her to try a documentary but with a
story running through it and in 1933 she embarked on the project that
became The Rugged Island – a simple story of young couple torn
between the promise of a new life in Australia and duty to stay and look
after ageing parents. Very relatable today, of course!
Jenny planned, directed, shot and edited the film largely by herself using
local crofters, her friends, as her actors. The magazine in her 35mm
handheld EYEMO camera was tiny and took just 100 feet of film… each
spool lasting just over 1 minute! Something to think about when you
watch her films.
How did the film survive?
The fact that The Rugged Island survives at all is thanks in large part to
the work of another amazing woman: Janet McBain. Janet was recruited
in 1976 to catalogue a jumbled collection of films housed in a shed behind
the Scottish Film Council headquarters in Glasgow. From these modest
beginnings Janet grew a film archive for Scotland, seeking out film
donations from across the land and leading the organisation for 35 years
until retiring in 2011. Janet met Jenny in the late 70s by which time Jenny
had reignited her passion for filmmaking with a series of ethnographic
projects in Arctic Canada. In the knowledge that her old nitrate stock was
flammable, Jenny stored her footage for safe-keeping in an old hen
house. Janet encouraged Jenny to donate her work to the Archive for
preservation and decades later, in 1997 the archive set out to undertook a
detailed inspection of the contents of the hen house, committing to
restoring and re-printing The Rugged Island. It was only then that they
became aware that there were two versions of the film.
Janet McBain is truly one of film archiving’s heroes not just in Scotland but
internationally, and I am deeply grateful to her for being kind and
encouraging to me when developing this commission and also when I was
just starting out as a wet-behind-the-ears trainee film archivist 30 years
ago.
Why do festivals like Sea Change matter to you?
Jen’s work as the founder of Screen Tiree, and the subsequent
development of Screen Argyll is hugely inspirational. Not just because we
share a ‘femme-centric’ approach to programming, shining a light on
unsung women in the cinema industry. In my role as programmer year-
round of the Hippodrome in Bo’ness and founding director of HippFest it’s
so encouraging to see what can be achieved in terms of growing a
community around film outside the usual urban centres, as well as
attracting visitors to travel to it. People perceive travelling from Edinburgh
and Glasgow to Bo’ness as a barrier but if you can persuade people to get
on a ferry or a plane to come to your festival, then we can persuade
people to take a train and a bus. Making the festival and the programme
really relevant to and owned by the local community is at the heart of what
we do too and I’m keen to immerse myself so I can learn more about how
Sea Change has been taken into people’s hearts on the island.
If you’ve enjoyed reading about The Rugged Island: A Shetland Lyric, why
not come along to Sea Change to see it for yourself?