Scotland the brave

Scottish Screen Archive

The Scottish Screen Archive has released some 1,000 film clips on its impressively-redesigned site. The SSA is Scotland’s national film archive, now part of the National Library of Scotland. It has an excellent record of preserving, contextualising and making accessible a national moving image heritage to a multiplicity of audiences. This latest resource comes courtesy of the Heritage Lottery Fund, and present clips from the 1890s to the 1980s, all integrated into their existing catalogue. The searching and browin (by place, subject, biography and decade) are all exemplary, and the catalogue descriptions are spot on.

So, what is here for the silent era? Well, sixty-two clips, all of them non-fiction titles, from 1897 onwards, including many classic gems. For instance, look out for Lord and Lady Overtoun’s Visit to Mcindoe’s Show (1906), a rare early film of the outside of a fairground bioscope show; Dr Macintyre’s X-Ray Film (1896/1909), examples of the X-ray cinematography of Dr John Macintyre; several examples of Scotland’s own silent newsreel, Scottish Moving Picture News (later called British Moving Picture News); the civic record, Glasgow’s Housing Problem and its Solution (c.1919); a family holiday home movie from 1927; film of the building of the Ritz Cinema, Edinburgh in 1929; and St Kilda - Britain’s Loneliest Isle (1923/1928), a classic picture of life on the remote island while it was still inhabited by humans.

Social films, city films, newsreels, home movies, charity films, advertising films, interest films, documentaries - this is a marvellous collection, not just of Scottish life but of the multifarious forms of the non-fiction film, demonstrating for our period what an important part it plays in what should be our understanding of the silent film overall - somehing of the people, for the people. Go explore.

Time Out

The Northeast Historic Film Summer Symposium will be held in Maine on 20-21 July, under the title Time Out: Images of Play and Leisure. The symposium will focus on moving images that offer a new historical, cultural, and critical understanding of play and leisure, focusing on images of play and leisure made by amateurs and for noncommercial purposes. The programme of events includes several subjects relevant to silent cinema and pre-cinema. Peter Morelli’s talk “A Night at the Moving Pictures - Before Cinema” looks at pre-cinema entertainments such as the magic lantern and the diorama; Martin Johnson looks at home movies of the 1920s-40s and the intriguing subject of people who turn their faces away from the camera; Ishumael Zinyengere looks at the work of Burton Holmes, pioneer producer of travelogues (he coined the term); Mark Neumann looks at early films of the Grand Canyon. An excellent programme which demonstrates the value of looking at amateur film from the silent film era quite as much as the commercial. More details from the festival web page.