Being in a Place is available to watch online from 16-31 December.
After watching the film you can also listen to a recording of Luke Fowler's sound piece 'Pomona', a collage of Margaret Tait’s reel to reel tape recordings, re-discovered in a box found in the library and archive, Kirkwall, Orkney
Watch Margaret Tait's films 'A Portrait of Ga' and 'Happy Bees' via National Library of Scotland
Watch more Margaret Tait films
Ticket prices
Tickets to watch the film are available on a sliding scale. You can refer to our Sliding Scale Guide to help you choose what to pay. Please note that, if affordable, a ticket price of £2 or more allows us to cover our baseline costs for hosting the film securely online. If you would like to book a free ticket, you can do so using the code 'CAMPLE-FREE' at checkout. You won’t be asked for any proof or ID.
Pomona (extracts from Margaret Tait’s Sound Rushes)
By Luke Fowler (30mins, stereo, first broadcast Radiophrenia 20th Feb 2022)
“The visual image, the sound, and the meaning of words spoken are three separate things. The visual pattern is the flow of the film, the sound being a sort of counterpoint. Sometimes the visual image is predominant and the sound secondary. At moments the sound must be the most important thing. And sometimes where there is dialogue the very meaning of the words of dialogue may be, for instants, the primary thing, the sound of the voice secondary and the picture in the frame may be quite subordinate. But at each and all times the sound of course must not merely refer to the actual image seen at the same time.” (from Margaret Tait’s notebooks, 6th March, 1952)- quoted in Between Categories by Sarah Neely (Peter Lang, 2016)
Pomona is a collage of Margaret Tait’s reel to reel tape recordings, re-discovered in a box found in the library and archive, Kirkwall, Orkney. The recordings were all made on a stereo UHER portable tape recorder with both mono and stereo microphones. The tapes date from the early 1970’s to the late 80’s and chronicle aspects of people, place and sound-marks of Orkney made with the purpose of being edited and eventually included on a optical soundtrack for one of Tait’s 16mm films. The recordings document Orcadian customs, rituals and rites – including the news year day “Ba” game, agricultural shows, Johnsmas Foy, Armstice services, town-hall meetings, Church of Scotland hymns sung at St. Magnus Cathedral, children playing and migrating birds.
There are of course anomolies to these sound-types. For a period in the late 1950’s/early 1960’s Margaret wrote and self-published a series of poetry books and short stories – the reels include rare examples of these being read out by Tait herself (including the poems Pomona, Historical Sense and Numen of The Boughs). There are also instrumental sounds – of fiddle playing and whistling – as well as recordings from the radio and TV.
One of my favourite tapes in the collection is a statement she recorded to be included in a BBC documentary (where she confesses a rather dismal view on the current state of Scottish cinema). I use extracts from this and as many other recordings as was possible, making a feature of the materiality of the analogue medium and its (in some cases) decay. At times I have taken the liberty to use the tapes as raw material for sound sculpting on a Serge analogue synthesiser (which uses 4mm Pomona cables to make connections). On these occaisions I’m interested in emphasising the tones, rhythms or transient events found in the tapes – not to distract or obliterate the original materials – but to provide further light and shade to the montage.
I think that film is essentially a poetic medium and although it can be put to all sorts of other – credible and discredible – uses, these are secondary.
Margaret Tait, from “Film-Poem or Poem-Film”
Margaret Tait (1918-1999) was one of Scotland’s most important female independent filmmakers; she died in her home town of Orkney in 1999 at the age 80. Tait made one feature film in her life (‘Blue Black Permanent’, 1992) but was best known for her short 16mm poem-films (or film-poems). After studying with Roberto Rossellini at the Centro Sperimentale film school in Rome (1950-52) she based herself in Edinburgh where she ran the Rose Street festival- rubbing shoulders with the likes of John Grierson, Hugh MacDiarmid, Sorley Maclean and Norman MacCaig. She returned to her birthplace of Kirkwall, Orkney in the late 60’s – which became the landscape and subject of the majority of her following films until her passing.
Luke Fowler (Glasgow, 1978) is an artist, filmmaker and musician based in Glasgow. His work explores the limits and conventions of biographical and documentary filmmaking, and has often been compared to the British Free Cinema of the 1950s. Working with archival footage, photography and sound, Fowler's filmic montages create complex portraits of counter-cultural and other marginalised figures. Fowler was awarded the inaugural Derek Jarman Award in 2008 and was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 2012 for his first feature film ‘All Divided Selves’. In 2019 he won Best Short film at both Glasgow Short Film Festival and Punto De Visto international documentary festival for his film ‘Mum’s Cards’.
with thanks to Dr Sarah Neely (University of Glasgow) and Lucy Gibbon @Kirkwall Library and Archive, Orkney
Being in a Place is available to watch online from 16-31 December.
After watching the film you can also listen to a recording of Luke Fowler's sound piece 'Pomona', a collage of Margaret Tait’s reel to reel tape recordings, re-discovered in a box found in the library and archive, Kirkwall, Orkney
Watch Margaret Tait's films 'A Portrait of Ga' and 'Happy Bees' via National Library of Scotland
Watch more Margaret Tait films
Ticket prices
Tickets to watch the film are available on a sliding scale. You can refer to our Sliding Scale Guide to help you choose what to pay. Please note that, if affordable, a ticket price of £2 or more allows us to cover our baseline costs for hosting the film securely online. If you would like to book a free ticket, you can do so using the code 'CAMPLE-FREE' at checkout. You won’t be asked for any proof or ID.
Pomona (extracts from Margaret Tait’s Sound Rushes)
By Luke Fowler (30mins, stereo, first broadcast Radiophrenia 20th Feb 2022)
“The visual image, the sound, and the meaning of words spoken are three separate things. The visual pattern is the flow of the film, the sound being a sort of counterpoint. Sometimes the visual image is predominant and the sound secondary. At moments the sound must be the most important thing. And sometimes where there is dialogue the very meaning of the words of dialogue may be, for instants, the primary thing, the sound of the voice secondary and the picture in the frame may be quite subordinate. But at each and all times the sound of course must not merely refer to the actual image seen at the same time.” (from Margaret Tait’s notebooks, 6th March, 1952)- quoted in Between Categories by Sarah Neely (Peter Lang, 2016)
Pomona is a collage of Margaret Tait’s reel to reel tape recordings, re-discovered in a box found in the library and archive, Kirkwall, Orkney. The recordings were all made on a stereo UHER portable tape recorder with both mono and stereo microphones. The tapes date from the early 1970’s to the late 80’s and chronicle aspects of people, place and sound-marks of Orkney made with the purpose of being edited and eventually included on a optical soundtrack for one of Tait’s 16mm films. The recordings document Orcadian customs, rituals and rites – including the news year day “Ba” game, agricultural shows, Johnsmas Foy, Armstice services, town-hall meetings, Church of Scotland hymns sung at St. Magnus Cathedral, children playing and migrating birds.
There are of course anomolies to these sound-types. For a period in the late 1950’s/early 1960’s Margaret wrote and self-published a series of poetry books and short stories – the reels include rare examples of these being read out by Tait herself (including the poems Pomona, Historical Sense and Numen of The Boughs). There are also instrumental sounds – of fiddle playing and whistling – as well as recordings from the radio and TV.
One of my favourite tapes in the collection is a statement she recorded to be included in a BBC documentary (where she confesses a rather dismal view on the current state of Scottish cinema). I use extracts from this and as many other recordings as was possible, making a feature of the materiality of the analogue medium and its (in some cases) decay. At times I have taken the liberty to use the tapes as raw material for sound sculpting on a Serge analogue synthesiser (which uses 4mm Pomona cables to make connections). On these occaisions I’m interested in emphasising the tones, rhythms or transient events found in the tapes – not to distract or obliterate the original materials – but to provide further light and shade to the montage.
I think that film is essentially a poetic medium and although it can be put to all sorts of other – credible and discredible – uses, these are secondary.
Margaret Tait, from “Film-Poem or Poem-Film”
Margaret Tait (1918-1999) was one of Scotland’s most important female independent filmmakers; she died in her home town of Orkney in 1999 at the age 80. Tait made one feature film in her life (‘Blue Black Permanent’, 1992) but was best known for her short 16mm poem-films (or film-poems). After studying with Roberto Rossellini at the Centro Sperimentale film school in Rome (1950-52) she based herself in Edinburgh where she ran the Rose Street festival- rubbing shoulders with the likes of John Grierson, Hugh MacDiarmid, Sorley Maclean and Norman MacCaig. She returned to her birthplace of Kirkwall, Orkney in the late 60’s – which became the landscape and subject of the majority of her following films until her passing.
Luke Fowler (Glasgow, 1978) is an artist, filmmaker and musician based in Glasgow. His work explores the limits and conventions of biographical and documentary filmmaking, and has often been compared to the British Free Cinema of the 1950s. Working with archival footage, photography and sound, Fowler's filmic montages create complex portraits of counter-cultural and other marginalised figures. Fowler was awarded the inaugural Derek Jarman Award in 2008 and was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 2012 for his first feature film ‘All Divided Selves’. In 2019 he won Best Short film at both Glasgow Short Film Festival and Punto De Visto international documentary festival for his film ‘Mum’s Cards’.
with thanks to Dr Sarah Neely (University of Glasgow) and Lucy Gibbon @Kirkwall Library and Archive, Orkney
