All These New Relations

Affectionate observational shots of toddlers, school age girl and very new baby.

Land Makar

"This is a landscape study of an Orkney croft, with the figure of the crofter, Mary Graham Sinclair, very much in the picture. The croft is West Aith, on the edge of a small loch, which almost every passing visitor stops to photograph or draw or paint. I have been filming this beautiful place since 1977, observing many of the human activities which alter and define how it looks." Margaret Tait

A Portrait of Ga

Another early experiment in portraiture from Tait. In filming her mother she asks the wider question of how much the camera can reveal of the person.

Aerial

"Touches on elemental images; air, water, (and snow), earth and fire (and smoke) all come into it." - MT

Colour Poems

'Titles within the film are: Numen of the Boughs, Old Boots, Speed Bonny Boat, Lapping Water, Incense, Aha, Brave New World, Things, Terra Firma. A poem started in words is continued in images - Part of another poem as an addition to the picture - Some images formed by direct-on-film animation - Others 'found' by the camera" - MT

Calypso

Hand painted directly onto film stock by Margaret Tait, this film features animated dancing figures, accompanied by authentic calypso music.

Where I Am Is Here

"Starting with a six-line script which just noted down a kind of event to occur, and recur, my aim was to construct a film with its own logic, its own correspondences within itself, and its own echoes and rhymes and comparisons, all through close exploration of the everyday, the commonplace, in the city of Edinburgh." - MT

Princes Street Edinburgh

A short piece of film recording general views of Edinburgh's Princes Street in the 1950s.

Place of Work

Margaret Tait documents her house, studio and garden in Buttquoy, Orkney as the seasons pass. She had lived there from the age of seven and often returned. At the time of filming, the house was about to be taken back by the council - this film is an effective 'goodbye'. Margaret Tait said it 'was meant to define a place, or the feeling of being in one place, with the sense this gives one, not of restriction but of the infinite variations available.'

Hugh MacDiarmid: A Portrait

A portrait of poet Hugh MacDiarmid.

The Lion the Griffin and the Kangaroo

Perugia and its Italian University for foreign students.

Garden Pieces

A set of three 'film poems' composed around the theme of the garden - the central one featuring hand scratched animated drawings. Margaret Tait described them as follows: 'Round the Garden' - right round and round again, 'Garden Fliers' - flighty cartoon and a stunner of a piano piece and 'Grove' - grave and sonorous.

Rose Street

The minutiae of daily life on Edinburgh's Rose Street in the fifties is presented in this impressionistic documentary piece.

Splashing

An experimental piece of film-making by Margaret Tait, featuring three children at play in a burn and garden, splashing and having fun playing with water.

The Drift Back

The first in a series of films for the Rural Cinema Scheme in the Orkneys, it records the return to the island of Wyre of Neil Flaws, a farmer, and his family at a time when the drift from the northern isles of the Orkneys was of concern to some Orcadians.