For many, the highlight of the 2004 EdinburghInternational Film Festival was its retrospective onMargaret Tait. Peter Todd, curator of the five Taitprogrammes showing, took some time out from ahectic schedule to talk with film editor Mitchell Miller.

What is behind the re-emergence of Margaret Taitas a figure of historical and critical interest?

I have been involved myself in making a number ofshort films, and part of the importance of that isshowing them in context. I have put on a number ofprogrammes of ‘Film Poems’ and there was onedevoted to no-budget, self-made films. As a resultMargaret and I corresponded and talked a bit aboutthese and we showed Margaret’s work. We alsodiscussed a new programme, which was possibly todo with hand painting in films, animation and poetry –and that was the point at which she died, and Iorganised a tribute screening at the Lux Cinema inLondon, and asked people for their recollections ofMargaret and got some obituaries written. And Istarted to connect with others and started to findopportunities to programme her work. And then itdawned on me that there was all this other work that Iwas aware of – she had sent one or two other printsdown for me to include in other programmes, so Irealised she had a lot of materal. I just felt there wasthis body of work that needs to be preserved, becauseat the moment it was all in the studio, in piles of cans.There were a lot of papers about making the films aswell, and they have all gone to the Scottish ScreenArchive as well, which is alright, so that is there – it is la lifetime’s body of work.

And the other thing is just to get people to see thefilms! And the opportunity with the Edinburgh FilmFestival was to do the biggest retrospective possible;although there had been a retrospective in 1970 inEdinburgh, this would range across all her work andher career. So other programmers could see it, andother people who are interested could find out more. Ithink her work offers a range of things for hopefullyvarious people – interested in literature or poetry or ofcourse, for other filmmakers. And because she lived invery specific places, so that there is also a record ofthese, yet they are not the traditional kind ofdocumentary. One of the things I find very interestingabout her work is that she has filmed these thingsquite often to deal with times and changes, but theyare not sentimental and they are open to a moremeditative way of viewing, which I think people canbring their own interpretation to.

So you had this body of work to deal with, andrepresent to film audiences. How did youapproach that?

I was hoping that atthese screeningsthere would beother programmersor people likeyourself who wouldfind connections. Itried to programmeit as openly aspossible so peoplecould see it fresh.Because, havingspoken to one ortwo people andsomebody like thewriter, Ali Smith,who has written theessay on the Luxwebsite, you know,she was sort of saying that she was born in theHighlands, educated at university there and wasn’taware of Margaret Tait’s poetry or the films, and shefound out to her surprise they existed about threeyears ago. So I think hopefully there will be ageneration of people who weren’t around in the 1970swho will rediscover her … and she is almost knownmore as an international figure at the moment. Sowhat is nice is to allow people who have maybe amore specific engagement with the places where shegrew up and have a view of them to see how shecaptured it. I see it very much as the start of theprocess, an ongoing engagement.

Tait’s work does seem very fresh and verycontemporary – and in this era where amateur andno/low budget filming is enjoying a revival, seemsvery much of the current time.

I think she is quite unique. She was part of thatgeneration who did grow up with mainstream andHollywood classic cinema. So she saw that and shewas aware of that, and at the same time she went tostudy in Rome after the neo-realist period wherepeople like Rosselini were around and very influential.But there were also ideas of things like shortfilmmaking, short documentary, things for communities.And I think when she returned to Scotland she alwaysthought that she would be part of a group orsomething that would happen, and it never did quitehappen. I think that she didn’t really fit in with the kindof films of Scotland and the documentary tradition …she realised that she didn’t fit in. But she got on with it– just did it. And that is an achievement, wherever youare, for anybody who is interested in trying to expressthemselves. But on the other hand I do think thatsome of the make up, growing up in Orkney, beingbased in Edinburgh and her interest in poetry, this mix

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‘… quite unique’: Reviving Margaret Tait

In conversation with Peter Todd

of backgrounds, all fed into this, and her determinationto get these films made. And as you say, I think it isamazing that it does feel really modern, contemporary– it doesn’t seem encumbered by the past, it seems tospeak to people now.

What do you know about her actual workingmethods?

For 30 years she used only one camera, with three orfour fixed lenses, and it was only with the very lastones that she actually had to get another camera –like the garden pieces she used one where she used azoom lens. Nowadays, people have to reinvest in newtechnology every few years to keep up with digitaltechnology. People say it is cheaper, but on the otherhand you could say across 30 years she used just theone camera and a lifetime’s engagement in film andwith her films. As with On The Mountain, she revisitedthem many times. There are a number you feel are‘signed off’ that she probably wouldn’t return to in herlife, but there are others she would have returned tolike Aspects of Kirkwall – are they individual films, or ifshe had lived would she maybe have returned to themor re-edited them into one? And again, people talkabout something like the Blue Black Permanent –because she made that at what turned out to betowards the end of her life, people often talk about itlike it was the end of something. But it was her firstfeature – she had written other feature scripts, more abeginning. I think that one of the things that againmaybe comes out of documentary traditions or howshe works with people is that she is good withpeople… you notice it in her portraits, the dialogue shehas with people when she is filming them – they areaware of her, it is not like taking an image orsomething, it is quite a unique engagement. It is notlike I am running away afterwards … I am here to do adocumentary and then I am going away. You know, Iam here like the fabric. That may or may not causeother problems with people. When she was doingHugh MacDiarmid, occasionally he is going ‘oh yes’,like that – when she does Portrait of Ga, there are acouple of times where she is spinning round and youcan tell Margaret is saying ‘can you spin round again’and she is going ‘not again’. But it’s engaged andopen and I find it quite moving.

It is interesting you mentioned Grierson and the Gairsondocumentaries – and his dominance of the scene inScotland, and those who ‘never fitted in’ – such asEnrico Cocozza, the Wishaw filmmaker, who wasactually in Italy at the same time as Tait, I think.

I have seen the name and I was aware of him – andthat’s an interesting Italian connection. I was reallykeen to see some of the films some time. You know,we are always looking for films to programme andconnections. But no, that would be really interestingbecause I came across his name and read some ofthe stuff in the Scottish Screen Archives. I think hemaybe put out one of the things on video orsomething. Hopefully by doing these screenings andfestivals you become aware of other people who havedone bits and pieces. But certainly now it probably is

quite a rich thing for someone looking across a periodof the last century to find these kind of individuals or‘islands’ of activity. I think that would be reallyinteresting to bring it all together. In 1952 Tait actuallyran her own film festival, the Rose Street Film Festival… and one of her friends wrote a few poems, she hadsome of her own films, some other filmmakers’ films –a kind of ‘chamber cinema’.

I think we are increasingly rediscovering that uphere in Scotland our amateur cinema wasremarkably vibrant in a way our official ‘national’cinema probably wasn’t …

I would be curious to know more about her links tothat, both in terms of filmmaking and showing films – Idon’t know if there was any sort of crossover at anypoint or whether there were these different thingsgoing on at different times. But there were occasionalcrossovers, maybe at the Festival time people wouldsee different works and stuff like that. But therecertainly seemed to be quite a number of traditions atwork.

You yourself are a filmmaker in your own right ofcourse …

I’m very interested in the idea of a space for films thatare poetic and not narrative-driven – maybe dealingwith mood, or as with a piece of music, in the sameway people would be quite happy to go along and justlisten to someone playing a guitar … With poetry youare dealing with textures and moods and things likethat – and films can also deal with this, and aredealing with. So over about five years now I havedone this sequence called ‘Film Poems’ of which thereare now five. Each time I made a new film, rather thantry to distribute it through Festivals, I would create aprogramme and show it through that. It allows adialogue with my filmmaking, seeing how it workedwhen presented with my other films and films I wasinterested in. So each programme has emerged out ofmy filmmaking, so each of those Film Poemsprogrammes had one of Margaret’s films in, they allhad one of my films in it and other filmmakers as wellof what was available – sometimes moredocumentary-driven, sometimes what people wouldcall more ‘artist films, experimental’. And so in a waythey are a continuing dialogue rather than somethingthat is fixed.

The going back and forward – recycling throughthings – that seems very much in the spirit ofMargaret Tait’s work.

She went back and reworked material in some casesand in other times not, so seeing films can be a newexperience each time. You know, you can see a filmseveral times and maybe see different things in it, andit is an engagement with it – it is not just like ‘oh I haveseen that one now’, but it is also how somebody elsemight programme it and what they might choose tojuxtapose it with. I have probably seen her films three,four, six, seven times – and I am still seeing thingsnew or different. It’s an interesting way of thinking that

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your work is alive, rather than the film is all signed offand it is gone. And she was very much working to theend and active to the end.

You very much get the feeling that there is anuntold story about mid-twentieth century cinema inScotland, that has to some extent been lost inGrierson’s shadow.

A lot of people are now doing low budget digital stuff ordocumentaries – in the end they would probably liketheir stuff to be shown at a Festival or be showcased,as well as to be shown to a community group. Andthen, as you said, those kind of lost histories andalternative traditions start kicking in. The documentarytradition, now includes activist films being shown incommunity centres or screened on the web. It isamazing how strong those different traditions are. But,you know, there is something there in the kind of mixand letting people know … hopefully what isinteresting at the moment is that there is thatcrossover between some people maybe working morefrom a fine art perspective, coming out of the collegesand stuff like that – others coming out of local videoand community video and kind of documentaryfilmmaking, and then very personal film making …people just coming across the technology and beingaware of other filmmakers doing it. It seems quite anexciting time really, and its only the second century ofcinema. And I think it is nice to have Margaret Tait’swork as another reference point, you know, for thatwhich will hopefully be something that people can pickup and run with. It’s a bit like archaeology, becauseyou do feel that some of them are lost and you arefinding them – it is great that people see them againand they can live again.

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