Movies: Margaret Tait

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....

In 1990s Edinburgh, Barbara Thorburn reflects on memories of her poet mother, Greta, and her tragic death....

Drawing on a wealth of unseen archival material and unpublished notebooks, the film weaves a complex and personal portrait of Margaret’s life, from the perspective of a fellow artist sensitive to the potential Margaret envisaged for film as a poetic ...

'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 - So...

In Aurand’s signature diaristic form, roses in bloom, farm animals, Orkney landscapes, and scenes of the late filmmaker Margaret Tait having tea are rendered through expressive Bolex movements as well as the director’s active camera, and punctuated b...

Young women in Milan, rooftops and children. One of the women is possibly Margaret Tait. [shotlisted from MiniDV] gvs Milan main square, bustling crowds. Shot of woman with dog (0.07) women sitting on bench chatting (0.27) dog running along rooftop...

A film interpretation of the poem 'The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo' by Gerard Manley Hopkins. Margaret Tait speaks the poem throughout the film....

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

Perugia and its Italian University for foreign students....

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 car...

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 ...

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

A portrait of poet Hugh MacDiarmid....

"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 pain...

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

Brightly coloured animated figures dance to the traditional tune 'John MacFadyen', as played by the Orkney Strathspey and Reel Society in this hand painted piece by Margaret Tait....

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....

"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 exp...

A palindrome created on film. Features interaction between a couple with the recurring line 'Madam I'm Adam'....

Every time the task of drawing a circle is performed, it results in a unique shape, a slightly different 'version' than the previous and next attempt. BEFORE WORDS is loosely based on Margaret Tait's unrealised script VIDEO POEMS FOR THE 90s. The vid...