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Non Fiction Film and National Culture

Janet McBain

In the spring of 1953 the Hollywood producer Arthur Freed paid a visit to Scotland. He was preparing to produce the film musical Brigadoon and wanted to find a village in the Highlands of Scotland which could look uncharged as if its inhabitants just awakened after the passage of one hundred years. He travelled the length and breadth of the country looking for his village setting. He returned to Hollywood weeks later declaring "I went to Scotland but I could find noting that looked like Scotland".

The film was shot on a set built in a Hollywood studio.

Scottish audiences were undoubtedly entertained by Brigadoon when it appeared in their local cinema in 1954 but the Scottishness of it was unrecognisable to them in their daily lives.

Scotland is a small country of some 5 million people attached to its bigger neighbour England by an Act of Union in 1707. Scots took to moving pictures as quickly and as enthusiastically as their European neighbours in 1890's, setting up 'topical' production companies and film renting businesses by the turn of the century. Despite several valiant attempts in the 20's and 40's however, there was no film studio established in Scotland for the making of feature films until 1982 - and even that hasn't survived.

However, where film production was a success was in the field of documentary, sponsored, educational and topical film with many small production companies established and busy by the 1930's. Scots made their mark in documentary film.

The pioneer of the British documentary movement, John Grierson, was a Scot as was his protégé Norman McLaren both of whom played a leading role in the development of documentary and animation film both in the UK and in Canada. In short, Scotland's film culture, its national cinema if you like, has been strongly identified with non-fiction from the earliest days.

FIAF's aim is to promote the collection and preservation of films as works of art and/or historical documents that, of course, includes non fiction film which has its unique contribution to make as a work of art and record within film culture a different role perhaps than the art of fictional cinema but, nevertheless, an artistic form in its own right, whether this is the beautifully crafted documentary of the lovingly made hobby film.

And, undoubtedly, non fiction film has an important historical role to play in recording the 20th century - as testimony to society and culture, to people's lives. This testimony, with its basis in actuality, often contradicts and challenges the screen image offered by feature films - films made to entertain and whose influence had become so deep seated and pervasive that in 1953 Arthur Freed could genuinely believe - "I could find nothing in Scotland that looked like Scotland".

When the Scottish Film Archive was established in 1976 one of the first conscious decisions made was that we would not, as an archive, aspire to preserve feature films. This decision was influenced to a degree by practicalities (the cost, the fact that the UK National Film Archive in London was already well established in this field, and the range of specialised technical facilities required). But as well as these practical concerns, what exerted a major influence on this decision was that we felt there was a more important job to do for Scottish film heritage than to duplicate work being done on fiction film in archives elsewhere, and that job was: to rescue the wealth of indigenous material (amateur, educational, industrial and factual films) which recorded the changing life of the country and its people, films which reflected the reality of Scotland as opposed to the celluloid stereotype offered by the product of the English and American film studios.

This indigenous production, less glamorous, less exciting and at the time probably less valued than the classics of the big screen, were at great risk, arguably because in Scotland no-one was actively advocating their worth. Our belief in the intrinsic value of this kind of material has since been vindicated, to judge by the tremendous appetite that now exists for access to these images, an appetite that has grown in parallel with the growth in study of social history and of ordinary people's quest to discover their own history, as opposed to that of the political and cultural celebrities of their generation. The collection in the Scottish Film Archive is consulted by historians, academics and students, folklorists and local studies groups. It is used extensively by the broadcasters and through our programming activities enjoyed by the public at large. For students of film and television it is fascinating to compare the fictional portrayal of Scotland on the cinema screen, which they encounter in their studies, with the same country as recorded by Scots film makers themselves. Our collection offers the raw material from which they may draw their conclusions and indeed assess Scots film makers' collusion of otherwise in the stereotyping process.

Extracts of the following films were shown as part of the presentation:

A Crofter's Life in Shetland (1931) 16 mm amateur film made by Jenny Brown (later Gilbertson) using second hand Bell & Howell camera, hand held. Self taught, she spent over 9 months in the Shetland Isles making this film of people she came to know intimately, indeed later marrying a crofter and settling in the Shetlands.

Seawards the Great Ships (1960) d Hilary Harris, pc Templar Films sp Films of Scotland.

The first Scottish film to win a Hollywood Oscar (for Live Action Short) and many other awards worldwide. In 1995 undergoing restoration in the Scottish Film Archive to recover original Sottish speech track and restore colour negative.

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Le cinéma écossais a été identifié, dès ses premiers temps, au film de non-fiction, qu'il soit documentaire ou film d'amateur.

Le Scottish Film Archive, dès sa création en 1976, a privilégié la recherche et la sauvegarde du cinéma produit localement (films d'amateurs, films industriels, films didactiques) reflétant la réalité de l'Ecosse - par opposition à l'image stéréotypée proposée par les studios anglais et américains.

Films de no-ficción y cultura nacional.
La cultura cinematográfica de Escocia - su cine nacional - se identifica, desde sus inicios, con el cine de no-ficción (ya sea bajo su forma de documental o de cine amateur).

Desde sus inicios en 1976, los Archivos cinematográficos escoceses del film renunciaron a preservar películas de ficción para consagrar sus esfuerzos a la conservación de material autóctono (películas de aficionados, educativas, industriales, etc.) que refleja la realidad de Escocia, la vida de sus habitantes, y aparece como opuesta a la representación - estereotipada - ofrecida por los estudios cinematográficos ingleses y americanos.