Still: Glimpses From a Visit to Orkney in Summer 1995 (Ute Aurand, 2000)
This 16mm filmmaking workshop is inspired by Margaret Tait’s short script Video Poems for the 90s. Led by Berlin-based filmmaker, Ute Aurand, this day-long workshop will introduce participants to the basic principles involved in working with the Bolex clockwork 16mm camera and will experiment with the techniques and approaches suggested by Tait’s script.
The morning session will take place in The Pier Arts Centre and will finish with a lunchtime screening of Aurand’s films (12-1pm). The screening will include Glimpses from a Visit to Orkney in Summer 1995 (2020), Aurand’s recent film featuring material from her visit with Tait, including their own experimentations with Tait’s Video Poems for the 90s script.
For the afternoon session, participants will break into small groups before heading out into Stromness and its surrounding environs to explore Tait’s script through the lens of the camera.
Artists Luke Fowler and Louise Barrington will also be present and will assist with the small-group filming.
Workshop fee £20 (£10 students)
LIMITED SPACES AVAILABLE
If you would like to book a place please email info@pierartscentre.com
This event is organised as part of the Scottish tour for Luke Fowler’s, Being in a Place: A Portrait of Margaret Tait (2022), funded by Screen Scotland and led by Urth Productions.
Access Fund
We have a modest access fund available to support costs for childcare, carers, support workers which is available on a first come first served basis. Please contact info@pierartscentre.com for further details.
On Tait and Aurand’s filming of Video Poems for the 90s
“In Summer 1995, I visited the filmmaker Margaret Tait in Orkney. One day we went out filming some titles from her film script ‘Video Poems of the 90’s’ like ‘lapping water’, ‘turning the page’ and ‘rust everywhere’. You see these images next to images I just filmed for myself during that visit like Margaret drinking tea in her studio in the very end of the film.”
From Ute Aurand (2004), ‘On Video Poems for the 90s’, Peter Todd and Benjamin Cook (eds.) Subjects and Sequences: A Margaret Tait Reader, London: LUX.
“Whilst in Orkney, the two also began working on a project responding to a rough outline of a script Tait had produced called Video Poems for the 90s.[6] They took their Bolexes and began filming. As Aurand recalled, “We didn’t finish the film poems, but it was an unforgettable beginning…with no end”.[7] The film was indeed never finished, although attempts were made to continue it by sharing new sections by post as they were being filmed.”
From Sarah Neely (2022), ‘These Passing Instants: the Films of Ute Aurand and Margaret Tait’, Mutual Films. Read more here >
Ute Aurand (Frankfurt, 1957) - filmmaker, programmer and educator - has been a central figure of Berlin’s experimental film scene since the 1980s and is one the most significant filmmakers active in the diary and portrait tradition today. Aurand has been active as a programmer for more than three decades: co-organizing the monthly 'FilmSamstag' screenings at Berlin’s Kino Babylon from 1997 to 2007, particularly championing work by women filmmakers [including Tait], and often showing her films in dialogue with those of fellow filmmakers and friends. (Courtisane Festival, 2017)