Four new films for charity Relationships Scotland now online

We have recently completed four short films for the charity Relationships Scotland that can now be viewed online.  Relationships Scotland supports a network of relationship and family support services across Scotland offering family mediation, relationship counselling, child contact centres, groups on parenting and other relationship and family support services.

The four films are: Family Mediation Explained, Family Mediation In Action and two films about Child Contact in Scotland, Supervised Contact and Supported Contact.

http://www.relationships-scotland.org.uk/

http://www.youtube.com/user/RelScot

Breadmakers – festivals and awards to date

13th Thessaloniki Documentary Film Festival, Greece (2011)

Look & Roll Short Film Festival, Switzerland (2010)

The Supetar Super Documentary Film Festival, Croatia (2010)

The First International Creative Documentary Film Festival in Skopje, Macedonia (2010)

3rd Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala, India (2010)

Cromarty Film Festival, UK (2009)

The Normal Festival, Prague, Czech Republic (2009)

International Short Film Festival The Way We Live, Munich, Germany (2009)

The Antigonish International Film Festival, Canada (2009)

Gdansk DocFilm Festival, Poland (2009)

Doxita, USA (2009)

The Picture This Film Festival, Canada (2009)

ReFrame Peterborough International Film Festival, Ontario, Canada (2009)

Mustafa Ali’s Gallery, Damascus, Syria (2008)

Kingussie Food on Film Festival, UK (2009)

Heartland Film Society, Pitlochry, UK (2008)
Audience Award

Microcinéfest2008, Toronto, Canada (2008)

Temecula Valley International Film and Music Festival, California, USA (2008)

The Middle East International Film Festival, Abu Dhabi, UAE (2008)
The Black Pearl for Best Documentary Short Film

dokumentArt European Film Festival, Germany (2008)

Planet in Focus International Environmental Festival, Toronto, Canada (2008)

Milano Film Festival, Italy (2008)

Documentary Film Festival “Message to Man”, St Petersburg, Russia (2008)

International Documentary Festival on Disability, Athens, Greece (2008)
Best short documentary prize

Krakow Film Festival, Poland (2008)

Wolverhampton Disability Film Festival, UK (2008)

Iowa City International Documentary Film Festival, USA (2008)

International Women’s Film Festival Dortmund / Cologne, Germany (2008)

SILVERDOCS International Documentary Film Festival, USA (2008)

Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, Durham, North Carolina, USA (2008)

Glasgow Film Festival, Glasgow, UK (2008)

True/False Film Festival, Columbia, Missouri, USA (2008)

London International Disability Film Festival, London, UK (2008)

Quebec International Ethnographic Film Festival, Quebec, Canada (2008)

Sundance Film Festival, Park City, Utah, USA (2008)

Ofensiva International Film Festival, Wroclaw, Poland (2007)

Film Festival Dokumenter, Yogyakarta, Indonesia (2007)

Docudays – Beirut Documentary Film Festival, Beirut, Lebanon (2007)

Documentary Film Festival of IRAN, “Cinema Verite”, Tehran, Iran (2007)

Seventh International Festival of Visual Culture, Joensuu, Finland (2007)

BAFTA Scotland nomination in the best short film category (2007)

Edinburgh International Film Festival, Edinburgh, UK (2007)
Best Short Scottish Documentary Award

And So Goodbye screening at festivals in Damascus and Beirut

Our documentary from 2004, And So Goodbye, is being screened at Reel Festivals in Damascus and Beirut in May.

Reel Festivals is a new arts festival hosting cultural exchanges between Syria, Lebanon and Scotland, 7 – 21 May 2011. The event will begin in Damascus, move to Beirut and end in Edinburgh with a changing programme of music, film and poetry.

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Frozen to be screened again on BBC TV

Having already been screened twice on BBC2, Frozen will be shown early in the morning on Thursday 31st March on the main terrestrial channel BBC1 – at 12.15am in England and Scotland, and 12.45am in Wales.

Remembering Bill, Antony and Bob

One of the pleasures of making films is that new and often lasting friendships are made through immersion in the new worlds that productions open up to us. Sadly, we now mark the passing of three people in recent months who all played a crucial role in productions by Freedonia Films.

Bill McIntyre was the source of much information included in our William McLaren film, generously given over several interviews. A shy man, Bill eventually agreed to appear in the film and his contribution was invaluable.

Antony Kamm co-authored with Malcolm Baird the biography John Logie Baird: a Life (NMSE Publishing, 2002). Our documentary JLB – The Man Who Saw The Future was based on this book and we are indebted to Antony for his help in clarifying a number of issues during production and for his authoritative interview in the film.

Bob Edwards was the subject of our documentary And So Goodbye and the fictional film director in Finding Bob McArthur. Bob was an inspirational teacher and a cinephile who had an extraordinary memory, particularly for films of the 1930s and 1940s, his favourite decades for cinema. He continued to watch films every day and would also travel extensively, pusuing his lifelong love of theatre and opera. In the films we made with him, he finally had his moment in front of the camera.

About A Band screening at Glasgow Film Festival

Our documentary About A Band is premiered at the Glasgow Film Festival on Wednesday 23rd February at 13.30 at Glasgow Film Theatre.

William McLaren – reviewed by Georgina Coburn

After the screening at Eden Court, Inverness, this review by Georgina Coburn was posted on the Hi-Arts website.

GEORGINA COBURN welcomes an important step in restoring the reputation of illustrator William McLaren

In a world obsessed with the Art of the Now, William McLaren – An Artist Out Of Time raises many questions about Scottish visual traditions and the habitual exclusion of Applied or Decorative Arts from the national canon of Art History. The whole idea of what constitutes Scottish “crafts, techniques and aesthetics as a living tradition” begs further investigation and scrutiny.

Though none of these issues are directly interrogated by the film, the tone being set by a personal rather than a critical agenda, the documentary feels very much like part of a necessary process of cultural and social archaeology.

Aspects of McLaren’s milieu, the contradictions between an artist whose life spans reactionary periods in history but who chose to evoke artistic traditions of the past, are layers which are tantalisingly glimpsed but not explored by the film in its current form. It is ultimately the human interest of McLaren’s story that binds this introduction to his life and works together, and as an essential starting point for any cinematic storytelling it is an admirable beginning.

William McLaren – An Artist Out Of Time reads very much as the work in progress that it is, unfolding through conversations with those who knew the artist and punctuated with hundreds of images of his drawings, paintings, illustrative and decorative work. In this way the experience of the audience parallels that of the film makers in researching and uncovering McLaren’s life and work with each successive testimonial.

It is this whole process of discovery that the film evokes, and the sense of telling an individual story that may not have otherwise come to light, rather than a definitive portrayal of the man and his oeuvre. At the end of the screening I came away craving a feature that actively engaged with the contradictory layers and aesthetics inherent in McLaren’s life and work, whilst feeling equally inspired by the film makers’ six-year journey which began with a chance discovery.

A short 24-minute documentary, And So Goodbye, screened prior to the main film revealed the inspiration for Director Jim Hickey and Producer Robin Mitchell’s subsequent research and documentation of McLaren’s life and work. Mitchell’s discovery ofMercury magazines belonging to his mother featuring the artist’s work and McLaren’s art direction on the 1944 film And So Goodbye, which Mitchell’s father had also worked on, provided the catalyst for their project.

The story begins with a personal connection and this emphasis is felt throughout the documentary presentation of interviews and recollections. The presence of both Director and Producer at the screening provided fascinating insight into their process, and was deserving of a wider audience.

Described as an artist who “lived his life in the past”, McLaren’s interest in Italian Renaissance Art, French painting and 18th century lithography and engraving influenced both his imagery and techniques. His prolific output as a painter and muralist, illustrator for Radio Times (from 1951-1967), The Saturday Bookand The Sphere magazine, designer of over 150 book covers and of customised furniture and interior design schemes reveals a desire to evoke an elegant civilised world, from the walls of his council flat in Cardenden, Fife, to the stately halls of wealthy clients.

The transformation of a surface or object to evoke another era is part of McLaren’s signature, based on traditional methods of construction, geometry of drawing and restoration. Both in his work in great country estates and his own domestic space, such as the painted ceiling and fireplace in his old West Bow flat in Edinburgh, there is a sense of the artist painting himself and his clients into a scene or aesthetic, backed by histories real and imagined.

The 20th century is wholly absent within this design which is what makes McLaren’s art unique and rather fascinating. Throughout the 60’s and 70’s the design and craft of the artist’s imagery belongs to another time entirely. Both the visual denial of his own time and the context of his portraiture would be interesting starting points for further film projects, perhaps incorporating some of the artist’s compositional devices into the frame.

Resoundingly, Hickey and Mitchell have replaced McLaren’s unmarked grave in Cardenden with two headstones, one carved, the other on screen, an acknowledgement of a life’s work that may have otherwise remained unseen.

© Georgina Coburn, 2010

www.hi-arts.co.uk

Review of William McLaren in The Herald

Review of William McLaren – An Artist Out Of Time that appeared in The Herald newspaper published in Glasgow on Thursday 12th August:

http://tinyurl.com/34wy2np

William McLaren screenings at Inverness, Glasgow and Dundee

William McLaren – An Artist Out Of Time is being screened at the following venues in Scotland:

Eden Court, Inverness – Monday 16th August at 8.30pm

Glasgow Film Theatre – Wednesday 18th August at 8.30pm

Dundee Contemporary Arts – Tuesday 7th September at 6.15pm

Breadmakers screens with Kings of Pastry

Breadmakers will be screened at the Robert Burns Centre Film Theatre in Dumfries on Wednesday 5th May at 18.00. We are delighted that the film has been programmed with the superb D A Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus documentary Kings of Pastry. http://kingsofpastry.com/