MARGARET TAIT: FILM POET

I think that film is essentially a poetic medium, and although it can be put to all sorts of other – creditable and discreditable – uses, these are secondary.

Margaret Tait

Margaret Tait (1918-1999), filmmaker and poet, is one of Scotland’s most extraordinary talents, and yet she was largely overlooked during her lifetime. Born in Orkney, she trained first as a medical doctor and served in the Royal Army Medical Corps during the Second World War, before studying film at Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome in the early 1950s. After returning to Edinburgh, Tait established her film studio, Ancona Films, at 91 Rose Street before eventually returning to Orkney in the 1960s, where she lived and continued to make films until her death in 1999. Tait produced over thirty short films and became Scotland’s first female feature filmmaker with the release of her film Blue Black Permanent in 1992.
This programme, part of a wider series of screenings and events marking the centenary of Tait’s birth, showcases the full breadth of work produced by this extraordinary filmmaker. Tait’s films capture the people and places she was familiar with. They are celebrations of the everyday, approaching their subjects with great intimacy, and unravelling the mystery of the commonplace through the details of the everyday often overlooked.

Aerial • Three Portrait Sketches

1899: A BATTUE AT BOIS-BOUDRAN

Many of the 35 vues attributed to Louis Lumière (most of them from 18951896) now look like home movies. They star babies and pets or capture memories of afternoons in the garden or on the beach. However, they do not qualify as genuine home movies since they were screened in public, to anonymous audiences who neither knew nor cared that the bébé was the niece of the person operating the camera. Nor do the films in this programme qualify. Yes, they are inédits, intended for private viewing, but it is unlikely that they were shot by a family member. Peter Elfelt filmed the Danish Royals in his function as the court photographer. Who might have filmed the battue at Bois-Boudran, the immense estate of Comte Greffulhe? His wife had her photographic portraits taken in the top studios of Paris, by Nadar, Otto, Reutlinger, so it seems far more likely that these films were shot by a professional than a member of the family. The hunts in Bois-Boudran were famous. Invitations were highly coveted, kings and princes were among the invited guests and Grand Duke Wladimir of Russia was a regular presence. You will need a guide to understand these films, and there is one. In the second volume of his Transylvanian Trilogy (1937) Count Miklós Bánffy gives a panoramic description of a battue, including the colours and sounds, written with the invaluable knowledge of an insider – Bánffy belonged to the same class as the Greffulhe-Gramonts – and the distance of a great writer.
Ladies of the highest nobility hunted too, and with relish – observe the Grand Duchess Wladimir, she of the famous tiara. To our relief, Élisabeth Greffulhe does not participate in the massacre and, as always, outshines everybody. The upturned collar! The hat!
Following recommendations of Béatrice de Pâstre, a later film from the same collection donated by Henri de Gramont has been included as a bonus to the programme.

Mariann Lewinsky

Commentary by Gróf Bánffy Miklós read by Bryony Dixon.