Between Categories Book Launch at GFF17

16 February 2017
8.15–10.15pm

CCA Clubroom
Glasgow
View Map

A colour photograph of Margaret Tait on the set of Blue Black Permanent. In the foreground Tait sits in a directors chair, her name illustrated on the back, with her back to the camera as she turns her head looking to the left of the frame. She wears clear framed glasses and her white hair blows in the wind. In the background a man stands on the shore with a camera on a tripod, his ankles covered by the sea, against a blue sky. — Margaret Tait on set of Blue Black Permanent, 1992. Courtesy of Orkney Library and Archive.

Orcadian poet and filmmaker, Margaret Tait (1918 – 99) was one of Britain’s most unique and individual filmmakers and most under-appreciated poets. Her influences ranged from Federico García Lorca to Emily Dickinson, Morton Feldman and the films of the Italian Neo-Realists. In Between Categories: The Films of Margaret Tait: Portraits, Poetry, Sound and Place writer Sarah Neely (Senior Lecturer, University of Stirling) reappraises Tait’s poetry and portraits, her sounds and vital place in both Scottish letters and cinematic history.

To celebrate the launch of this publication, Neely will be in conversation with actor/writer/director Gerda Stevenson, who played the character Greta in Tait’s only feature film, Blue Black Permanent (1992). The event will be chaired by Mitch Miller, editor of The Drouth, who has also written on Tait’s films and poetry.

Presented in partnership Glasgow Film Festival.