Juliana Capes and Ruth Barrie's Be Different Today airs as part of the first commissions for Now & Next

We are delighted to announce that the first of the Now & Next short film commissions, in partnership with Screen Scotland and BBC Scotland, will air on Thursday 18 April at 11pm as part of Loop TV episode 1.

Juliana Capes and Ruth Barrie’s film Be Different Today was filmed over seven visually described sunrises on Portobello beach in February 2019. It has grown from Capes’ passion for equal access to the arts and her experience of working with visually impaired audiences over the last 15 years in Scottish galleries as a visual describer. Consequently, she considers visual description a creative practice akin to the making of a painting and of equal benefit to visually impaired and sighted audiences alike.

Capes and Barrie’s collaboration speaks about the difficulty of describing the indescribable (such as colour, grief, love) and operates on the cusp of the personal and universal, drawing on each of the artists’ life experiences. They have also been inspired by their shared love of Portobello beach, ASMR YouTube videos and transcendental meditation. The resulting film Be Different Today speaks of the dualities of living: of simultaneously keeping close and letting go.

Ruth Barrie and Juliana Capes are artists and friends who both live and work five minutes from the beach in Portobello, Edinburgh.

Ruth Barrie (b.1979, Glasgow) trained as a filmmaker at Edinburgh College of Art. She has directed documentaries for Channel 4 & STV and regularly collaborates with musicians and artists to produce moving image work.

Juliana Capes (b.1974, Grimsby) is an award-winning multi-disciplinary visual artist. She has worked in the arts in Scotland for the last 23 years, exhibiting most recently at Edinburgh’s Fruitmarket Gallery, Royal Scottish Academy and Edinburgh Art Festival.