Reel time stories
A British Film Institute archive project offers an ‘accidental social history’ of these islands – and Scotland looms large, writes Alistair Harkness
documents the day the trams ceased to run in the city. “It’s a moment of change that’s quite poignant… and I think if anyone remembers that moment, it’s a really emotional film.”
Because of the prohibitive cost of film, though, there is, perhaps, a surprising level of craft to some of these non-professional efforts. But there’s also an experimental quality to some of the more professional ones, a clear desire to use film in a more expressionistic way. That’s certainly the case with Beneath the Skyline (1966), a ten-minute short about Edinburgh that juxtaposes magic-hour shots of the city’s beautiful architecture with footage of heavy industry and nature, all soundtracked with the music of Bach and Sibelius. The film was made by Sheffield-born, Edinburgh-raised director Mark Littlewood, who began it shortly after starting an apprenticeship, aged 18, with a small Edinburgh production company. “I was besotted with Edinburgh and used to walk around it for hours,” says Littlewood today. “I noticed how the natural beauty of Edinburgh was enhanced by wherever the sun was, which I suppose is obvious, but it had huge implications for the type of film I wanted to make.”
Made over two years using a lot of innovative techniques (including sequestering a fire engine’s hydraulic lift to pull off some of the elevated shots of the city’s landmarks), the finished film presents an experimental portrait of Edinburgh as a hive of activity in which the once-thriving shipbuilding and fishing industries in Granton were as important to the city’s identity as Calton Hill, the Scott Monument and St Giles’ Cathedral.
In other words, it functions as an intriguing freeze-frame of a moment in the city’s history that has long since passed. It’s also unusual among the archival footage included here in that it has already been seen by millions of people throughout the world. Back in 1972, the BBC used it for the opening sequence of the Eurovision Song Contest when the competition was broadcast from Edinburgh’s Usher Hall. “The BBC trawled their own archives and couldn’t find anything suitable and eventually someone suggested my wee film… I think I got £120 for it.”
But it’s the time travel aspect of the archive that really lingers. “For me it really does feel like you’re going into a time machine that only film can offer you,” says Baker, back at the BFI. “Over 90 per cent of the films we’re including are documentaries, home movies and newsreels, and they’re providing actuality footage that I think people will find more tangible.” Part of that is just the connection the real people appearing in these films provide to the places and the landscapes. In Jamaica Street, a 1901 film shot on one of Glasgow’s busiest thoroughfares, what proves most fascinating is the way members of the public stare back at the camera. “It’s like you’re seeing deep into the eyes of the people who could well be your forebears,” Baker marvels.
Indeed, compare this to the shots of zoo animals that appear in the 1949 film Peddlers’ Progress and it’s striking just how exotic the people in these films often appear – perhaps because with the proliferation of digital video we’re so used to being filmed every minute of the day we’ve become just like those zoo animals: oblivious to the surveillance of others.
But then, that’s one of the most useful things about the archive and about projects like this: they allow us to track subtle changes and anxieties in our world.
0“One thing I love about this collection is that we’re not telling the social history of Britain,” says Baker. “We’re telling an accidental social history of Britain.”