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The Scottish Screen Archive holds a number of films that illustrate the remote and island communities around the Scottish coast. The film 'Eriskay- A Poem of Remote Lives' filmed by amateur photographer and ethnographer Dr Werner Kissling illustrates life for the 500 Gaelic speaking inhabitants of the small Hebridean island in the 1930s. This film was shot in 1934 as a silent film with Gaelic music and dialogue added to give a atmospheric portrayal of the sights and sounds of the island. The narration describes it as an 'Island of crofter, fishermen and tweed weavers’ and shows the traditional methods of subsistence on the island, described as a ‘hard and simple life’. The film shows scenes of peat cutting, sheep shearing, the collecting of crottle (lichen) for dying wool, and traditional tweed waulking amongst other scenes of life in detail on the island. Many films in the archive's collection that look at rural Scotland and island life feature the home and working lives of crofters, showing their skills and crafts, the Gaelic language and songs, rural traditions and the surrounding landscape. For example the film 'St Kilda, Britain's Loneliest Isle' (1928) illustrates life on the remote and now deserted Hebridean island before its evacuation, and 'The Rugged Island' (1933) is set in a crofter community in the Shetland Islands. |
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