Dunvegan Hall, Saturday 2nd September, 7.30pm, free admission and all welcome.

This film screening, hosted by Duirinish Media and Culture Club, selects two documentary films from the recent City Art Centre, Edinburgh exhibition ‘Glean: early 20^th century women photographers and filmmakers in Scotland’. The films are ‘Housing Problems’ (Arthur Elton, EH Anstey, directors, 1935, 15 mins, black and white, sound); and ‘A Crofter’s Life in Shetland’, Jenny Gilbertson (1931, 46 mins, black and white, silent). The films will be introduced by Glean’s curator Jenny Brownrigg. 

Ruby Grierson (b. Cambusbarron, Stirling, 1904-1940) was an uncredited assistant for the documentary Housing Problems (1935) directed by Arthur Elton (1906-1973) and Edgar Anstey (1907-1987). The film shows what was done to improve living conditions in London by local authorities and planners. Grierson has posthumously been credited with getting those living in poor conditions to talk straight to camera.  This was an innovation in documentary film making, which had previously relied on a narrator. Ruby Grierson was the older sister of filmmaker Marion Grierson (1907-1988) and younger sister of founder of the 1930s British Documentary Movement John Grierson (1898-1972).

Jenny Gilbertson (b. Glasgow, 1902-1990) had her career as a filmmaker in two distinct parts; the first in the 1930s’ filming Shetland life and the second, in her 70s’, recording the lives of remote Inuit communities in the Canadian Arctic.  ‘A Crofter’s Life in Shetland’ follows the full year of life in Shetland. Following the farming seasons, Gilbertson significantly places this way of life alongside other events and life there, including a wedding in Fetlar and the modern main street of Lerwick, Shetland’s capital. This film also captures the bird life on Shetland’s cliffs.

Jenny Brownrigg is Exhibitions Director at The Glasgow School of Art.

Credit: Jenny Gilbertson, (with Cuthbert Cayley), 1938/1939. Courtesy of Shetland Museum & Archives

Films: Courtesy of BFI Collections and Moving Image Archive, National Library of Scotland