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Garden Pieces 1998 star_border 7
A set of three 'film poems' composed around the theme of the garden - the central one featuring hand scratched animated drawings. Margaret Tait described them as follows: 'Round the Garden' - right round and round again, 'Garden Fliers' - flighty cartoon and a stunner of a piano piece and 'Grove' - grave and sonorous.

Land Makar 1981 star_border 6
"This is a landscape study of an Orkney croft, with the figure of the crofter, Mary Graham Sinclair, very much in the picture. The croft is West Aith, on the edge of a small loch, which almost every passing visitor stops to photograph or draw or paint. I have been filming this beautiful place since 1977, observing many of the human activities which alter and define how it looks." Margaret Tait

Place of Work 1976 star_border 9
Margaret Tait documents her house, studio and garden in Buttquoy, Orkney as the seasons pass. She had lived there from the age of seven and often returned. At the time of filming, the house was about to be taken back by the council - this film is an effective 'goodbye'. Margaret Tait said it 'was meant to define a place, or the feeling of being in one place, with the sense this gives one, not of restriction but of the infinite variations available.'

Survivor 1976
Unedited slates from a film called 'Survivor' filmed by Margaret Tait. Footage includes outdoor landscape and garden scenes, a fire burning in field and a man drinking tea in his study. [There appears to be no coherence to the footage] See also Additional Information file at 11/1/455. Paper Archives 4/5/119, 4/11/651, 4/5/92.

Tailpiece 1976
"The film was conceived as a coda to a longer (colour) film, Place of Work, made in the same year. It covers the time of finally emptying a long-time family home, with its personal memories and connection with some of my own work. Fragments of verse, along with young children's voices released into the emptying rooms and staircases, and an ersatz 'pop' music track, clarify the familiar and the alien in the situation." Margaret Tait

Colour Poems 1974 star_border 7.7
'Titles within the film are: Numen of the Boughs, Old Boots, Speed Bonny Boat, Lapping Water, Incense, Aha, Brave New World, Things, Terra Firma. A poem started in words is continued in images - Part of another poem as an addition to the picture - Some images formed by direct-on-film animation - Others 'found' by the camera" - MT

Painted Eightsome 1970
Margaret Tait described this title as 'An eightsome reel played by Orkney Strathspey and Reel Society, recorded in about 1955 - 1956, later transferred to 35mm optical stock with clear picture and gradually painted over the years. Eights of different things - figures, antlers, or sometimes just blobs in tartan colours - dance their way through the figure of the reel.

Caora Mor: The Big Sheep 1966
A picture of East Sutherland in 1966.

Splashing 1966 star_border 7
An experimental piece of film-making by Margaret Tait, featuring three children at play in a burn and garden, splashing and having fun playing with water.

Palindrome 1964
A palindrome created on film. Features interaction between a couple with the recurring line 'Madam I'm Adam'.

Where I Am Is Here 1964 star_border 7
"Starting with a six-line script which just noted down a kind of event to occur, and recur, my aim was to construct a film with its own logic, its own correspondences within itself, and its own echoes and rhymes and comparisons, all through close exploration of the everyday, the commonplace, in the city of Edinburgh." - MT

Hugh MacDiarmid: A Portrait 1964 star_border 4.2
A portrait of poet Hugh MacDiarmid.

Rose Street 1956 star_border 6
The minutiae of daily life on Edinburgh's Rose Street in the fifties is presented in this impressionistic documentary piece.

All These New Relations 1955
Affectionate observational shots of toddlers, school age girl and very new baby.

The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo 1955 star_border 5.4
A film interpretation of the poem 'The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo' by Gerard Manley Hopkins. Margaret Tait speaks the poem throughout the film.

A Portrait of Ga 1952 star_border 6.2
Another early experiment in portraiture from Tait. In filming her mother she asks the wider question of how much the camera can reveal of the person.