The performance will include an extraordinary silent film from the National Library of Scotland Moving Image Archive directed by local filmmaker Jenny Gilbertson, presented with a live performance of newly commissioned music by Inge Thomson and Catriona Macdonald.
The Rugged Island: A Shetland Lyric (1933) is a beautiful 'story documentary' made by pioneering Scottish filmmaker Jenny Gilbertson showing life, love and work in Shetland's rural crofting communities. Jenny's husband-to-be plays Johnny: a young man torn between his duty to home and his love for Enga, with the promise of a new life in Australia. Hailed by John Grierson - father of the British documentary movement - as "one of the best descriptions of life in the country anybody has yet made", this tended and beautiful dramatisation of Shetland life surpasses the bounds of both fiction and non-fiction filmmaking.
Hippfest commissioned one of Scotland's most in-demand composer-producers, Inge Thomson, to create a new live score for this remarkable film. The premiere met rapturous response and requests for further performances. Thomson, herself from one of Scotland's most remote crofting communities, brough in multi-award winning Shetland fiddler Catriona Macdonald, and between them they make a soundtrack both ancient and modern. The perfect foil to Gilbertson's feminal work.
Tickets for The Rugged Island: A Shetland Lyric cost £16.50 (including 10% booking fee) and are available to purchase online here, in-person at the Box Office in Mareel, or by calling on 01595 745 500 during opening hours of 10am-9pm, Tuesday - Sunday.
The tour and this performance was originally commissioned by HippFest: a world class Festival for silent film, cultivating and international community with an adventurous appetite for extraordinary cinema. The commission was supported by Creative Scotland's National Lottery Open Fund for Organisations. Screening material courtesy of the National Library of Scotland Moving Image Archive.
Header Image by: Kat Gollock
