Ending where we started

Scotland's cultural highlights started early with The Happy Lands - an uncompromising film portraying life in a Fife pit village during the General Strike. Developed by Edinburgh-based theatre workshop using local people both to source stories and portray characters, it premiered at the Glasgow Film Festival and toured throughout the UK looking for a general release. Unsuccessful, despite enthusiastic reviews, it is now available on DVD. Go to http://distrify.com/films/6990-the-happy-lands 

January's Celtic Connections festival had a strong left-leaning programme. The ubiquitous FairPley productions served up not only another sellout Songs of Struggle, but packed the huge Royal Concert Hall in Glasgow with a crowd anxious to see Tony Benn promoting his forthcoming film biography, Will and Testament. Other concerts included Songs of the Spanish Civil War, and a tribute concert to Scottish folk singer songwriter, Alistair Hulett, headlined by doyen of the folk scene, Roy Bailey.

Mark Thomas headlined the first sellout Great MayDay Cabaret, the centrepiece of Glasgow's MayDay festival celebrations. A bill including the Co-operative Funeralcare Brass Band, and Marxist magician, Ian Saville kept the Oran Mor audience rocking with songs and laughter. The finale where Mark grabbed a tambourine to join folk's political leader, Arthur Johnstone, and master of the moothie* Fraser Speirs in a rendition of Bandiera Rossa had everyone standing.

Other gems sparkled in an impressive MayDay programme, including a reprise of The Morning Star's own Our Class, Our Culture event that brought composer, Bill Sweeney to talk about Music and the Working Class Movement. 

FairPley also programmed a major part of Edinburgh's Assembly Rooms' Edinburgh Fringe, successfully mixing music, theatre and spoken word events. The Fringe showed an increase in left shows this year, although the low number of shows dealing with the upcoming independence referendum excited some comment. Notwithstanding, a conference on the future of political theatre concluded that it was in fact, in rude health

Assembly Rooms highlights included a return for Tony Benn and for a Songs of Struggle concert, and a couple of interesting short plays in God Bless Liz Lochhead, and Hindsight, the latter the first play from new writer, Keir McAllister. Elsewhere,  an intelligent look at the pressures of politics and the failures of the last Labour administration made The Confessions of Gordon Brown stand out, and the already high level of standup was boosted by the return to the stage of Alexi Sayle and another in the series of Mark Thomas's 100 Minor Acts of Dissent.

Other key events this year have included a cracking satire from a group of writers as part of the always worth watching A Play, a Pie and a Pint series. The Deficit Show took us swiftly back to the days of Wildcat in a sharp, entertaining attack on austerity economics. 

A superb performance of Shostakovich's First Violin Concerto from Canadian violinist, James Ehnes backed by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, drew plaudits from audience and reviewers alike.

Finally the year ended with a TV outing for The Happy Lands, when BBC Scotland gave the film a showing (last Sunday 15 Dec) to counter the lack of a cinema release.

*Mouth organ, for those uninitiated! 

Happy Lands needs YOUR vote in second BAFTA nomination

News has reached the Captain of potential BAFTA stardom for a film that has been mentioned once or twice in these pages. Most notably here.

Yes, The Happy Lands - in addition to its earlier nomination for a BAFTA 'New Talent' award - has also been nominated for the BAFTA Cineworld Audience Award in the BAFTA Scotland awards.

This is a public vote, the peoples' vote - so if you want to see this great film getting the credit it deserves, get along to the website and get your vote in!

In addition, you get an extra chance to see the film as it is being shown in the Cineworlds in Aberdeen (Union Square), Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow (Renfrew Street).

The competitors for this award are also being shown between now and Monday 28 October, so you can get a surfeit of good, Scottish film making! But The Happy Lands is on in each of the cities named at 18.00 on Thursday 24 Oct, so you'll need to hurry!

Some of the other films have bigger budgets and even bigger casts! So every vote counts.

Please vote yourself and encourage friends and family to do the same.

Any networks or organisations you can circulate this through would be tremendous and appreciated tenfold.

In addition the film is due out on DVD shortly. By SODA pictures, it is available from Amazon, I-Tunes and Distrify from Oct 28.

To the next stage, comrades!

Happy Lands now on tour

As part of the Glasgow Film Festival, that recently finished, the hugely successful premiere of The Happy Lands took place. Indeed, so successful was the film, that an extra (third) screening had to be added!  The film is a unique collaboration between many hundreds of volunteers from the Fife coalfield communities and Theatre Workshop Scotland.  It tells the story of the 1926 General Strike and the subsequent miners’ lockout as it impacts on a pit town in Fife. More details are in a previous blog.

Dan Guthrie, miners leader,
confronts the pit supervisor

I reviewed the film in the Morning Star, here. And one of the points I made is that the film does not have a commercial distributor. This is because the distributors are unsure that the film will have an audience. Therefore the producers have started a roadshow (with the premiere) that is traveling to many coal mining and other areas in Scotland and the rst of Britain and being shown in halls and theatres as well as cinemas to try and  build up the level of support to take back to the distributors.

The details of this roadshow change frequently, but the list below is where things stand at present. Links to the venues for tickets (where appropriate) are included.

MARCH:

• FRI 1^st; BLANTYRE MINERS WELFARE blantyre miners welfare
• SUN 3^rd; PENICUIK CINEMA penicuik cinema
• SUN 10^th; EDEN COURT, INVERNESS eden-court. whats-on
• SUN 10^th; ADAM SMITH THEATRE, KIRKCALDY adam smith
• MON 11^th; ADAM SMITH THEATRE, KIRKCALDY (11.00 am)
• SAT 16^th; DURHAM MINERS, REDHILLS, Durham Miners
• MON 18^th; LOGANLEA MINERS WELFARE (Pitstop) loganleamw
• WED 20^th; GALA CINEMA. DURHAM gala durham
• FRI 22^nd; KIRKCONNELL MINERS MEMORIAL HALL – Dumfries Kirkconnel Miners
• TUE 26^th; SHEFFIELD SHOWROOM  sheffield showroom
• SUN 31^st; BONESS HIPPODROME  Boness Cinema

APRIL: 

• FRI 5^th; NATIONAL COAL MINING MUSEUM, WAKEFIELD, ncm
• SAT 13^th; LEICESTER PHOENIX ARTS CENTRE phoenix arts
• WED 24^th; CANTERBURY GULBENKIAN Gulbenkian Kent
• FRI 26^th;  COLINSBURGH COMMUNITY CINEMA, FIFE cccinema

• 21-28; BEIJING INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL bjiff

MAY:

• WED 1^st; RIVERSIDE STUDIOS, HAMMERSMITH, LONDON riverside studios
• SUN 5^th; DCA Dundee dca

If you are around any of these venues when the film is being shown, I can heartily recommend it. Why not get along, have a great night, and increase the pressure on commercial distributors to give The Happy Lands a mainstream release?

The Happy Lands opens at Glasgow’s Film Festival

Following the success of the ‘Red thread’ running through the Celtic connections festival this year (see my article in the Morning Star here) , producers of a number of films and other events are hoping that this interest and involvement in things cultural, is no one-off!

Film Poster for The Happy Lands

First out of the blocks is an important film getting its public premiere as part of Glasgow’s Film Festival. The Happy Lands, is a production by theatre workshop, an edinburgh-based theatre company, and tells the story of the General Strike and the subsequent lock-out of the miners, and how that affected a community in Fife.

Theatre workshop spent four years working with 1,000 volunteers from the Fife community, many of whom had family connections with the miners on strike. Many of the volunteers ended up starring in the film. 

Although it deals with three families in a specific mining village in Fife in 1926, the film has both universal appeal, and lessons for today. The film deals with questions of loyalty, honour, love and trust as these are put under huge strain by the strike. Set at a time when a Conservative-Liberal pact meant slashing of wages and rights for the worst off in our society, the film clearly has messages that resonate in similar circumstances today.

The first public showing of the film is at the GFT on Sunday 17 February at 13.40. If you can’t make that, in an interesting development, the film will be screened again at the Clydebank Empire on Monday 18 February at 11.00. See a trailer here, and get tickets for the film festival showings here. The tickets for the Clydebank Empire showing are a flat £4.50.

The film will then go on a UK roadshow tour to (among other places) Blantyre (1 March), Inverness (10 March) and down South to Durham, Sheffield and Wakefield. Check the website for more details. We hope to welcome it back to Glasgow for the MayDay celebrations!

An Drochaid- The Bridge Rising

The Skye Bridge

Another recently made film shown on BBC Alba in early January, is the Media Co-Op’s documentary of the campaign against the tolls on an early Tory PFI project in Scotland - the Skye Bridge. An Drochaid - the bridge rising, deals with the history of the non-payment campaign.  “An untold, bittersweet story of passion, ego, and financial skullduggery, through the testimony of those who took part. - as the Media Co-op website says! 

It is currently being edited for general release. Hopefully it won’t be too long until another important fight by people against the financial exploitation of governments and big business is properly documented. See a trailer here!

MayDay plans

Events are beginning to emerge for Glasgow’s MayDay celebrations too! Watch this space for more news soon! Or check the Friends of MayDay site. If you have some event around MayDay and want to see it in the programme, why not let me know? chrisbartter@btinternet.com or @chrisbartter on twitter will find me!