“HOME”
Dùthchas | Home is a poignant, touching and emotive exploration of what it meant - and still means - to people, especially women, to have to leave the island of their birth to get an education, work, and live. We explore the effects of the resulting cultural and linguistic loss. Featuring unique and unseen archive film footage, contemporary interviews and a powerful soundtrack composed by Donald Shaw, this will be a particularly moving film for anyone with a connection with the Hebrides.
This fascinating and unique collection of archive footage from the 60s and 70s reveals repeated iconic scenes of leaving the island, friends and relatives on the pier waving as they recede into the distance. Although the film is silent, you can almost hear the keening.
Director Biography
Andy Mackinnon has worked in creative & collaborative film and contemporary art since the late 80’s, and lives on the island of North Uist in the Outer Hebrides. He was director/cinematographer/producer of the Scottish BAFTA nominated £300k budget feature documentary TRANSITION, the first Scottish documentary to make the official selection at IDFA in 2000. In 2000 he worked with Taigh Chearsabhagh Museum & Arts Centre to make the participatory documentary feature Passing Places - The Real Outer Hebrides. He is passionate about environmental issues and the islands where he now lives.
Kirsty MacDonald, director of new Gaelic creative agency, Comas Creative, has an MA (Hons) in Scottish Ethnology and a wide range of skills in both media production and Gaelic/Traditional Arts development, with years of experience as a TV presenter, voice-over artist, online content producer and director, researcher and translator. A native of North Uist, she is fluent in Scottish Gaelic, and has a love of indigenous minority cultures and languages, history and archaeology.
Kirsty MacDonald worked in the public sector for 10 years at Historic Scotland and Creative Scotland developing Gaelic and Traditional Arts, while continuing to contribute freelance to broadcast productions such as An Dotair Mòr (2014), An Cràdh/Endo What? (2015), An Taistealaiche/ The Far Traveller (2019), and Iorram/Boat Song (2019). She has a particular expertise in archive material having managed the cataloguing of the Tobar an Dualchais/Kist o Riches project 2006-2009.
UistFilm, based in North Uist in the Outer Hebrides, was formed in 2013 by Andy Mackinnon within Taigh Chearsabhagh Trust, and produces a wide range of media content. Andy produced and directed UistFilm’s first broadcast documentary commission, the widely acclaimed An Dotair Mòr (2014) and recently collaborated with Joshua Bonnetta, whose Uist-shot feature An Dà Sheallach | The Two Sights premiered at Berlinale FORUM in 2020. The FAODAIL | FOUND Outer Hebrides Archive Film project seeks to digitise and disseminate indigenous archive film of the islands as currently all of the National Library of Scotland Moving Image Archive relating to the Outer Hebrides is from outsider perspectives.
Director’s Statement
Andy Mackinnon
When the FAODAIL | FOUND archive film project were given this archive film collection, as Donald says in the film, we didn’t know what was on it other than what was written on the reel boxes - Berneray 1960-78. Thanks to very generous crowdfunders we had the collection digitised to 4K and were amazed at the fantastic scenes the reels held. One iconic scene was repeated every time the filmmakers, Bill & Ann Scott, left the island - friends and family waving from the pier as the boat slowly pulls away. I knew we had a film to make.
Kirsty MacDonald
This precious footage from Berneray provided us with the perfect opportunity to explore how cultural and linguistic loss has affected one tiny island. A similar story can be seen throughout the Hebrides over the last century, but it's important to balance this with the profound sense of community and deep belonging that still runs strong. It's a special thing to have the story of Berneray told by the islanders (and descendants) themselves, and it's been a real privilege to get to know them better in the process.