Jenny Gilbertson's slice of life... The Rugged Island: A Shetland Lyric (1933), with Inge Thomson, Catriona Macdonald, HippFest at Home

"Jenny seems to have lifted the soul of that time in the islands and left it hanging up on the screen for future generations to see and feel part of."

Douglas Mackinnon

This film sits amongst better-known works of the thirties showing island life on the extremes but actually predates both Robert J. Flaherty’s docudrama Man of Aran (1934) – the Irish island, not Arran – and Michael Powell’s drama The Edge of the World (1937). Director Jenny Gilbertson (née Brown) had made a number of short documentaries and was encouraged to make this film by the great Scottish documentary filmmaker John Grierson, director of Drifters (1929) and the man who coined the term "documentary" in a review of Flaherty's Moana (1926).

The result is every inch as powerfully evocative as these other films with Jenny’s previous experience of the island, the documentary A Crofter’s Life in Shetland (1931), showing a year in the life of the rugged folk of Hjaltland… more Norse than Gallic and only 30 miles closer to Scotland than Norway. She was self-trained and this is even more remarkable when you consider that she not only wrote but filmed and edited her work.

There’s a discussion of Gilbertson’s work on the HippFest at Home/Falkirk Leisure and Culture You Tube channel from academics Dr Shona Main and Dr Sarah Neely, introduced by Alison Strauss, and it’s fascinating to see her journey from middle-class Glasgow beginnings to university, teaching and on to such inventive independent filmmaking. She had a passion for capturing ways of life far removed from the contemporary comforts of her upbringing and she was able to engage the locals in such a way that, as John Grierson said, had “…already broken through the curse of artificiality and is on her way to becoming a real filmmaker, an illuminator of life and movement”.

There was also an introduction from Janet McBain founding Curator, Scottish Screen Archive, who knew Jenny and remembered her as a "pocket dynamo" later in life. She took us through Jenny's career and her documentary shorts made for the GPO including In Sheep's Clothing (1932) screened before the main film with accompaniment from Stephen Horne. She didn't fully appreciate at the time how pioneering Jenny had been until the work of academic like Shona and Sarah. This is not surprising when you consider as Janet says, the films were found rotting in a henhouse but were subsequently restored by the SSA in 1997 and reprinted. Blessed are the Archivists... and the Festival Directors.

John Gilbertson and Enga Stout

The Rugged Island is so intimate it feels like a genuine intrusion on the lives being portrayed, the irony here being that Gilbertson’s was sometimes described as an “amateur” and yet clearly she was consummate in terms of technique and direction with only one professional actor - Enga Stout – with the rest being her friends and others she’d cast locally. Her editing is also so precise here in terms of capturing the detail of the performers including her substantial animal cast – Flora the dog and Caddie the lamb - to create such a warm narrative whole.

The story involves Enga and her beloved Johnny (John Gilberston who Jenny went on to marry) who face the choice of emigrating to Australia or staying to fulfil their duties in looking after their aging parents – something Jenny’s own mother expected of her. The economy of these islands was changing and trawling was replacing line fishing and industrialising what had been the mainstay of Shetlands’ way of life. This is reflected in a detailed way as we see Johnny and the men catching fish on the line – they have to, as there’s not much else to eat – then later trawling pulling in hundreds of fish.

The narrative works in so much of the day-to-day lives as the seasons change and events complicate their choices. Jenny’s camera is right inside the cramped crofters’ cottages – interiors built by the multi-tasking John Gilbertson whose parents and sister also provide suitable cast members. His best pal Andrew, from Stucca, played Andrew who woos John/Johnny’s sister Maggie and, as Dr Main points out in her HippFest programme notes, only someone with Jenny’s connection to the locale and the people could make a film that is so convincing and thoroughly authentic.

The film is a gorgeously evocative postcard from the past with the location perfectly served by Jenny’s camerawork; seagulls swooping across Shetland skies, as the young couple walk the cliffs and shore staring out to the endless sea of possibilities as they do at the beginning and end. After watch Johnny and the lads fish we see the interiors of the folk at their poached fish supper with bread and tea… a flashback to a childhood memory of my great grandmother McIntyre’s parlour in Liverpool, no electric in her kitchen at all. Her husband was a Glaswegian, and his mother came from a crofter’s cottage on the Isle of Arran.

Then we see the men tilling the land and the discovery of an orphaned sheep quickly adopted by Enga who feeds her from a bottle; no life can be wasted on the isle. There’s potato planting and the whole community working together to same intensive rhythms of necessity; there’s a time to farm and to dig up peat to burn in the winter. The women work together on converting wool into those famous sweaters, making a few shillings to pay for new fishing boots for Johnny from Peter Mouat’s General Merchants, a dealer in Shetland Hosiery.

This is not quite subsistence living but it leaves very little time for idle pondering – I’d be sunk – but Gilbertson interweaves the documentary purpose well with the drama of Inga and Johnny’s dilemma as it places them under pressure as the fishing season does not go well. It’s hard not to compare with Man of Aran and this does feel a more realistic and – this word again – authentic representations. It’s just lovely to look at and cinematically satisfying especially with the new accompaniment.

Everyone knits on Shetland...

This was provided by Inge Thomson and Catriona Macdonald who provided an intoxicating air of emotion and location, even for those of us of Scottish descent watching from home. Catriona is a Shetland fiddle player, Royal College of Music alumni and academic who combines that rich folk tradition together with collaborative and compositional expertise. Inge Thomson is from Fair Isle, Shetlands too, and is a composer, producer, lyricist, multi-instrumentalist and performer.

Together they infused their music with a vibrancy and authenticity to match the filmmakers own. I hope they get a chance to tour the film and music as Alison Strauss suggests.

The last word from Shona: “People can’t quite believe that (these films) exist. … she’s still not known enough, I don’t think she’s appreciated enough…” and, as she says, this is where HippFest comes in. This is peak HippFest, aiding the rediscovery of significant Scottish artists, especially one as ground-breaking as Gilbertson, is part of their core mission and achievements. Again, as the commentators say, the more you see of Jenny G, the more you want to see, the interest only grows the more you want to learn.

I just wish I’d been in the room to fully appreciate the film, music and audience… next year HippFest it’s in the diary!

The video discussion of Gilbertson’s with Dr Shona Main and Dr Sarah Neely is available via this link.

 

There’s also an excellent summation of Gilbertson’s career on the Women’s’ Film Pioneer Project here.