Other Initiatives have stemmed from the projects such as the Za’atari Film Workshop co-sponsored by Voices of the Children. Refugees were invited to submit a film to My Dream, My Right resulting in nine documentary shorts such as this example by Mohamed and Mohamed.

My Dream, My Right  Mohamed & Mohamed

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Bridging the Gap provides training, mentorship and a first commission to Scottish-based filmmakers. Here’s your opportunity to work closely with the Scottish Documentary Institute (SDI) and make a 10 minute documentary.

Bridging the Gap is Scotland’s flagship short documentary film scheme for new talent and every year, the initiative provides an £8k budget to get your film made. This year SDI are looking for short films inspired by ‘women’. This is an opportunity for filmmakers of all genders to be part of the conversation and make a visually innovative, character-led story with ‘women’ as a starting point.

For the new season of Bridging the Gap, the SDI team will hit the road this month, hosting workshops and screenings across Scotland to help filmmakers prepare their submissions. The workshops will explain the aims of the scheme, provide tips on how to improve your chances of selection and offer you a chance to pitch your short documentary idea informally and receive feedback. They are free and open to filmmakers at any level. But places are limited so make sure to RSVP in advance.

DUMFRIES
7 September (4-6pm) | Robert Burns Centre Film Theatre
This workshop will be followed by a screening of Bridging the Gap: Resilience shorts from 6-7pm
Workshop & screening organised in collaboration with the Robert Burns Centre Film Theatre.

INVERNESS
8 September (4-6pm) | Eden Court Cinema
This workshop will be followed by a screening of our most recent Bridging the Gap: Resilience shorts at 6pm and by a Q&A with filmmaker Theresa Moerman Ib (The Third Dad).
Workshop & screening organised in collaboration with Screen Hi & Eden Court Cinema.

To attend either the Dumfries or Inverness workshop, please RSVP to rebecca@scottishdocinstitute.com with your name, postcode and a brief summary about yourself.

EDINBURGH
9 September (5:30-7:30pm) | ECA – Evolution House boardroom
For this workshop, and to echo this year’s Bridging the Gap theme of ‘Women’, we have invited Engender, an organisation that has worked in Scotland for 20 years to advance equality between women and men, to come and introduce their work.

GLASGOW
10 September (5-7pm) | GMAC
Workshop organised in collaboration with GMAC.

To attend either the Edinburgh or Glasgow workshop, please RSVP to flore@scottishdocinstitute.com with your name, postcode and a brief summary about yourself.

If you have any question please email flore@scottishdocinstitute.com and we are looking forward to meeting you!

See full application guidelines online here.

Deadline: 4 October

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Award-winning broadcaster and director David Street (pictured above) made programmes for all the main UK’s TV channels before he turned to feature documentaries. A lover of life in all its complexities, he’s on a constant quest to find out why we do what we do and why we are who we are. The 40 year Film & TV veteran has just premiered Battle Mountain at Edinburgh International Film Festival. Here he explains just what went into creating this epic documentary where he followed “The Flying Scotsman” (Graeme Obree) for two years as he prepared for the human-powered vehicle land speed record attempt in Nevada.

two .. tick.. name .. check.. thank you note.. done. one .. tick name.. check and on it went, 76 tickets and thank you notes put into addressed envelopes on the morning of 24 June 2015.

If I’d known three and a half years earlier I would be doing this on the morning of the world premiere of my film Battle Mountain: Graeme Obree’s Story, would I ever have started filming?

The project started as a simple taster tape but when the production company couldn’t sell it to a broadcaster, I felt it was a a story too good not to be told.

I decided to go along with this Ayrshire cyclist who had broken world records and twice been a world champion in the 1990s as he set out two decades later to try and break another world record. Even if it didn’t work, I told myself, it would be a fun ride.

Over the years I’d gone from being a film editor to a producer, director and then as the industry changed found myself as a self-shooting director/producer, along the way I’d built up my own camera and sound kit so I had the freedom to jump in the car and go down to Graeme’s tiny 1st floor flat in Saltcoats and shoot whenever he felt like building.

This man who rose to fame by breaking world records on “Old Faithful” – a bike he built himself with bits from a washing machine, was now going to build a new machine to try and break the Human Powered Land Speed record. He no longer had a bike shop so he was going to build it in his kitchen.

When I got there an engineer’s vice had been bolted onto the dining table, the washing machine was still in one piece, but with a cooker and fridge freezer as well as sink and kitchen units there wasn’t room to swing a cat, so getting in there to film was going to be fun. Thankfully I’m used to working on my own, doing sound as well as camera, it proved a really useful skill in such cramped conditions, especially when Graeme’s family turned up. The room had a big window which was both a blessing and a curse. It meant that there was plenty of natural light, no bad thing when there was hardly room for me and the camera, so definitely no space for lighting stands. Graeme’s natural working position when he was building “The Beastie” was with his back to the window, so without lighting to balance the outside, getting a big wide of him meant he was either in silhouette or the background was grotesquely burnt out.

Part of the deal I made with Graeme when I was negotiating the access, was that I would never ask him to do anything specifically for the camera, nor would I ask him to repeat anything. He didn’t want a filmmaker stopping him in the middle of his thought pattern and creative flow. His building method is incredibly tactile and in a sense evolutionary. While the agreement worked for Graeme it meant I had a challenge on my hands every time I went to film. I started by asking him to talk me through what he was planning on doing so I would have some idea of where I could be to get the best shots to tell the story. However, after the first couple of minutes I realised this wasn’t going to work. As with many geniuses, his brain is always working and trying to find new and better ways of doing things, so even if he said he’d be doing x and y, 30 seconds later he’d be doing ax and cz. From then on I was trying to cut it in my head whilst filming and making sure the sound was right. I didn’t want to miss any of Graeme’s pearls of wisdom, so the sound had to be continuous. My thinking was that in any given period I would get non-sync action of Graeme brazing, sawing, filing  and making tea – he made a lot of tea – to help the editor get round some of the problems, mostly it worked.

I was shooting on a Canon XF305 with a radio mic and a top mic, occasionally I would use 2 radio mics. Most of the time I was using a Manfrotto monopod, it meant I could scoot round Graeme and his kitchen while still being able to use the long end of the lens to get in for covering close-ups. There was hardly room to put a tripod up, but even if there had been, Graeme is so fast on his feet when he’s creating, that within seconds that shot wouldn’t work, the monopod is a boon for flexibility and I wouldn’t be without one.

To balance the developing sense of claustrophobia the film was acquiring by filming in the small kitchen, I wanted to film Graeme out training on his bike, ideally riding round the beautiful Ayrshire countryside. I still find it staggering that some of the locations where we shot are less than 30 minutes from the centre of Glasgow. At this point the film was still self-funded so I couldn’t afford to bring in a cameraman or a driver. I had to do it myself. Two years working on Top Gear and watching how some of the top DoP’s rigged cars for filming car-to-car and cars-on-the-move helped me get round these problems, that and the fact the roads were incredibly quiet. It’s one of those things though that you really shouldn’t try at home. One problem that did surprise me was how fast Graeme could go downhill and how well he could corner. I quickly realised I had to pull over and let him go ahead on the big downhills as he could go faster round the corners on two wheels than I was prepared to go in a four wheel Qashqai.

This is just a small part and some of the experiences that I enjoyed as I spent nearly two years filming a Scottish icon and another 18 months getting it to the stage where I was putting tickets in envelopes. And NO I wouldn’t have started if I’d known what it entailed but I am so glad I did and I know that I can’t wait for the next opportunity to come along. It’s been a blast.

A kickstarter project helped get David the initial funding he needed to bring this project to life with additional funding from Creative Scotland’s Film Fund.

Sign up for updates on when David’s documentary will be screened near you on www.gobattlemountain.com.

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Looking for more blogs? Visit here.

GuideDoc is the Internet Documentary Database.

You can browse films by genre, country, production company (such as European culture and arts television channel, Arte) or by top rated. You can read short synopses before deciding on what to watch. Also, creating your own profile enables you to add films to your a watchlist and review the films you’ve seen using a simple star rating.

Find your next documentary hit here.

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“The skyline of Glasgow is set to be radically transformed…”

This was the quote from Glasgow City Council in 2006 and since then the city has lost 25% of its high rise flats. As well as high rise flats – many schemes throughout the city have also disappeared – the last remnants of old Dalmarnock were demolished for the Commonwealth Games and all traces of the Oatlands estate have been wiped out by a motorway extension.

Since 2007 Glaswegian photographer and filmmaker, Chris Leslie, has been documenting the condemned and disappearing housing schemes of the city. Using photography and audio he documents the thoughts, memories and lost livelihoods of residents and the disappearance of schemes and communities – issues largely forgotten in the utopian goals of regeneration. Most of the areas he has documented have now disappeared or will do so soon.

His long term multimedia project on ‘Glasgow’s Renaissance’ can be viewed online here www.glasgow-renaissance.co.uk.

Chris is looking to get the project exhibited / published. If you’re interested please email him at chris@chrisleslie.co.uk.

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Take a look at Part One of Chris Leslie’s Glasgow Renaissance here

Alasdair in 64′

I first met Alasdair in about 1997, when he recorded a voice over for a 16mm experimental doc that I had made with, the then, Glasgow Film and Video Workshop. Pre-internet and (for me) pre-mobile, it was a very convoluted path to hook up with him involving connections that my wife had had with the Free University Alasdair had been part of in the ’80’s. When we finally met, we chatted about some other work I had been involved with – documentaries on radical psychiatrist RD Laing, the Kino movement in Glasgow, filmmaker Jenny Gilbertson and a short I had made for Canal Plus in France. Later he visited me and watched some of this work and seemed quite taken with it, writing me a very nice letter assuring me that I had made the right choice of career…something that I wasn’t entirely convinced of at the time as I churned away making grant aided film work and updating weather maps for teletext to bring in an income. It was felt like a wonderful validation from an artist whose work I had an enormous admiration for.

Alasdair in 64′

From these initial encounters, he suggested I might like to make a film about a mural he was planning on restoring in a tenement in Glasgow’s West End. I knew that Alasdair painted but it was an area of his work I only had a vague knowledge of. Alasdair wrote a proposal and I took it to Ken Neil, the then head of arts at Scottish TV (yes, at that time they had an Arts Department producing 26 half hour documentaries a year!). Ken, having seen the experimental film I had made with Alasdair’s voice over, The Fishmonger Scales and Other Red Herrings, liked the idea and even accepted Alasdair’s curve ball of not wanting to appear on the film as a talking head. I resolved this challenge by shooting on a Bolex film camera and intercutting other material of interviews with people who had strong connections to some of Alasdair’s murals dotted around the central belt. The resulting half hour film, Unlikely, Murals Mostly, was a mix of 16mm material shot on a wind up camera and interviews shot on video. It was nominated for a Scottish BAFTA in 2002 and was even, on the invitation of artist Lucy McKenzie, snuck into a gallery in Germany at one point.

Alasdair Palacerigg Opening

I kept up the contact with Alasdair and worked with him again when he began refurbishing another mural, this time in Palacerigg Park in Cumbernauld. As many of Alasdair’s collaborators find, it was becoming apparent that I was embarking on a much longer term project than I had initially thought. Working with Alasdair involved a long period of building up trust – he spoke on several occasions of feeling that he had been stitched up by crews using footage that he hadn’t been aware was being shot. At this stage, in around 2001, I had bought my first DV camera and was nervously experimenting with how it might work. It wasn’t until about 2004, after I had made a film about Alasdair’s Oran Mor mural for BBC Scotland, that I started asking Alasdair to wear a radio mic.

Alasdair – Oran Mor

I’ve always felt that there is something magical about seeing a film that engages with a subject over a number of years. Its something that TV usually doesn’t do – people in power in TV institutions change rapidly and rarely commit to something like this – normally a fully crewed arts doc on TV might shoot over 5 consecutive days. I shot the film around other parts of the work I was doing. For a long time this was participative work in West Dumbartonshire (work that still is an central part of my practice as a filmmaker). so instead of heading home over the Erskine Bridge I would head down Great Western Road and drop in for an hour or so on Alasdair at the top of a scaffold, adding the material to my box of tapes marked “A Gray”. Being a freelancer and more often than not dipping in and out of projects, it was good to feel part of Alasdair’s team. For a while I was even on the payroll of the Oran Mor, building up material for the second TV instalment of the project, this time for BBC Scotland’s Artworks strand.

Chess – Oran Mor

The BBC doc in 2004 allowed me to not only work with a crew, but also to access the archives in a way that I couldn’t have done otherwise, and this subsequently became a central plank of the feature length film. There isn’t a lot of material but like most everything Alasdair does, his work with TV was extraordinary and came with the Gray stamp – even a straightforward interview to camera becomes a meditation on the medium of television and its requirements for the soundbite. In a Hugh Weldon commissioned programme about Alasdair in 1964, Under the Helmet, he dissects the relationship between audiences, artists and the camera in a way that still seems provocative.

Drawing – Hillhead

Over the years the relationship waxed and waned, and I got used to catching up with him and filming when new projects started. The underground mural began in 2009 and typically for Alasdair it involved a whole new process of ceramic tiling that no one had tried on the scale that he, and his collaborator Nichol Wheatley, had tried before. Again filming Alasdair I took the opportunity to experiment with a medium that still seems closer to film than video: DSLR cameras. At the time these new generation of digital stills cameras promised cinema quality images albeit with the proviso that sound had to be recorded separately.

Hillhead Launch

Having gathered all this material the question became how to bring it together. I knew that I didn’t want the film to follow a linear path as that seemed to be at odds with something that had been shot on different formats and contained a strong element of archive. I also knew that I needed to buy some time away from my other commitments to make this happen. I approached a number of production companies but in the end it was Hopscotch Films that put some money in. They had previously produced my BBC programme 0-60 about Alasdair, they also have a strong reputation in supporting filmmakers who want to make more singular pieces of work. They had also the experience of producing The Story of Film, which similarly was conceived on a grand scale and had been undertaken without an initial commission.

In terms of editing observational work, I normally wade in and start chopping to get a feel for the material and build it up, mosaic like. I’ll make long cuts of particular sequences and build up the film with several lines of narrative cutting across the work as a whole. I like to think this, and the absence of a narrator, gives a fresher feel to the overall work, the drawback to this being is that it doesn’t necessarily feel like this on the umpteenth viewing as you try to see if the overall shape “works”. It requires enormous amounts of concentration to bring a fresh eye to the process. It was a strange experience looking through material that I had shot ten years previously, stranger still to see it “upresed” from standard to high definition.

Alasdair looks at Oran Mor

After seeing an initial cut of the film, Allan Hunter at the Glasgow Film Festival invited us to show it as a work in progress in February 2013. It proved to be an equally illuminating and terrifying experience. Sitting at the back of the cinema I got a sense of where it was hitting the mark and where it was falling short. Following on from this I shot more interviews with Alan Bisset and Ian Rankin, recutting it again and screening it at the Dunoon Festival in June the same year.

Alasdair – Maryhill

A year on from this work in progress stage is the films premier at the Sheffield Documentary Film Festival. Alasdair has already given me a long list of areas of how the film could be improved and we have discussed tentatively how this might happen. It may yet turn out to be the first instance of a subject’s cut! What I hope is that Alasdair Gray, A Life in Progress, gives an unusually intimate insight into an artist’s life, the way Alasdair works and the way he lives…whilst retaining everyones dignity. But not too much.

Alasdair – Writing

Trailer: Alasdair Gray, A Life in Progress

All images courtesy of Kevin Cameron.

Kevin Cameron’s Alasdair Gray, A Life in Progress will premiere at Sheffield Doc Fest on 12 June in PBS America Showroom 3.

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Document Film Festival is an international human rights documentary film festival based in Glasgow at the CCA. Established in 2003, the festival provides a platform for the exploration of human rights and social issues. Now in its 12th year, the festival continues to ask hard questions, screening films around a variety of difficult subjects that are often neglected by mainstream media. Document are currently looking for entries on any theme pertaining to human rights and social issues for this year’s festival.  Previous styles have included, reportage, cinematic essays, investigative journalism and more experimental forms of cinema on a variety of different issues. The festival will run from 9 – 12 October.

For more information about the festival and to learn more about submissions, see the Document website.

Deadline: 30 April

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Jim took some time to answer some questions about his work:

You tell your stories using both image and text. I’ve noticed some videos as well with images and recorded text. Are you considering moving towards film?
I’m certainly embracing it, film, as another tool to share stories. I’ve found each discipline has their own ways of focusing and can be viewed, experience singularly or as a whole. Photographs and text have a great relationship when presented together, interviews render a deeper understanding and it’s always been of great importance to me to share images that have supporting text that acts as a kind of pathway into them, into the person sharing their story. Film is an extension of this. For me, all options are open, all ways of sharing are of equal importance, all have their ways of delivering information and it’d be a failing to not explore them use them as the tools they are and sharing across multiple disciplines give an audience multiple options, if they have found a particular story through stills, a film only serves to take them farther within the story.

On that note, what can photography do that film can’t?
Photography, I just love the pace of experiencing a still image, it’s so immersive, we might live in a world where time can be dictated by the short time it takes to click a mouse, the goal is to extend that time, to present images, within their context, supported by text to eliminate any overlay of assumption. I don’t intend for images to be art, for them to be a experience to leave guesswork or assumptions, they exist to document and in turn to share, vehicles of moments, they really transport us within themselves, and the people, stories they contain too, transported from one time, place to that of the viewer, ultimately it’s about bringing people closer together, closer to lives, situations, moments with the aim to break down walls of misunderstanding, stereotyping, we really need to try to cease judging one another based upon reinforced characters perpetuated by mass media and start listening to each other and discovering ways to understand all we have in common.

Which come first, the stories or the images?
They always evolve together. First though, always, comes listening. Everything comes from the fertile grounds of communication, asking questions then being quiet and really listening. I’ll make images through conversations, recording audio files of conversations, sometimes filming and that all serves as the foundations for a story, from that starting point I’m then able to follow it’s natural path, shooting straight documentary where needed, shooting portraits. It’s very organic, though, you’re planting seeds, tending to them and then watching them grow.

You mentioned that you want people to be comfortable and for the camera to disappear. You’re very involved in these people’s lives. How would you describe the relationship between what you make and the difficult emotions that come with it?
Absolutely, the last thing I’m interested in is a flying visit to the surface of someone elses life and taking a photograph of them looking at my camera. So, I spend a lot of time getting to know people, to better appreciate and understand them, though I’d say this is an extension of who I am, I love getting to know people, it just happens that this way of being is beneficial for stories, the time and self invested, by all parties, is always the key to the camera becoming invisible.

It can be hard, emotionally, shooting long form, especially when your witness to someones pain, or fear, or death. I’ve had a couple of people very close to me pass away, both played a huge part within the series and their passing hit me as profoundly as would any person close to me in life. I’ve never seen the camera as a shield to emotions, it’s not removing me, a step back, if anything, it’s bringing me closer, which is both my honour and privilege.

Life, though, is filled with beginnings and endings, as a carer I’ve become very used to witnessing pain, both physical and mental but rather than making me tune it out, harden to it, it’s just enabled me to learn to understand it, to listen and in turn do what’s needed versus doing what I perceive needs to be done, which most often is the wrong thing!, you have to learn to be more understanding, most all of the lessons I have learned caring for my mother have served me well in making documentary.

It’s important to have an internal relationship, dialogue, to know where the drive comes from, the fuel, for me, it’s always been about redressing the imbalance of how people are stereotyped, judged… I’m split between a state of continual awe at the strength it takes people to endure and angered at the often brutal ways people are treated, empathy is an energy, anger is an energy, both can be used, with the right focus, they become the hand that you hold to see you through.

When you’re editing your film how do you narrow down your selection of images? What things are you looking for specifically?
I really do a lot of what I do instinctively, that instinct is reinforced by every experience… I’ll always try to present a completed story with an element of linear narrative, chronological events punctuated with moments of reflection, so pairing images up with interviews and accounts is something I have often done.

Could you tell us a bit more about your process?
For the bulk of the series I’ve been using a Nikon D700 with an old 28mm AF f2.8, which is a lovely lens and recently a 24mm f1.4 which is such an enabler, able to shoot really fast in low light, which I often find myself shooting in,  and of course my trusty Sekonic light meter which I use for every photograph. I’m embarking on a portrait series this year, in film, and for that I am using a Mamiya 7ii with a 65mm, so I’m very excited for that.

Your method of documenting reminds me of the work of John Grierson whose documentary work focused on social issues and emphasised the extraordinary in the everyday. What do these stories mean to you?
Thank you, that’s a wonderful compliment. The people, the stories, they are a huge part of my life and from pretty much day one, I’ve viewed these stories as important within the now and important for the future, not important in the sense of my having made them, I’m merely a conduit, but important for the people within them, the issues they raise, the time we are all within. I really see it as a resistance, there is a war happening, the lower classes (what a terrible premise for any culture to have) so often are demonised in the now, maligned and used as pawns in the game, appropriated as tools to empower editorial or political ideology.

I’ve always seen the human being before the labels we are so often taught to adhere to one another and I’ve always been aware of the chapters of back story that lead to a defining moment. We live in times of fast food truths, delivered in bite sized portions, using all the tricks of advertising, we exist in a time of being sold versions of the truth with the singular goal of swaying, shaping opinion, rather than bringing us closer, honing our empathy, it’s often used to divide us, fracture us, cutting prejudice into us, my only hope for these stories is that in some way, they unite us, bring us back to a time where we took the time to not become a panel of judges, life is not about being a self appointed  judge, making snap decisions based upon a very thin experience, life is not fucking Pop Idol or X Factor, and the result of being swayed by such divisive presentation of fact via the mass media is less tolerance for many whom need only to be understood and embraced, the stories are about building communities, not tearing them down.

All images courtesy of J A Mortram.

Interviewed by Madeleine Schmoll

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Dazed Vision, the in-house video art arm of Dazed Group, launches today. It specialises in branded and editorial visual content for online, broadcast and beyond, translating Dazed & Confused‘s rich and unique print heritage for the video era.

Its first major editorial project will be the launch of a year-long landmark video strand, Visionaries on dazeddigital.com. This will see weekly video takeovers from some of the world’s most exciting creatives and collectives. Dazed‘s December cover star, James Franco, is first off the mark, while confirmed future Visionaries include Björk, Jake & Dinos Chapman, Kim Jones, Rankin and Warp Records.

Dazed Vision is simultaneously commissioning and scheduling a rich weekly content cycle across the worlds of style, documentary, art, music and culture for dazeddigital.com.

On launch Dazed Vision is proud to announce partnerships with the likes of Channel 4, Arte Creative, Copenhagen international Documentary Festival, Sheffield Doc/Fest and Tribeca Film Institute, with many more to follow.

The video arm is also working with a host of brands on large-scale moving image projects, looking to push the way audiences view and interact with branded content.

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Art/Roc/Doc is a fly on the wall documentary which followed Glasgow band, Isosceles on a road trip to uncover the London art scene during Frieze Art Fair 2009.

Along the way, Isosceles headlined PLUS, a large group exhibition and series of events produced by Kerry Ryan (Neon and Sign-makers), Declan McMullan (artist/independent producer) and Volume (London), with support from Central Station. PLUS was 72 hours of non-stop artists, exhibits and music, featuring Douglas Gordon, Matt Collishow, Sarah Lucas, Gavin Turk and Sam Hasler.

See all three parts of Art/Roc/Doc here.

Members Tom Duncan and Dasha jumped on board to film and photograph the event, designer Ruth Parker was set with the task of creating a cardboard caravan and together they created a short film which premiered at Glasgow Film Festival 2010.

To find out more about the project, read this.

See the full Art/Roc/Doc collection online here.

(originally published on Central Station V1)