ISLAND OF THE BIG CLOTH

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Places:

  • Outer Hebrides

Genres:

  • Documentary
  • Sponsored

People/organisations:

  • Films of Scotland Committee
  • Grigor, Murray
  • McConnell, Edward ‘Eddie’

Decade:

  • 1970s

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Title: ISLAND OF THE BIG CLOTH

Reference number: 2622

Date: 1971

Director: d. & ph. Edward McConnell

Sponsor: Films of Scotland on behalf of The Harris Tweed Association in collaboration with The Highlands and Islands Development Board and the British Wool Marketing Board

Production company: IFA (Scotland) Ltd

Sound: sound

Original format: 35mm

Colour: col

Fiction: non-fiction

Running time: 21.00 mins

Description: The story of Harris tweed and of the life of the islanders who produce it.

Credits: from a treatment by Murray Grigor
asst. cam. David Lewis
location sd. Cyril Sinclair
ed. Bill Forsyth
m. Andrew Park
comm. w. Charles Gormley
comm. s. Murdo MacDonald
in collaboration with the Highlands and Islands Development Board and the British Wool Marketing Board.

Shotlist: Map showing principle towns of Ireland, England and Scotland, then concentrates on Lewis (0.37) crashing waves on the Hebridean shores with titles overlay (1.05) L/s of beach (1.17) C/u of shipwreck (1.22) Sheep being taken from pens and clipped (1.40) Gvs standing stones (2.05) Women gathering moss and lily roots to use as dye (2.28) The procedure of hand dying the wool (2.57) the different coloured wool is hung out to dry (3.12) Weaving on a hand loom (3.40) A boat arrives (4.00) Wool sorting in the British Wool Marketing Board factory in Dunfermline (4.21) The wool being shipped to Dunfermline (4.40) wool is prepared in the factory, intercut with footage of the more traditional way to prepare wool (7.13) Various colours and patterns of tweed are shown (8.01) Gvs the Hebridean beaches (8.26) Preparing the warp strands for the loom (9.08) The waft and the weft being taken from the mill to the weavers (9.37) Digging peat and collecting seaweed on the croft (10.17) Exts the croft (10.40) Ints the croft as the crofter-weaver works at his loom (11.52) Another crofter-weaver at work (12.20) Gvs crofts (12.49) Fishermen at work in Stornoway harbour and in the fish market (13.29) Fishwives deshelling prawns (13.48) lobster fishing (14.20) Peat burning (14.35) Smoking fish (14.49) After being spun and dyed the wool is collected to go to the mill to be finished (15.37) In the tradition of thickening the cloth, women sit around a table singing as they perform their work, intercut with scenes of the machine thickening process (16.49) Checking and putting final touches to the cloth (17.20) Harris tweed being modelled (17.35) Bales of cloth are stamped with the brand name of Harris Tweed (17.48) More models modelling various patterns and colours of tweed (19.15) C/u of the cloth, intercut with the various flowers and mosses used in the dyeing process (20.30) End Titles (21.00)