AERIAL
Full length video
Please read Understanding catalogue records for help interpreting this information and Using footage for more information about accessing this film.
Title: AERIAL
Reference number: 3699
Date: 1974
Director: filmed by Margaret Tait [Stuart Pound]
Production company: Ancona Films
Sound: sound
Original format: 16mm
Colour: bwcol
Fiction: fiction
Running time: 4.00 mins
Description:
Impressions of air, fire, earth and water. Margaret Tait described this film as follows: 'Touches on elemental images ; air, water, (and snow), earth and fire (and smoke) all come in to it. The track consists of a drawn-out musical sound, single piano notes and some natural sounds".
LUX VHS viewing copy held.
There are slightly differing versions held - contact National Library of Scotland Moving Image Archive for further detail.
Margaret Tait on this title: "Yes, really a very simple film, if you allow yourself to respond to it instead of trying to follow it intellectually. There is no narrative and no argument, it seems more like a musical theme conjured out of the whole rather than presented as point to be taken. There's a general theme of the four elements, earth, air, fire and water - in a different order - air, water, earth, fire and then air again, with all the elements intermingled. But just as a sort of song or even a kind of nursery rhyme. Although I don't understand musical structure - I can't really follow the structure of piece of music when I'm listening to it - but I think that film- structure is more like musical structure than anything else."
See also Additional Information file at 11/1/455. Paper Archives 4/5/119, 4/11/651, 4/5/92.
The Tait papers are deposited in Orkney Archives. Currently being catalogued. For any enquiries please contact Principal Archivist.
See National Film Theatre Programme Notes - Art In Cinema - The International Avant-Garde Film.
Online tour of this title, interpreted by contemporary Scottish writer Ali Smith can be found on the LUX website at: http://www.luxonline.org.uk/tours/margaret_tait(3).html [last accessed 3/4/2008]
The British Artist's Film and Video Study Collection at http://www.bftv.ac.uk/avantgarde based at Central St. Martin's College of Art and Design holds an artist's file on Margaret Tait.
The British Film Institute National Library http://www.bfi.org.uk holds many of the published articles on her and her work.
In 1979 Margaret Tait was the subject of a BBC Scotland 'Spectrum' arts programme.
Credits:
Ancona Films presents
filmed by Margaret Tait
[Helen Tatlow, David Croft, Malcolm Bates]
Shotlist:
[shotlisted from LUX VHS viewing copy. Control track]
title and opening credits (0.19) [bw] experimentally presented images of air, fire, earth and water. Includes footage of trees rippling in wind, snow falling on street, birds on tree branch in snow, children sledging (1.36) [col, some underexposed] digging earth with fork [bw] c/u leaves [in negative and then pos] [col] c/u tree leaves, a dead (?) bird, worm wiggling in earth, fire burning in hearth, birds again on windowsill in snow and feeding on bread [bw] sky and clouds (4.06)