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Title: GARDEN PIECES

Reference number: 6214

Date: 1998

Director: filmed by margaret Tait

Production company: Ancona Films

Sound: sound

Original format: 16mm

Colour: col

Fiction: fiction

Running time: 11.30 mins

Description: A set of three 'film poems' composed around the theme of the garden - the central one featuring hand scratched animated drawings. margaret Tait described them as follows: 'Round the Garden' - right round and round again, 'Garden Fliers' - flighty cartoon and a stunner of a piano piece and 'Grove' - grave and sonorous.

Hand coloured scratched drawings. See also ref. 6215 for slates from the final 'film poem' entitled 'Further Grove'.

'The second film in this trilogy, "Garden Fliers", is the animated one, with white drawings on a variously coloured background. The neg has the hand drawn black motifs on a clear background. The coloured backgrounds were put in at the printing stage. I think the drawings are in ink, probably done with a pen.' [Adrienne Wilson, Archive Technician]

See also MA thesis submitted to University of East Anglia by Winn, Joss Preserving the Hand Painted Films of margaret Tait, 2002.

GROVE
Is a holy place
Calmly looked at for what it is.
It is as it should stay.
Although of course
Nothing and nowhere stays as it is
...... so that the particular time
of the grove being seen -
our view of it, the feeling about it,
and the sounds heard there
all have a
there and then and never again quality.
margaret Tait, February 1998

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.

For further information on John Gray and Craig Gerrard (composer and pianist, respectively) see paper archives or online at the Scottish Music Centre http://www.scottishmusiccentre.com/ [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: composer John Gray
pianist Craig Gerrard
copyright 1998

Shotlist: title (0.20) ROUND THE GARDEN repeated pan around margaret Tait's studio workshop with film etc, gvs garden [piano accompaniment] (2.46) GARDEN FLIERS animation, with white scratched drawings on variously coloured backgrounds - featuring bold images such as insects, leaves etc, intercut with 'real' footage of c/u poppy at end of sequence (6.36) [few frames solid colour, margaret Tait saying 'Grove' on soundtrack] (6.41) [GROVE] gvs lush woodland, trees, wildflower meadow including bluebells, a black cat sits on a tree trunk and gvs garden / woodland (11.10) ecs (11.30)