Please read Understanding catalogue records for help interpreting this information and Using footage for more information about accessing this film.

Title: SHOP!

Reference number: 6236

Date: 1978, March

Director: [filmed by Margaret Tait]

Sound: silent

Original format: 16mm

Colour: bw

Fiction: non-fiction

Running time: 15.33 mins

Description: A series of interiors exploring the work of various businesses - presumably in Kirkwall. Margaret Tait has filmed them at different speeds and added humorous intertitles to hint at their content. 'Workshop Whizz Kids' features auto mechanics, 'Hangar Languor' a farm supplies business, 'Backlings Store' the work of a storeman, 'Hesitation Waltz' the car garage, and 'Centre of Power' general office work [Incomplete]

The title may not be the actual title, but rather the film could be incomplete and this is an intertitle only (?) No soundtrack discovered for this title so the assumption has been made it is silent. The speed of the footage varies according to section.

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.

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.

Shotlist: title (0.03) ints grocery supermarket shop, woman standing at cash register, another woman shelves boxes of tea, another young woman chatting to customer is obviously conscious she is being filmed (0.28) an elderly man cuts the string on a box of groceries (0.34) interior gvs shop, a woman and her children, a shopkeeper in a white overall serves customer (0.57) Workshop Whizz Kids [speeded up] ints engineering workshop, apprentices and mechanics attend to tractors, cars, engines etc (2.52) Hangar Languor [sic] [slowed down] man operating forklift truck, gvs men lifting bags of agricultural feed (nitrogen based feed for grass and other field crops?) manually and using forklift (5.03) c/u forklift driver's face (5.07) gvs as men load bags from back of truck and onto wooden pallet in outdoor yard (7.07) c/u man's head (7.14) Backlings Store [speeded up] ints store, where men move pallets, sweep up rubbish on floor (7.45) c/u sign on truck 'J&W Tait Ltd, Kirkwall', followed by more ints store, men filling sacks with seed (?) (8.13) Hesitation Waltz ints car garage, including behind the office counter and office, the showroom floor, man carrying out paperwork, the storeroom where lady is seen collecting samples of windscreen wipers, gvs general office and reception duties (11.30) exts garage where man fills up 'Ancona Films' van from BP petrol pump (11.51) Centre of Power [normal speed] ints office [unidentified business - possibly a lawyer / council or similar?] interior gvs office with people performing administrative tasks such as taking telephone calls, typing, filing, reading and researching using books, general paperwork, handling incoming mail, financial book keeping (15.26) Comedy Merchants [intertitle only - no picture, ends abruptly] (15.32)