Many people here are already familiar with Margaret Tait, at least from her most famous film, A Portrait of Ga. But most people aren't familiar with the breadth of her work, which is often pictured as simply quaint and observational. It is that, but it's poetic first and foremost, in a figurative sense, but also in a very literal sense. I'll let Ali Smith introduce her; for a celebration of Tait's centenary, Smith wrote this incisive piece on her work: https://www.margarettait100.com/2018/10 ... aret-tait/.
The first film I'm showing is her last film, Garden Pieces. It combines two of the major aspects of her career: observational studies of Scottish landscapes, and hand-painted/hand-scratched film a la Brakhage. I'm not a big fan of a lot of her hand-painted work, which I think is relatively uninteresting when it mimics natural forms. But here the hand-painted segment is decidedly unnatural, a shocking pink that creates a very odd juxtaposition with the imagery of the garden.
The rest of the films I'll be showing will highlight how she combined film and poetry, in various different ways, throughout her career.
