Meet Scotland's stars of short film

Three years ago, The Skinny ran a cover story celebrating “a new dawn” of Scottish cinema. Looking back with 20-20 hindsight, perhaps that was too bold a claim – but can you blame us for getting over excited? It was around the time Jonathan Glazer’s hallucinatory Glasgow-set sci-fi Under the Skin was doing the rounds on the festival circuit, David Mackenzie had just made Starred Up, his best film in years, and a trio of fine Scottish films (black comedy Filth, musical Sunshine on Leith and Paul Wright’s wildly audacious For Those In Peril) were released in UK cinemas within weeks of one another, each proving that Scottish film could be more than dour tales of alcohol-soaked misery.

Suffice to say, mainstream Scottish cinema couldn't match this flood of great films. But it doesn’t mean we were wrong; we were simply channeling our ardour for home-grown moving image makers into the wrong medium. Recent Scottish feature films may not be able to hold a candle to Glazer’s feverish nightmare, but there have been films made in Scotland that get close. It’s just that their run times are so brief they could be used to time the hard boiling of an egg.

We’re talking, of course, of short films. So far this year, no Scottish feature has emerged to match the mini-masterpieces we found at this year’s Glasgow Short Film Festival, and we’ll be amazed if, by the end of the year, we find a home-grown feature length work as visceral as Bryan Ferguson’s Flamingo, as humane as Scott Willis’s Dear Peter or as moving as Ross Hogg and Duncan Cowles’ Isabella, to name three of the best Scottish works we saw at GSFF.

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Trailer for Ross Hogg and Duncan Cowles Isabella

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The latter, a heartbreaking study in memory and identity, won best Scottish Short at GSFF and audiences have a chance to see this evocative documentary-animation hybrid again at the upcoming Edinburgh International Film Festival, where it’ll compete for the McLaren Award, the festival’s annual animation prize. Another fantastic animation that screened at GSFF also competes for the award, Cat Bruce’s elegiac stop-motion No Place Like Home.

The festival's annual animation retrospective, meanwhile, is given over to the undoubted stars of Scottish short film of the last few years, Will Anderson and Ainslie Henderson, who between them have amassed over 50 festival awards, two Baftas and both have taken home the McLaren Award, Anderson winning for The Making of Longbird in 2012 and Henderson last year with Stems. We could add to this list of film animator directors to emerge over the last few years, names like Claire Lamond, Kate Charter, Gavin Robertson, Ross Butler, Lewis Bolton… With EIFF approaching, now seems like a perfect time to take the temperature of this bubbling short film scene.

Creating a scene

Isabella co-director Duncan Cowles agrees that Scottish short film has been flourishing of late. “I think it’s always been strong,” says the Edinburgh filmmaker, “but I think a lot of talent has chosen to leave in the past. So filmmakers may have made a short and then moved away to London or elsewhere. What’s great at the moment is that a lot of filmmakers are beginning to choose Scotland as their home, and base for work.”

Should we thank London’s extortionate rents for stemming this mass exodus of talent, then? Ainslie Henderson thinks there’s more to it. “Maybe being part of a community online with sites such as Vimeo and Twitter makes it feel like where you actually live matters less?” he suggests. “Not that it ‘mattering less’ is a reason to live in Scotland, but, maybe we’re starting to realise that a quality of life that lets you make good art is more important than being around people you need to schmooze.” 

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Crucially, this increase in filmmakers choosing to base themselves in Scotland and build their practice here has proliferated a dynamic scene in which to work and be inspired. “I think I’m lucky to be part of a tight-knit group of filmmakers who generally want the same thing: to continue making work which we find exciting, important and thought-provoking,” says Ross Hogg, who studied at Glasgow School of Art but is now based in Edinburgh. “I have a studio space at Summerhall and there are a few other animators and filmmakers based there, which can sort of act as a support network,” he says. “We don’t always work together or collaborate, but we do often share ideas, share equipment, and give each other feedback on projects – which can be a massive help!”

Cat Bruce shares similar sentiments: “A lot of the filmmakers are good pals: directors, cinematographers, animators, sound designers, producers etc. We all support each other and many people are happy to offer advice from their particular area of expertise.” As for professional rivalry, she says it doesn’t come up. “I think everyone is genuinely happy to see it when others succeed.”

Art schools to die for

Someone well placed to comment on Scotland’s short film scene, particularly its depth and breadth of talented animators, is Iain Garner, EIFF’s animation programmer. He sees a critical connection between all of the filmmakers mentioned above. “What links them all is that Scottish art colleges are still promoting an ethos of critical thinking,” he says. In other words, art schools like Glasgow School of Art and the Edinburgh College of Art are not in the business of creating cookie-cutting practitioners who serve industry. “This is a bug-bear of industry,” explains Gardner, who lectures at ECA. “It keeps saying, ‘We want graduates to come out that can do the jobs that we want done,’ but I think part of the reason we do have a rush of graduate success is that they’re critically engaged within the culture of what they’re doing and they haven’t just been trained to switch on a machine and do 3D modelling.”

This is certainly the case for Will Anderson. “I have an art school background, and not a film one,” he tells us. “There you are encouraged to speak your mind and talk about things that are important to you. Personally, I can’t really make a film that I don’t understand or empathise with. So maybe it’s to do with education in some way.” He also adds, patriotically: “It’s also probably because Scotland is awesome.”

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Trailer for Cat Bruce's No Place Like Home

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Bruce has a theory that ties Scotland’s low cost of living, its venerable art colleges and the current purple patch of short filmmaking all together. She suggests the relative affordability of Scotland not only keeps talent here, it’s what allows our most gifted young people to take a chance on entering the arts in the first place, and they in turn make the arts scene more vibrant. “Perhaps when there are little or no tuition fees, more people go to study something like film, from various walks of life, making a diverse learning environment, which is educationally beneficial," Bruce says. "People become used to being faced with ideas differing from their own, which would encourage more wide-ranging thoughts and ideas.” Pair this with the much discussed ‘democratisation of filmmaking’ thanks to the affordability of digital filmmaking hardware and software, and you start to see a wide talent pool develop.

Getting films on the scene seen

Cinema history is littered with new waves, but none yet have been born online; for this lively film scene to exist you have to convince audiences to watch the movies, to join you in the darkened auditoriums. Lydia Beilby, EIFF’s short film programmer and founding member of moving-image collective Screen Banditas, knows there’s an audience for these films. “Because of our relative small size, there is able to be that network of support in terms of venues in which to make your work or to show your work,” she explains. And from her own experience with Screen Banditas, she’s found that “people are hungry for cultural representations and there are a lot of grassroots organisations who are showing films or putting on theatre throughout the year.” These events bring artists and filmmakers together to talk and have ideas. “There are always people who are keen to see new work and speak to the filmmakers about it," says Beilby, "so there’s this really interesting process of communication between artists and audience that’s going to-and-fro all the time.”

Walk through Filmhouse in Edinburgh during EIFF and you’ll see this to-and-fro in action – usually over a pint. “That’s another thing a lot of the short animation filmmakers have in common,” says Hogg, “they have screened their work at EIFF. Iain Gardner is immensely supportive of Scottish animation filmmakers and I think his input has really nurtured the animation talent and been a significant contribution to the scene.” You can see this nurturing with a quick glance of the McLaren programmes, which sees Gardner throwing a trio of ECA graduates – Dominica Harrison (Illusions), Muqing Shu (The Last Day) and Robert Duncan (Record/Record) – in with the established filmmakers.

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Trailer for Will Anderson's The Making of Longbird

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It’s a similar story on the west coast. “The growth of Glasgow Short Film Festival over the past few years has been substantial,” says Cowles, “and should also be credited as a festival that has supported Scottish short filmmakers incredibly well. They were the first festival to ever show my work, in 2012, and they gave me the confidence to submit and push my work internationally. Five festivals later and they’re still supporting what I do and helping me forward in my career.”

“Matt Lloyd and Morv Cunningham [GSFF’s director and producer] seem to be growing Glasgow into something greater and greater every year,” adds Henderson. “A lot of their screenings highlight local talent; it’s a good sign. It feels like there is a buzz, collaboration happening between different artists and beautiful work being made.”

Is the future feature length?

The question is, can this indie film scene be sustained? Money didn’t come up very often when we were chatting to these filmmakers, they seem to be getting by by doing the odd corporate video here and there to fund their personal projects. As for the prospect of a long form animation emerging from this group, Iain Gardner isn’t keen on the insinuation that these filmmakers need to ‘step up’ to features. “It makes it sound as if short film is a lesser form, or a stepping stone to making a feature film,” he says, “and I think it’s important to remember that short film is an artform in its own right in the same way as a poem is an artform, or a short story is an artform; nobody ever says to a poet, When are you going to write a novel?'”

The filmmakers themselves, however, are more open to the suggestion. “Will and I have always talked about trying to make something low budget, using new technology and innovation in order to be creatively unburdened by other people’s expectations,” says Henderson. They’re both interested in making films with spontaneity – “we want to make unusual films that defy genre” – but raising money for these kind of inventive projects can be difficult. “That’s why there’s a gulf between shorts and features,” says Henderson. “You can make a great short with no money, but it seems much more difficult to make a feature that way. You have to start trying to raise cash, bringing all that into the equation complicates things. The Scottish Film Talent Network is a great scheme, and hopefully should help some of us make the transition into making features.”

Five Years of Will Anderson and Ainslie Henderson: Why now?

Anderson and Henderson’s upcoming retrospective is perhaps the strongest indication of the Scottish short film scene’s strength. But as talented as they undoubtedly are, it’s still surprising to see filmmakers receive a retrospective so early in their careers. For Gardner, it was perfect timing. “There was a nice circularity to them both winning our festival award,” he says. “In addition to that, they come out of college and they both win a Bafta. There aren’t many people in our practice, even after many years, who’ve got a Bafta on their shelf.” The fact that they’re hoping to develop a feature is also a factor. “I think it’s just an interesting time to see what they’ve been up to, and to try and get them to talk a little bit about what they’re going to do next. I’m sure that there’s always going to be these personal shorts, these little gems that they make, but I think their careers will be changing from this point forwards.”

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Will Anderson and Ainslie Henderson's Scrooging on a Greg

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Gardner confesses that the duo weren’t thrilled at the prospect of the retrospective when he first put it to them. “They were quite embarrassed with the original title,” he recalls, “which was basically to consolidate the series that we’ve been running since the last few festivals, which is the Masters of Animation.” We can understand their trepidation. The other filmmakers to have recent EIFF retrospectives are a who’s who of animation greats: names like Ralph Bakshi, Ray Harryhausen, the Quay Brothers, Don Hertzfeldt, and Scotland's greatest ever animator, Norman McLaren, after whom EIFF’s animation competition takes its named. “They might blush to be put on that pedestal with those very esteemed animators,” says Gardner, “but they more than deserve it. We did have to amend the title to suit their modesty, but I think it’s really important to make the statement that they have very firmly arrived in the animation circuit.”

What about the animators themselves – what do they think of the accolade? “It feels a little daunting,” admits Henderson, “but it depends how you look at it. We’re not pretending to be ‘masters of animation’ looking back over an illustrious career, like these things often are. We’ve just had a pretty eventful first five years, and we’ve done a lot in that time.” For Anderson, the feelings are more mixed: “It feels strange. I feel like a charlatan. I also feel honoured. I feel like an honoured charlatan.”

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EIFF takes place 15-26 Jun

Isabella and Illusions screen in The McLaren Award: New British Animation 1, Filmhouse, 22 Jun

No Place Like Home, The Last Day and Record/Record screen in The McLaren Award: New British Animation 2, Filmhouse, 23 Jun

Five Animated Years of Will Anderson and Ainslie Henderson, Filmhouse, 24 June