Film Production in Scotland
Early film production activity in Scotland centred to a degree on the optical lantern dealers who were developing moving picture production and exhibition in the 1890’s. William Walker’s Royal Cinematograph Company was the pioneer, making and showing local ‘topical’ films around the Grampian region between 1897 and 1911. The first known feature film made in Scotland was Rob Roy (1911), sadly missing.
Scotland’s first cinema newsreel, the Scottish Moving Picture News, was established in 1917, but did not survive into the era of the ‘talkies’. There was a further flurry of feature film making activity centred on Rouken Glen on the south side of Glasgow in the early 1920s, none of it lasting long, followed by the establishment of a number of small companies specialising in advertising, promotional and topical films who were to enjoy more sustained success. It was one of these enterprising film producers Ronnie Jay who made Scotland’s first talkie Sunny Days in 1934.
The factual film production industry settled down in the 1930s with Stanley Russell’s Scottish Film Productions (becoming Russell Productions and finally Thames & Clyde), Elder-Dalrymple Films (specialists in educational films) and Campbell Harper Films in Edinburgh. This triumvirate was joined after the war by Templar Films whose best known production is the first Scottish Oscar winner Seawards: the Great Ships (1960).
Another unsuccessful attempt at establishing a production base for feature films was promoted in 1946 by Scottish National Film Studios whose ambitious (but unrealised) plans included major film studios at Inverness.
The establishment of the Films of Scotland Committee in 1954 proved a catalyst for the growth of indigenous film making in Scotland in the post war period. The commissioning powers of the Committee (they sponsored over 150 films in their thirty-year existence) enabled young Scottish filmmakers to earn a living and to develop and hone their skills behind the camera and in the cutting room. From this training ground in documentary film emerged, amongst others, Bill Forsyth, Murray Grigor and Mike Alexander.
The National Library of Scotland Moving Image Archive (formerly the Scottish Screen Archive) holds films, videos and moving images by amateur and professional filmmakers. It also holds the records of the Films of Scotland Committee, records of various film production companies, papers of individuals and records of bodies concerned with the development of film in Scotland, such as the Scottish Film Council. Most local, university and business archives deposit their moving images with the Moving Image Archive.
Contributor: Janet McBain (Scottish Screen Archive, 2002)
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