Margaret Tait (1918-1999) is one of the most mysterious figures of 20th-century avant-garde cinema. Far from cultural and intellectual centres, Tait developed, over five decades and in a completely independent way, an extensive and singular filmography that can be compared with the work of Jonas Mekas or Marie Menken. In Scotland, between Edinburgh and the Orkney archipelago (she was born in Kirkwall and all her work preserves a telluric relationship with that territory), her path is defined by the relationship with places and how they are inhabited (by present and absent figures).
Yet there is nothing picturesque in her films. What interests her is the particular, the people (and also the animals, the plants and the objects) that constitute a place and bring it to life. Her films are devoted to small things, to precise gestures, to the colours of the garden, to the way the earth splits open, how the rain drains, how the birds sound, how a road is travelled, how a house is inhabited, how children play in the fields, how a treacle sweet is unwrapped.
A filmmaker and poet, her work is built from formulations such as the film-poem, the filmed diary, the lyrical documentary, the portrait film and abstract animation made directly on film. Shot always (or almost always) in 16mm, this retrospective makes a point of, whenever possible, presenting the films in their original format, thus preserving the material sensitivity the filmmaker refined over the years. (…) Cinemateca Portuguesa. Programming here. Margaret Tait retrospective.