Small Islands Film Festival 2-3 October 2009

Homecoming – South and East

To celebrate Scotland’s ‘Year of Homecoming’ the Small Islands Film Festival 2009 focuses on the theme of ‘home’ and homecoming’ in a packed programme of screenings and discussions of award-winning shorts, documentaries, drama-docs and rare archive films from the world’s island communities. Earlier in the year we explored  our interpretation of ‘island homecoming’ from the perspective of ‘North and West’ with our third annual  festival event that took place on the Isle of Benbecula, Western Isles, 19-21st June 2009. Details of  this are posted below.

Now we wish to  continue with  our homecoming theme by returning to the island of Islay for our second contribution to this year’s 2009 Homecoming celebrations by staging a further festival event. 

 Read on for further details of this and previous festival events.

All screenings will take place at Ionad Chaluim Chille Ìle, Gart na Trà, Bogha Mòr, Eilean Ìle / Columba Centre, Bowmore, Islay. The main programme of screenings (Sessions A-D) will be complimented by additional Gaelic related film materials accessible at the Centre’s Library/Learning Resource Room (Session E).

For details of the programme please click here SIFF Full Programme Islay 09 .Please keep checking for further changes/updates.

For details of how to book tickets in advance for the Islay event as well as details for payment please click here SIFF Booking Islay 2009. Highlights include:

• From Chile: The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1952) – Director Luis Buñuel’s take on Defoe’s classic tale. Defoe’s story itself is of course based on the true experiences of Fife’s Alexander Selkirk.
• Being Rapanui (2007) offers an  insider’s perspective on Rapanui, aka Easter Island. Set against endless oceans, monolithic moai, exquisite petroglyphs and oral histories, the mystery of Rapanui is revealed.
• From Tasmania:  Black Man’s Houses (1992)  is a documentary that tells the story of black survival in Tasmania amidst the continuing suppression of history and culture. In doing so, it challenges skin-deep assumptions about Aboriginality today.
• From Hawaii:  Act of War: The Overthrow of the Hawai’ian Nation (1993)  This hour-long documentary is a provocative look at a historical event of which few Americans are aware. In mid-January, 1893, armed troops from the U.S.S. Boston landed at Honolulu in support of a treasonous coup d’etat against the constitutional sovereign of the Hawaiian Kingdom, Queen Lili’uokalani. The event was described by U.S. President Grover Cleveland as “an act of war.”
• From Scotland: Gaelic and English features and documentaries on ‘home’ and ‘homecoming’ in Scotland’s islands including Mike Alexander’s Home and Away (1974)
• And to kick off our programme, and the ‘South and East’ theme, we screen Powell and Pressburger’s  classic I know where I’m going (1945) which offers a narrative of  British metropolitan ’southern-ness’ challenged by the experience of relocating to Argyll’s real and mythic island world and inviting the audience to share in its romance and a  ’homecoming’  of her own for English bride-to-be, Joan as she comes to terms with identity, modernity and an appreciation of ‘being’ rather than ‘becoming’.