02/03/2023 - BERLINALE 2023: Drawing inspiration from an unrealised project and her personal archive, Luke Fowler crafts a tribute to pioneering filmmaker and poet Margaret Tait

Only released last year, yet already one of the most treasured works by a Scottish filmmaker, Charlotte Wells’ Aftersun [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] sent the viewer scurrying across its frames for clues, like a forensic investigator assessing a crime scene. In both its past and present timelines, the mere sight of certain objects provided narrative closure, most notably the appearance of a Turkish carpet in one context as a novelty souvenir, and in another as a sentimental keepsake. But a more subtle prop was the sight of a Margaret Tait prose and poetry collection on the hotel-room shelf of the father character, Callum, alongside a “how to” meditation guide. But in this film of indirect, charged symbols, the daughter, Sophie, was considered the avatar for Wells, so what else could we derive from this small hint at her father’s state of mind?

Tait’s own revelatory cinematic and literary output, and Luke Fowler’s Berlinale Forum-selected documentary on her, Being in a Place - A Portrait of Margaret Tait [+see also:
trailer
film profile], provides something of an answer, turning the concept of the “anxiety” of influence for artists on its head, when a better phrasing would be a “wellspring” of influence. And keeping in mind a festival slate where Paul B Preciado celebrated Virginia Woolf’s Orlando for helping unveil his true gender identity, Tait has been upheld in recent years, especially domestically, as proof that a personal, artisanal British cinema can and did exist (institutional support be damned), offering a precedent particularly for independent female filmmakers to draw from.

Fowler, who works at the intersection of creative and heritage practices, specialises in portraits of radical, pioneering artists, but which come at their work from an oblique angle, scoffing at the literal-minded and easily digestible nature of most biographical approaches. Being in a Place is fittingly constructed from literal traces and more artificial reconstructions of Tait’s work, with footage shot by Fowler following the structural blueprint of Heartlandscape, an unrealised project of hers poetically documenting her home of the Scottish Orkney archipelago, alongside various unused rushes and alternative takes from her noted shorts, such as A Portrait of Ga and Colour Poems.

Tait herself is nary seen in Fowler’s assemblage, but her voice, fragile and aged beyond its years, is prominent in various audio snippets laying out her backstory, which passes from her medical studies, through national service in the old British Empire, to a filmmaking education in Rome amongst the neorealists, and back to Edinburgh and Orkney for some regional art-making par excellence. Her reputation as a published poet, existing in parallel with a life working as a physician, will remind viewers of William Carlos Williams (whose iconic 28-word poem “This Is Just To Say” has had a wonderful afterlife as a social-media meme), as well as fellow self-motivated Bolex camera enthusiast Jonas Mekas, who also sought to fuse the complementary traditions of poetry and cinema.

Whilst this is predominantly a gentle, placid response to Tait’s pastoral artistry, there is also a buried fury within it, like a pile of worms lying in wait beneath fallen leaves: the British art and film worlds rejected Tait in her time, leaving her an isolated independent. And Fowler aims to ensure she’ll only be independent in spirit, but not in posthumous notoriety and acclaim.

Being in a Place – A Portrait of Margaret Tait is a production of the UK, staged by Luke Fowler and Sarah Neely.