Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night….
That’s part of an inscription on New York’s General Post Office, but its sense of dauntless perseverance could apply just as well, not only to postal workers, but to the doughty members of the Highlands and Islands Film Guild, who were, in every sense, the heroic pioneers of today’s mobile cinema services, the Screen Machine and Film Mobile Scotland.
Between 1946 and 1970 the Guild brought films to small and remote communities across the whole of the Highlands and Islands including the Western Isles and Orkney and Shetland. While many people still have memories of the Guild, those often take the form of ‘a man and a projector coming to our village hall’, which gives no sense of the sheer scale of the operation. At its height in the 1950s the Guild was operating 67 projectors with a fleet of 17 vehicles, and was drawing audiences of up to a quarter of a million a year.
It’s important to bear in mind that most of the communities being served by the Guild had no access to TV reception until the 1960s, and indeed the Guild’s eventual decline can be mapped directly against the spread of reception to outlying communities. But without access to TV, it’s not surprising that communities would brave the cold and discomfort of their local venues, sometimes as often as twice a week, to share the experience of watching a film.
Like the Screen Machine and Film Mobile Scotland, the Guild brought round new mainstream releases from Hollywood and British cinema, leavened with documentary and Scottish material. But where today both the Screen Machine and FMS aim to provide as close a match as possible to the conventional cinema-going experience, the Guild operated with 16mm projectors (the typical stand-by of all film societies and clubs until the rise of DVD) and screens that were, on average, just 6 by 8 feet.
I can remember myself, from helping to run a University Film Society in the early 70s, just how noisy those 16mm projectors could be if they weren’t shut away in a projection booth, and of course each screening needed two projectors to switch reels in the course of the film—something that could be very obvious to the audience if the projectionist wasn’t absolutely on the ball, or if the two projector lenses weren’t an exact match. Moreover, the quality of the sound would have been very dependent on the nature of the venue. Today, equalizers can do a great deal to balance the projected sound for a particular venue, but even back in the late 90s I remember screenings by the predecessor of today’s Film Mobile, where you were lucky if you caught half the dialogue.
There’s a marvelous article about the Guild from a December 1955 issue of Scotland’s Magazine, read the article here it really brings home just how heroic the efforts were of those Guild operators, but also how little has really changed. Will the ferry be cancelled? Is the generator working? Will the film arrive on time (the rail strike in 1955 was a real setback!)? Will the weather stop the audience from making it to the hall?
What really comes across is how much the success of the Film Guild was down to the personal quality of its operators, and the links they formed with the communities which they visited. That’s as true today as it ever was. And part of that relationship was holding regular polls to decide on future film choices. That’s a model that both the Screen Machine and FMS are following. But the most telling comment of all comes at the end of the article: ‘It has been said that the advent of the Highlands and Islands Film Guild is by far the most significant development in the social life of the Highlands this century. It is…a genuine practical effort to make life in these emote areas more pleasant and attractive.’
The continuing truth of that statement is brought home today by the results of our survey into audience attitudes to the social value of local cinema. Even with home cinema set-ups and Netflix, people still hugely value the chance to share screen experiences where they live. The legacy of the Highlands and Islands Film Guild lives on.
The photographs are courtesy of Dr. Ian Goode of the University of Glasgow, who would be very interested to hear from anyone who remembers attending or helping with the film shows put on by the Highlands and Islands Film Guild (tele: 0141-330-6500 or e-mail Ian.goode@glasgow.ac.uk)