Today We Live screening

Inspired by a viewing of Helen Biggar’s 1938, A Challenge to Fascism - a film which guides us through that year’s May Day march through Glasgow, we wanted to take the opportunity to honour Scottish filmmakers depicting and celebrating the lives of working people through archival films, alongside contemporary filmmakers.

We’re so delighted to have filmmakers Rachael McBrinn, Mandy McIntosh, and Stella Rooney show their work alongside Helen Biggar and Ruby Grierson. These five Scottish filmmakers demonstrate the best of our heritage and showcase some of the unbounding talent working today.

Join us on the evening of Wednesday 1st of May, at 6.30pm for the screening plus a conversation with the artists.

Helen Biggar, A Challenge to Fascism: Glasgow’s May Day 1938, 1938.

This is the final work made by Biggar, with assistance from others from the Glasgow Kino Group - a politically-influenced group that screened anti-war and socialist films across the city, regularly fundraising on behalf of anti-war causes, and from the Glasgow School of Art. It begins with the preparations for the city’s May Day march, through the city, then ending at Glasgow Green, and takes us on the silent journey with the demonstrators. It exists as an artefact to international solidarity (banners showing Arms for Spain! And Workers of the World Unite) as well as an inspiring look at how far we have come, and work yet to do.

Ruby Grrierson (co-director), To-day We Live: A Film of Life in Britain, 1937.

A beautiful example of the social-issues led filmmaking of the 1930’s and 40’s Documentary Movement, and ‘starring’ non-actors, To-day We Live, shows the rural experience in Britain in the inter-war period. Ruby Grierson directs a group of women in Gloucestershire who endeavour to turn a into a community centre, whilst Ralph Bond directs unemployed coal miners in the Rhonda Valley whilst they look to build an occupational centre. Made for the National Council of Social Service, the film has been praised for an objective look at a bureaucratic process that gave communities power in the aftermath of the Great Depression.

Mandy McIntosh, Fair Creature, 2004.

From 2002 to 2004, McIntosh worked as an artist in Saltcoats with Pixelcurious, a Council funded initiative providing access to arts for local mothers using a nursery adjacent to the studio. Christine Gibb began taking a new video camera home with her and bringing back footage of her family which had been shot in the interim. The power of the footage lay in the multiple perspectives, collective cinematography and the act of using the camera as both a toy and a fly on the wall. Mandy encouraged Christine to keep the camera as a live element in her life and allow the novelty of it for her children to expand. The resulting bricolage film, edited and scored by Mandy, offers an insight into a mother’s life in Saltcoats among her children and friends, delivered in an assemblage of authorship. Chrsitine’s children are now adults with kids of their own and she has ten grandchildren.

Rachel McBrinn, Are you going my way?, 2023.

Are you going my way?, is a film rooted in the filmmaker's hometown Livingston, one of Scotland’s five post-war New Towns. With contributions from Dean Swift, former landscape architect for the Livingston Development Corporation, and residents (past and present) of Deans South, one of the first council housing schemes in Livingston which is currently undergoing demolition, the film positions the town as a home for divergent and complex narratives which emerge from cycles of building and demolition, growing and felling, planning and waiting. The film and accompanying publication Winding Up Body, were developed during a research-led residency supported by Rhubaba.

Stella Rooney, She Town, 2022.

She Town, is a moving image piece and short publication produced in 2022. The work is influenced by the women of Dundee and their role in shaping the city’s industry. Former mass employers, the Jute mills and Timex factories, employed predominantly women workers and earned Dundee a reputation as a matriarchal city. Today, most factories and mills are long closed and many women now work within the care and service sectors, with often lesser working conditions. Rooney charts the trajectory of Dundee’s matriarchal culture and examines the legacy of working-class women’s leadership within a city still yet to recover from deindustrialisation.

To find out more about the artists and their work, please follow the link to our website.

The films will continue to show from Thursday 2nd until Sunday 5th of May as part of Glasgow’s May Day celebrations. The running time of the Today We Live programme is a total of 103 mins and will begin at 10am, 11.45am and 1.30pm. Please note that a ticket is not required for these screenings from the 2nd till 5th of May, only for 1st of May.

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Accessibility:

The event space is wheelchair accessible. We have some bursaries for childcare, please get in touch about this or any other access enquiries market@marketgallery.org