FOR many in small rural communities, it provided the first experience of "the movies".
Sitting on a hard seat in a smoke-filled village hill, a reel-to-reel projector whirring away at the back would bring the likes of James Bond, Whisky Galore or One the Beach to the most remote parts of Scotland.
Now the work of the Highlands and Islands Film Guild, which organised such events, will be recalled during a series of special events.
The story of the guild itself, from 1946-71, will be the focus of a new live touring cinema event.
Entitled "Made On Our Land", it will explore the rural lives and landscapes of Scotland through a unique selection of local films from the National Library of Scotland’s Moving Image Archive.
Partly using Screen Machine Scotland’s modern mobile cinema, it will feature a host of “celluloid gems” including the Aberdeenshire mother-daughter film-making team documenting farm life around Aboyne.
Other films include 1960s holidaymakers on a road trip around Islay while the collection also includes British propaganda films on effective Scottish land use during the Second World War and a post-war plea dissuading Highlanders from leaving home for a life in the city.
Screenings will include films local to each venue introduced by curator Shona Thomson and will be complemented by a post-show "blether" with filmmakers, local historians and archivists.
Shona Thomson, Made on Our Land curator and tour producer, said: “I love the strong tradition of rural cinema-going that started with the Highlands and Islands Film Guild 70 years ago and continues today.
"It’s an honour to be celebrating that tradition by showing films from the 1930s to the 1980s that have a relevance to the modern rural audiences now served by the Screen Machine and Film Mobile Scotland network."
The arrival of the film guild was a big event for people living in remote mainland villages or on islands.
It was particularly welcome in the years before many had TV and were living too far from established cinemas.
The Highlands and Islands Film Guild was based in Inverness and employed 14 driver projectionists and operated around the north and west of Scotland.
It continued a pre-war initiative to make non-commercial cinema available to rural areas, which was carried on during the Second World War through the Ministry of Information and the Evacuation Film Scheme.
The film guild itself was proposed to counter depopulation and improve leisure facilities for remote communities.
Made on My Land is touring Scotland and forms part of BFI Britain on Film, a major project opening up unprecedented online access to screen heritage.
It begins its tour on Arran on July 22, with dates in Benbecula, Aboyne, Lochinver, Islay and Castle Douglas between then and September 25.
Ms Thomson said: "From Drew Wright and Hamish Brown’s live audio-visual performance around rural depopulation in Lochinver to a 1961 BBC documentary about the controversial rocket range on Benbecula,
"Made on Our Land is an opportunity to watch, share and discuss rarely seen archive films that address issues still at large in a politically charged Scotland.”
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