AN acclaimed film depicting women in Scotland through 100 years of filmmaking, is to be made accessible to viewers at home for the first time.
The National Library of Scotland (NLS) toured the hugely successful feature, "Her Century: Scottish Women on Film", in 19 cinemas, arts centres and festivals across the country in the lead up to lockdown.
The curated collection of archive footage, showing "ordinary women and girls", spanning the 20th century, was scheduled to be the main attraction at the NLS George IV Bridge building in Edinburgh over the summer.
Instead, from Monday, the Library, in partnership with Film Hub Scotland, part of the British Film Institute's (BFI) Film Audience Network, will make the film available to view online for two months.
The "at home" premiere will be introduced by Dr Emily Munro, from the NLS Moving Image Archive, who curated the film. Viewers will also have the opportunity to pose questions using live-chat throughout the screening.
Dr Munro said yesterday: "The films selected for this programme are as wide-ranging as their subject matter. They include educational and promotional material, amateur footage and propaganda.
"The women represented here include crofters, campaigners, factory workers, psychologists, mothers, pilots and educators. Seen together, they show great variation in women?s roles over time.
"The last century was a time of rapid social change in which 'a woman's place' was contested and redefined. I wanted to steer away from the 'monumental' moments of suffrage and the two world wars, drawing instead on the variety of ways in which ordinary women and girls have been represented on film, as scholars, workers, mothers and friends."
The 90 minute film captures women's stories through major social change, challenging their roles and fighting for equality "at work and at home, classroom to croft, girlhood to motherhood".
Highlights include Herring Harvest at Yarmouth, from around 1910, which shows "Scotch lassies" at work gutting and packing fish in Yarmouth, 600 miles from home; and A Day in the Home, a 1951 educational film for domestic science pupils about the "proper" role of the housewife and mother in post-war Scotland.
The 1980 public health film Male and Female, directed by prolific but undiscovered documentary maker Sarah Erulkar, features teenagers discussing their views on gender roles in the 1980s.
Freely available to view online, the film will be able to reach a far larger potential audience than would be possible in the Library itself.
Following the online premiere via the Library's YouTube channel at 5pm on Monday, it will be made available for an exclusive two-month period accompanied by a new dedicated Her Century website and a zine featuring writing from Scotland-based authors.
Nicola Kettlewood, Film Hub Scotland Manager, said: "After the success of the Her Century tour at our member venues and festivals across Scotland, we’re delighted to be working with Dr Emily Munro and the Library team to bring the film and the zine to new audiences online via the dedicated mini-site.
"The appetite for curated archive programming is very much alive in the digital space, and making Her Century accessible for free will help to continue the conversation, both within Scotland and further afield."
Women filmmakers feature strongly in Her Century, including professional filmmakers such as Sarah Erulkar, Budge Cooper and Jenny Gilbertson as well as footage from amateur Scottish documentarian Grace Williamson.
* The online premiere of Her Century: Scottish women on screen takes place on Monday 20 July at 5pm via the Library’s Youtube channel.
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