The huts a film from Wester Hailes (1985)
Director: Des Bradley
In collaboration with the Wester Hailes Representative Council:
Liz Whitecross, Anne Milne, Angus Hardie, Jackie Cameron, Lorna Gratton, Margaret McDonald, Colin Bartie, sheila Hamilton, Maureen Woytozgo
Production Trevor Davies (Skyline Productions, Edinburgh)
"The time was right for the emergence of an overall Wester Hailes coordinating body which people trusted enough to lend their authority. I spent a lot of time in people's houses talking and talking- trying to build concensus. Local activists were determined that their representative body should be as independent as possible from outside influences- like the remoteness of local government officialdom- or the partisan interests of professional politicians. The achievement of a unified independent voice was the Wester Hailes community's most telling achievement. This voice found its fullest expression in what eventually became the Wester Hailes Representative Council." (Laurence Demarco, Reflections on my time in Wester Hailes 1976-1990, 2009, www.senscot.net/view_art.php?v...)
From There… To Here - The social history of Wester Hailes
hailesmatters.wordpress.com/
"Wester Hailes - The Huts (52 mins Bradley 1985) is a single film documentary about community organisations in the Wester Hailes housing estate on the outskirts of Edinburgh. The huts are the temporary porta-cabin style buildings, for which local groups have secured modest funding, to provide a base for community development in the area. Directed by Des Bradley, it was produced by Trevor Davies, community activist and local councillor, by the independent production company Skyline Film and TV for the Channel 4 series People to People. During its early years, Channel 4’s commissioning policy encouraged experimentation in form, as well as content, across the programme genres (Stoneman, 1992, 2005). The Huts is an example of a film which attempts a radical alternative structure combining several different modes of documentary. Shot on 16 millimetre colour film the film interweaves a number of different approaches and uses reflexive, performative and participatory modes of documentary production. There are several recurring sequences which feature various local tenants’ organisations, such as a community arts circus workshop, which provides the device by which the landscape and buildings are shown with the camera following a teenage boy, in clown costume make-up and walking on stilts, as he makes his way around the estate. Members of a local drama group are filmed re-enacting role plays which depict aspects of life on this estate such as, the isolation of single parents, problems dealing with housing administrators, and the powerlessness felt by the long-term unemployed. These sequences are delivered by amateur actors, filmed on stylised sets with expressionistic lighting, as direct to camera monologues, or short dramatised scenes. This is intercut with interview material and documentary sequences which follow meetings of a tenants group and editorial discussions about the production and publication of the Sentinel, the local community newspaper. The background music, which features throughout, is a specially-composed jazz score by young saxophonist Tommy Smith, who grew up in Wester Hailes. This range of different elements combine to produce an impressionistic portrait, devised and expressed through a mix of community arts activities by local residents, focusing on the participation of residents in initiatives set up to change and improve the quality of their lives. The film engages with local people to produce a portrait of a community which is far from the outsider’s view of the journalistic reportage of Lilybank." (Alistair James Scott, Raploch Stories: continuity and innovation for television documentary production, 2013, Phd-Thesis, Edinburgh Napier University)
30 май 2017
