Being in a Place – A Portrait of Margaret Tait

Margaret Tait’s films (1918-1999) are notable for their characters exuding a childlike cheerfulness—people of all ages, classes, and occupations who roam and dawdle, becoming one with the Scottish soil. Her work also features a blend of materials, masses, and movements that, through the amateur power of Tait's gaze, create a sensuous dialogue of images and sounds. This draws the viewer into a sustained presence with the most archaic signs around them, without preconceptions, expectations, or narratives. Elements that sing, slide, climb, rise, fall, or descend in all circumstances—sun, wind, clouds, snow, ice, rain, streams, and various vapors—breathe life into Tait’s urban and rural landscapes through slow, enchanting contractions. This is a true invocation of the present, filmed through the present of the spectator ("Where I am is here," like the title of one of her short films), often evoking the very smell of places, far beyond a random collection of pretty images typical of ornamental films that might unfairly be labeled "experimental" or "poetic license."

Tait’s camera, which she operated herself, had an unfeigned, unpretentious wobble, reflecting the filmmaker’s full immersion at the edge of her immediate reality to draw out her own poetry. This is perhaps the main and richest documentary aspect of her work. Being in a Place – A Portrait of Margaret Tait by Luke Fowler combines Tait’s voice-over recordings, offering valuable insights (including her thoughts on her relationship with the camera and her focus on the present, inspired by one of her mentors from her studies in Rome), recent testimonies from people she had filmed, archival footage, old filming locations, and various reminiscences of her films. Contemporary images filmed by Fowler in the region where she lived also feature prominently. With expert framing and transitional effects, sometimes confined to a slight pedagogical pastiche that doesn’t always recapture the same charm or the rudimentary sophistication of the original work, Being in a Place remains dignified. It progressively becomes more engaging in its intelligent attempt to restore Tait’s art, like a skillful hand resting on a larger imprint etched in clay, invoking the original grace and spirit before they fade away forever.

Simon Galiero
Director, screenwriter and editor
of the documentary journal Communs.site