A Portrait of Ga

A Portrait of Ga is, to me, a lovely anthropological exercise in questioning what it is exactly that makes a person. In one particular shot, we see Ga, Tait’s mother, walking and then running towards a dark, stormy sky, a subtle rainbow glimmering dimly over the road ahead. In another, she spins around on a street of pebbledash houses somewhere, presumably Kirkwall, a burning cigarette clasped between her smiling lips. There is an intimacy here that speaks to the closeness of Tait’s subject. Her camera captures many repeated and familiar gestures that only she would know to look for: the way her mother sips on a cup of tea, or relishes a long puff on a cigarette — or perhaps the way she meticulously unwraps a boiled sweet, trying not to get her hands sticky, before popping it into her mouth. To focus on these gestures is also to focus on objects and things (a cigarette, a book, a sticky sweet, a bare stone floor) which, despite being inanimate, give us life and provide us with character. The same can be said for places and landscapes. The windy expanse of Orkney, the pebbledash streets, and even the seemingly empty space behind Ga as she sits in her chair are shown to be as much a part of Ga as the movement of her hand as she keeps the rhythm of an unheard song. It is as if Tait is saying that a person is not complete without a place to stand (or sit, or run, or smoke, or dance).

Jack Guariento
Filmmaker and programmer