Watch the recording of the Masterclass with Alastair Cole about multilingual filmmaking and his most recent documentary, Iorram (Boat Song).
Director Alastair Cole is a Scotland-based documentary filmmaker, originally from New Zealand. Iorram continues his filmmaking about the often subtle, intimate and increasingly political dynamics of language and society. His previous films include the feature documentary Colours of the Alphabet, (2016) and three short documentaries. Colours of the Alphabet was released at the 2016 Glasgow Film Festival, and went on to screen at 40+ international film festivals, winning multiple awards, as well as being broadcast in 30 langauges. It was also the focus of an international impact project surrounding its release across Africa. His previous short films have been broadcast in 27 countries and screened at 50+ festivals around the world, including at Cannes Critics Week in 2011 and 2012. Alastair is also a lecturer in Film Practice at Newcastle University.
More on his work at www.tonguetiedfilms.co.uk and @tonguetiedfilms.
Iorram (Boat Song)
The first ever cinema documentary entirely in Scottish Gaelic, Iorram is an immersive portrait of the fishing community in the Outer Hebrides, as the islands and their language face an uncertain future. This unique film is composed from rare archive sound recordings, woven together with contemporary images filmed over three years by director Alastair Cole. Voices, stories and songs from the mid-20th century interact with observational footage of daily life in the islands today, to create a poetic dialogue between past and present, and between sound and vision, set to an original folk score composed and performed by award-winning musician Aidan O’Rourke.
