It's been a busy year for us - To kick of the year we curated a selection of films on Up Helly Aa. We teamed up with Shetland Arts to show the "Fiery Films" in Mareel, as part of the growing fringe element to the main event held on the last Tuesday of January each year. The screening allowed visitors and locals alike to see previously unseen footage of the Up Helly Aa through the ages from 1949 to 2013. We carefully selected 7 short films made by local, national and international film makers to show a flavour of some of the material on the subject manner. At the end of the first screening the audience applauded, which was amazing - and we also received some great feedback. Violet Tulloch was in the audience and saw her husband, Andrew as Guizer Jarl in 1969 - which brought back happy memories for her, in a film she never knew existed. Others felt emotional when watching the Burning of Sunnanhamar - made by local film producers DJ Film and Sound. Some of the material was also shown on Promote Shetland's live broadcast of Up Helly Aa, which saw 21,000 people from around the world logging on. It's fantastic to know that people all around the world saw our films.
On Valentines Day we launched our 100 Happy Days Campaign - the gist of it is to ask people to take short videos of things that make them happy and to share those videos with us. We'll then edit together a montage and show it as part of Home Movie Day in October (watch this space for more details on that!) The campaign runs until 24th May, so there's plenty of time left to submit films.
And we're preparing to head off to the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow!! We've busy working away on a very exciting project "Ebb Tide". We're working in partnership with Shetland Arts and the Shetland Heritage Association to commission films on stories or artefacts from commonwealth countries, that are held by heritage centres around Shetland, and take the films to the Commonwealth Games. We'll be screening the films on-board the Tall Ship at the Riverside Museum in Glasgow 19th - 25th July. We'll also be taking the films on tour around Shetland.
So, as you can see we've been a busy bunch but there's more to come - so watch this space!
