Inaugural Professorial Lecture – Professor Virginia Heath

Re-imagining the past

Wednesday 26 November, 6pm – Room 9130, Cantor Building

At the heart of Professor Virginia Heath’s poetic documentary ‘From Scotland With Love’ is the dynamic, intertwined relationship between the dreamlike film archive images and the accompanying music soundtrack.

The focus of this lecture is to give an insight into the artistic collaboration between Virginia Heath as film director and King Creosote (aka Kenny Anderson) as composer. It will investigate the complex iterative process by which the music and images were woven together to create a poetic narrative – the visual and musical writing of the film.

Both Virginia as director and Kenny shared a commitment to telling the story of ordinary people, a kind of poetic ‘history from below’, and this would inevitably shape the film they were creating. As the process of research and collaboration evolved, it became clear that there was a common desire to portray the broad sweep of 20th century Scottish experience without sacrificing the ability to depict that story in an emotionally meaningful and often quite intimate way.

Places are free and include light refreshments but must be booked in advance.