St Kilda, Britain’s Lonliest Isle (1928) Dir. Bobbie Mann, Paul Robello
This has been more or less on as a loop while I‘ve been working on ‘you cannot see them anymore, they are not there’.
Commissioned by the steamship company who ran the service between Glasgow and St Kilda, the travelogue documents a sailing from Glasgow to St Kilda (via Mull, Skye, South Uist and Bara ) and shows life on the island shortly before it was evacuated.
It is in parts wonderful and in parts awful as the filmed footage of St Kilda and the St Kildans is contrasted with the patronising treatment they receive from from both the film makers and their opportunistic visitors. St Kildan society was at this time in irreversible decline and trips like this were treated by many as nothing but an opportunity to point and stare at something they found quaint and amusing.
One of the more poignant moments occurs at 10:23 and is footage of Mary Gillies who's death in 1930 was the final catalyst for the final evacuation in 1930.
In May 2010, the film was inscribed in UNESCO's UK Memory of the World Register.
