The Highlands and Islands Film Guild (1946-71)

This book provides the first history of rural cinema in Scotland through the focus of the Highlands and Islands Film Guild. It examines how this improvised and intimate form of cinema, made possible by the precedent of war time provision and the 16mm apparatus, was made available to rural and geographically marginal audiences who did not enjoy easy access to a permanent cinema. The study traces the organised provision of cinema by the Guild established in the austerity years and examines how this non-theatrical, non-commercial cinema was sustained from its inception in 1946 through its expansion and eventual contraction, precipitated by the arrival of television and the movement out of austerity across the region at the end of the 1960s. It highlights the work of the rural cinema operators employed by the Guild to exhibit film programmes in village halls and how this cinema was opposed by elements of the Free Presbyterian Church and experienced and remembered by community audiences. Key audience research gathered from across the region will build an oral history of the cinema-going memories of this disappearing non-metropolitan audience, while it is still possible to communicate with this audience.