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Transgressive North presents
the folk film gathering
The world’s first annual festival
of folk cinema

in partnership with the
Scottish Documentary Institute

Curated by Transgressive North, the Folk Film Gathering is the world’s first folk film festival, screening films that celebrate the lived experiences of communities worldwide. Each annual edition explores the relationships between cinema and other traditional arts (such as oral storytelling and folk song), discovering what a folk cinema has been at moments throughout world film history, and how it may look in the future.

NEXT FESTIVAL - 2022

PROGRAMME COMING SOON

2021

2021 programme

Wend Kuuni

Gaston Kaboré | Burkina Faso | 1982

Set in precolonial Africa during the time of the Mossi Empire, Gaston Kaboré’s feature debut follows the story of Wend Kuuni, a young boy who has lost the ability to speak. Found lying near-dead in the dirt, Wend Kuuni is adopted by local villagers and given a new home. Underneath his new life, however, lies a deep, unspoken trauma. With the help of his playful adopted sister Pughneere, will Wend Kuuni be able to face the darkness in his past, and find his voice again? The first feature film to be made in Burkina Faso, ‘Wend Kuuni’ draws from African oral tradition to create a powerful cinematic fable.

Wend Kuuni was presented with the kind support of Africa in Motion.

live events: filmmakers 2021

Our 2021 online programme featured a series of live conversations between some of the world’s most significant filmmakers, who share certain aspects of perspective and approach to filmmaking. The discussions were based around the possibility of a people’s cinema. See the results below...

live events: MUSICIANS 2021

Alongside our filmmaker conversations and film screenings, The Folk Film Gathering 2021 featured a series of live conversations between musicians from different parts of the world, with connections to the filmmakers. These conversations featured songs, stories and discussions, and were hosted by the Traditional Music Forum’s David Francis.

2020

2020 programme

The Kaipara Affair

Barry Barclay | 2005 | 136 mins

Barry Barclay’s provocative, lyrical documentary focuses upon a rural community in New Zealand, led by charismatic indigenous activist Mikaera Miru, who stage a collective resistance when unsustainable commercial fishing practices start to endanger their local waters in the Kaipara Harbour. A moving testament to the power of community with a powerful resonance for debates around land reform and community land ownership in Scotland, Barry Barclay’s film invokes the sense of a Maori ‘hui’; a community gathering at which multiple voices come together to discuss who really owns the land.

This film was screened with the kind support of Ng Taonga Sound & Vision.

Film Ceilidh 2020

To accompany our screenings, we asked musicians from across Scotland to respond to the 2020 Folk Film Gathering's theme of 'collectivity under pressure'.

Watch performances from some of Scotland’s most celebrated traditional musicians, including Rachel Newton, Simone Caffari, George Duff, Iona Fyfe, Robbie Grieg, Catriona Hawksworth, Allan MacDonald, Megan MacDonald, Tom Oakes, Eileen Penman, Alasdair Roberts, Sally Simpson and more.

WATCH THE PERFORMANCES HERE

LIVE Event 2020:

Filmmaking and the

community

Essays: Community

Under Pressure

The director of the Folk Film Gathering, Jamie Chambers, explores how some of our films this year articulate the increasingly urgent importance of collective values.

READ HERE

David Francis, director of the Traditional Music Forum explores how communities in Scotland have fought to prioritise the collective over the communal in a specially commissioned essay for the Folk Film Gathering.

READ HERE

Members of the Amber Collective (Tynecastle) and Nadir Bouhmouch (Morocco) – whose films screened in the 2020 Folk Film Gathering – discuss the challenges and rewards of collective filmmaking, and committed engagements with communities.

2019

2019 programme

The Decameron

Pier Paolo Pasolini | Italy/France/West Germany | 1971 | 18

The first in Pasolini’s Trilogy of Life, Pasolini’s ‘The Decameron’ weaves together a handful of tales by Giovanni Boccaccio into a dizzying, rhapsodic and bawdy celebration of humanity in all its contradiction and complexity. At turns erotic and playfully irreverent, ‘The Decameron’ tells the story of thieves, nuns, dimwitted husbands, murderers, martyrs and saints with verve, humour and Pasolini’s incomparable sense of cinematic poetry.

This screening was introduced with live music from Simone Caffari and followed by a discussion led by University of Edinburgh’s Pasquale Iannone.

2018

2018 programme

Penda's Fen

Alan Clarke | England | 1974 | 12

One of the first folk horror films, ‘Penda’s Fen’ is a startling evocation of the deep echoes of the past within Worcestershire’s Malvern Hills. Through a series of real and imagined encounters with angels, demons and England’s pagan past, Stephen (a pastor’s son) begins to question his religion and politics whilst coming to terms with his sexuality.

This screening was introduced by a special 30-minute set from celebrated Scots folk musician Alasdair Roberts.

2017

2017 programme

Blackbird

Jamie Chambers | 2013 | Scotland | 15

Featuring luminaries of the Scottish folk revival Norman Maclean, Sheila Stewart and Margaret Bennett, this lyrical cinematic fable explores the passing of songs from one generation to another. Ruadhan is an angry young man all too aware of changes in his community: there’s no more fish in the sea, the ceilidh house is shutting down, and the town is besieged by middle-class incomers’ intent on gentrification. Ruadhan stages a one man-stand: can he halt the unstoppable and save the soul of his community?

This screening was introduced by a live performance from folk-singer Margaret Bennett.

2016

2016 programme

Vacas

1992 | Julio Medem | Spain | 15

An act of wartime cowardice comes to haunt three generations of Basque country farmers. ‘Vacas’ chronicles the bitter feud emerging between two neighbouring families after Carmelo is killed because of his neighbour Manuel’s cowardice. Will Ignacio (Manuel’s son) and Catalina (Carmelo’s daughter) escape the fates assigned to them by their families, or will they be crushed under the weight of history? Deeply immersed in Basque traditions – notably featuring a stunning, traditional ‘aizcolari’ woodcutting sequence – Medem’s masterpiece marries the mythical with the historical in a thrilling and profound treatment of Basque history.

2015

2015 programme

Celestial Wives of the Meadow Mari

Alexey Fedorchenko | Russia, 2012 | 106 minutes | Advised rating 15

The second feature from Alexey Fedorchenko and Denis Osokin, ‘Celestial Wives of the Meadow Mari’ plays as a series of cinematic folk tales, each focussing on a woman from the Mari people whose name begins with ‘O’. Equal parts absurd, hilarious, tragic and surreal, Celestial Wives is a joyous and profound celebration of the feminine as filtered through folk tale.

The film was preceded by ‘Cailleach’ (Rosie Reed Hillman / Scotland, 2014 / 14 minutes), a short documentary about an elderly woman on the Isle of Harris who lives alone with her sheep.