WHAT’S THE STORY?

ARTISTS pay homage to the Cairngorm Mountains in a new film based on a book by one of Scotland’s most renowned writers.

Nan Shepherd penned prose poem The Living Mountain in the 1940s, but did not publish it for 30 years.

Now actors, artists and choreographers have created a new film influenced by the work.

A special screening of the result, titled How the Earth Must See Itself (A Thirling), will be held at the Scottish Sculpture Workshop in Lumsden, Aberdeenshire, next month.

WHO IS INVOLVED?

DESCRIBED as an “evocative and atmospheric homage” to the hills, the 12-minute short is directed by Lucy Cash and features compositions by Hanna Tuulikki, the acclaimed Finnish-English artist whose body of work includes Away With the Birds which saw a ten-voice female ensemble perform music mimicking birdsong based on traditional Gaelic songs.

Produced by the National Theatre of Scotland and Scottish Sculpture Workshop, it is voiced by Harry Potter actor Shirley Henderson, whose contribution is described as “dreamlike”.

And the whole shebang draws from the six-year Into the Mountain performance project by Simone Kenyon, which took to the hills of Cairngorms National Park, Moray and Aberdeenshire “celebrate women’s relationships with high and wild places”.

TELL ME MORE

CAPTURED on S16mm film, the movie takes viewers into the ecologies of Glen Feshie, inspired by Shepherd’s experiences of Cairngorms walks during the early years of the Second World War.

The Living Mountain reframed mountaineering to include mindful practices of walking and being with the land, shifting the frame away from peaks as objects to be conquered.

And since being reissued by Edinburgh publishing house Canongate a decade ago, it has sold more than 90,000 copies, been licensed into a dozen languages and become widely hailed as a modern classic. In How the Earth Must See Itself, a cast of five dancers, an evocative polyvocal score and a natural soundscape “echo the sounds of a living mountain”, with choreography and weathered images “bringing the mountain’s life to the screen”.

HOW CAN I SEE IT?

THE special screening will be held at 6pm on Sunday October 6 as part of the Across the Grain Festival, and will include a documentary about its making, followed by a Q&A with Cash and Kenyon. A limited number of free tickets for the special screening are available from nationaltheatrescotland.com

The film will also be shown by CityMoves Dance Agency as part of Dance Live in Aberdeen on October 19. It’ll be available to view online from September 19 on nationaltheatrescotland.com and ssw.org.