New film depicts island life in the Outer Hebrides

For many, the landscape of the Outer Hebrides has become a symbol for tranquil escape.

But this tendency is challenged by a new film, Dùthchas | Home, about Berneray and its people, the Beàrnarach. Here, knowledge of the land is knitted together with indigenous Gaelic culture.

The film, co-directed by Kirsty MacDonald and Andy Mackinnon, intersperses interviews and a specially-composed soundtrack by Donald Shaw, with rediscovered cine-film footage shot on Berneray in the 1960s and 70s.

Dùthchas began as part of a wider effort to source and digitise home video footage shot in the isles, in response to a dearth of material within existing archives. “We were looking at the archive films and I was just struck by how none of it was from an islander’s perspective, it was all film production teams parachuted in,” Mackinnon explained.

A call-out encouraged Gloria MacKillop, who moved to Berneray to work as a nurse in 1967, to dig out a box of unseen reels of film gifted by friends. “As soon as we saw what was on the footage, we were just blown away,” Mackinnon said.

The collection of films had been made by Bill and Ann Scott – a couple who visited the island almost annually between 1960 and 1976. Bill was an architect from Cheshire, wealthy enough to afford the latest kit, while Ann’s mother was from Berneray.

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The pair filmed their many visits to the island on 8mm Kodachrome colour film. Mackinnon explained that the Scotts’ home movie reels inadvertently created a priceless document of island life: “They just filmed the same scenes – every time they left, they filmed people waving from the pier.”

“It just struck me as such a poignant scene, such a strong metaphor for a wider leaving and loss of culture.”

As a result of the rediscovery, Gloria, now aged 91, was able to view footage of her wedding to local crofter Donald MacKillop in 1968 for the first time. But the island that Gloria arrived on, and that the Scotts captured on film, was already undergoing a prolonged transition away from the traditional ways of life it had known for centuries.

Although Berneray’s population has stabilised in recent years, like many islands it has seen long-term decline. The number of people living on Berneray has halved since 1951.

The numbers may tell their own story, but Dùthchas is concerned with equally profound changes in the character of life on the island. “The culture has just changed enormously in that space of 60 years,” MacDonald said. “I think that’s what the footage captures: a glimpse into what was going on at a time when Gaelic was the predominant language. It was an entirely Gaelic way of life.”

MacKillop was the first non-Gaelic speaker to live on the island, although she would come to learn the language with the help of her husband.

Dùthchas, translated in the film’s title as “home”, is actually freighted with layers of meaning that no single word in English can express. A web of related concepts: heredity, belonging, safety, are all woven within this single word.

Dùthchas is perhaps best understood as a way of linking identity to the land. “You know where you came from,” as Beàrnarach Sarah May puts it.

After centuries of struggle to prevent the eradication of Gaelic, it was finally afforded status as an official language of Scotland in the Gaelic Language (Scotland) Act of 2005. However, recent efforts to implement this legislation have seen increasing hostility and accusations of politicisation, particularly when it is are adopted by public bodies operating throughout Scotland. “I really hope that the film will help people to understand Gaelic culture a bit more, because I think there is a lot of misunderstanding,” MacDonald said. “I hope that by watching this film, it might create a bit of emotion and for those who see Gaelic as worthless, perhaps it will help them to see why maybe it isn’t.”

Dùthchas – in addition to being selected for exhibition at the Edinburgh International Film Festival – will also be shown in cinemas all over Scotland.

"It's got a more universal message about valuing culture and minority languages that is equally relevant around the world,” Mackinnon said.

Key to this wider appeal is the film’s rejection of nostalgia. While indigenous language and culture are fragile and the population has declined, life on the island has also improved, not least with the arrival of mains water, electricity, and telephones since the 1960s. In 1999, a causeway was constructed, linking Berneray to neighbouring North Uist.

Despite all the smiles and laughter captured by the Scotts on film, many contributors emphasise how hard the traditional crofting life was, particularly at a moment when many islanders were leaving and not being replaced. “There’s lots of pain amidst the humour and the stories and the fun of it all,” says Beàrnarach Catriona NicAonghais.

As island life has become less self-sufficient and new forms of culture have arrived, the decline of the shared rituals of the ceilidh – which in Gaelic means to visit or gather – is lamented.

For NicAonghais, strength of belonging is bound up with the pain of witnessing decline: “It seems to me to relate to the great difficulty of trying to keep being yourself, and being who you are and being from the culture that you’re from which has been under attack for really hundreds of years. It was so clear and it was so obvious that things were falling apart.”

Many of the challenges facing Berneray today are prevalent throughout rural Scotland. A housing crisis means young people who want to stay are forced to live with their parents. The crisis is driven by a boom in holiday lets and second homes in the Outer Hebrides, where around 40% of the housing stock is now devoted to short-term lets, and cash sales are increasingly common.

This is part of a trend recently described by Rural Housing Scotland CEO Derek Logie, as a “21st-century Highland Clearance”, exacerbating the desperate challenge the isles face to retain working-age people as the overall population rapidly ages.

That recurring image within the film of islanders waving farewell to those leaving in the boat therefore has a topical resonance, too.

One person’s dream of a far-flung rural idyll is another’s cultural and social centre, with shared ways of living at its heart. But the image of Berneray depicted in Dùthchas could not be further from that of a desert isle.

The often bustling footage captured by the Scotts is disarmingly intimate. “Those moments wouldn’t have been captured if it hadn’t been filmed by people who belonged themselves,” MacDonald notes.

How might that sense of belonging flourish in the future, despite all the challenges rural island communities now face? “I think it all comes back to dùthchas – part of that is the respect for the land, it’s about deep rooted historical links and creating that self-sustaining society,” she concludes.

Dùthchas | Home premieres at the Edinburgh International Film Festival and at screenings across Scotland today and tonight. For more details, see www.duthchas.org