On 10 May 2022, Summerhall in Edinburgh hosted a screening of short documentaries developed at the Scottish Documentary Institute. The screening was curated by Dr Aida Vallejo (Nominated Fellow 2021-22; University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU), as an outreach activity of her research project IDFmap, developed at the University of Edinburgh. The session presented a journey through films developed within the Bridging the Gap programme, a training and development initiative created in 2004 to foster new documentary talent in Scotland.
A selection of six short documentaries produced in the last decade presented different creative ways to look at reality. From first-person stories to experiments with animation, the films expanded the artistic boundaries of documentary towards new forms of non-fiction. From the streets of Glasgow to Algeria and Turkey and back to the North East coast of Scotland, the audience was invited into a visual journey around time and space that reflected on contemporary issues that include women's position in society, class division, global mobility, cultural diversity in an interconnected world and alternative perceptions of reality. The program included internationally awarded films that successfully travelled the festival circuit in previous years: Night Shift (2011, directed by Ruth Reid), Chappin’ (2014, directed by Igor Slepov), Ululation (2018, directed by Carina Haouchine), My Name is Anik (2019, directed by Bircan Birol), The Bayview (2021, directed by Daniel Cook) and Prosopagnosia (2021, directed by Steven Fraser).
The documentaries engaged with topics researched at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities of the University of Edinburgh, including Scottish culture and society, women's position in society and decoloniality, among others. The event gathered a mixed audience of around thirty people, including Film and Art students and staff, IASH Fellows, local filmmakers and Edinburgh citizens. They engaged in a lively debate with the three filmmakers present, Carina Haouchine (director of Ululation), Bircan Birol (director of My Name is Anik) and Daniel Cook (director of The Bayview, 2021), raising questions about their creative process, cultural translation and representation, and their experience at the Scottish Documentary Institute. The conversations went on in an informal meeting afterwards at the Royal Dick bar, offering an opportunity to get to know the filmmakers' work and their trajectories better.
The event was supported by IASH and the Scottish Documentary Institute.