Sarah Hill sent me this last week. It’s an old folk song she recorded especially with the folk musician Phil Tyler.  She told me it made her think of me standing on Knoydart’s shore everyday.  I met Sarah when I first came to Knoydart seven years ago and we became good friends over my first…

Originally printed at http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6259034&s_cid=tesmagazinehome Give children space, don’t ask too many questions and their creative instincts will bloom, says film-maker Sam Firth It is 9.39am on a bright and breezy day in June and the 10 minutes I will spend standing on a wooden platform, alone, in front of Loch Nevis are almost over. My…

Olivia Humphries is another female British short filmmaker making personal films dealing with death and the passage of time. Here is her short film Noctuaries which is quite wonderful and won the Grierson Award and a video diary piece she has made especially for Stay the Same . ..

I travelled up to Knoydart to visit Sam for the first time since she moved there. This quote from one of my favorite writers Joyce Carol Oates, articulates better than I can, what I feel Sam’s project is about: a desire to “make life more coherent, to set something in order, to single out meanings…

I leave everything to the last minute, and this response to your blog is certainly no exception, being written on a jolting coach of funeral-goers on the day before your project ends. I sometimes wonder if my tardiness is because I’ve never quite recovered from the freedom given to me as an adult to live…

It was particularly poignant when Henry Darke sent me these polaroids of his father playwright and poet Nick Darke who also died on June 10th in 2005. They were taken during a holiday Nick went on in Scotland with Henry’s mum Jane. One of Nick’s favourite books was Desert Solitaire by Edward Abby (Henry made…

My friend Pippa Best sent me this short film yesterday in response to the project. I have known Pippa since early childhood when our parents were part of a baby sitting exhange so it is very appropriate her film is about childhood. Pippa and I lost touch for several years then accidentally bumped into each…