Tha thu air Aigeann m’ Inntinn – You are at the Bottom of my Mind – is a film made for the centenary of the Iolaire disaster on 31 December 2018. Commissioned by the BBC, it has screened across the world, been nominated for several awards, and won Best Animation at the New Renaissance Film Festival Amsterdam.
201 sailors were lost in the Iolaire disaster when their boat hit rocks just yards from home in the Scottish Isle of Lewis 100 years ago. Archive recordings of survivors and witnesses are interwoven with a powerful musical score by Sarah-Jane Summers, and Iain Crichton Smith’s poem of the same name.
The film explores the trauma felt by the people of Lewis and Harris, struggling to reconnect to the men they lost after generations of silence. I layered charcoal-style drawings with subtle textures photographed in relevant Lewis locations, and with poignant details from the disaster fund forms completed by relatives in the weeks following the tragedy.
Tha thu air Aigeann m’ Inntinn was commissioned by BBC ALBA and funded by MG ALBA.