Tait, Margaret

   b. Orkneys

   Film-maker

   Margaret Tait first qualified as a doctor before changing careers and studying film making in Rome. She produced thirty short films from the 1950s onwards, but her first feature was Blue Black Permanent (1993), which she both directed and wrote the screenplay for. It has aspects of autobiography, in its Scottish setting and therapy in its protagonist’s search for identity as herself, as daughter and granddaughter. It is a subtle film which examines and replicates the processes that lie behind our ways of seeing. Hence, it deals with the nature of creativity itself and maps a series of experiences which serve as reference points for memory and imagination.

   MIKE STORRY