I was right pleased to be commissioned by Kevin Williamson to provide 12 short films for his Edinburgh Fringe Festival show about the radical poetry of Robert Burns. 1787 is the third in a series of the twelve films with a soundtrack by composer Luca Nasciuti. The second Edinburgh Fringe run of Not In My Name is from 24th-28th August, starting 7pm, at the National Library of Scotland. It's picked up a couple of 4* reviews and a nice shiny 5*; Joyce McMillan of the Scotsman described my wee films as beautiful, so I get to go home feeling all warm.
1787 (film by Alastair Cook, sound by Luca Nasciuti)
"Linked by a sequence of video narratives – especially created for this show by filmmaker Alastair Cook – Not In My Name is the live performance of the radical subversive poetry of Robert Burns, the dangerous stuff he couldn’t put his name to during his lifetime. Without changing Burns text, Kevin Williamson (poet, iconoclast and founder of the legendary Rebel Inc publishing house) will attempt to perform the poetry as he believes Burns may have done if he was around today. Alastair’s short films provide both context and chronological narrative to the performed verse. From the vicious political satire Address of Beelzebub through little-known underground, republican, anti-war, patriotic and revolutionary classics to the famed anthem of humanity, A Man’s A Man, this is Scotland’s Bard as never heard before."
