Pinning Down the Past

This picture shows best-selling and award winning author, Denise Mina, being photographed by Drew Farrell.

Denise and Drew were at the City Halls in Glasgow at lunchtime today ahead of the launch of the annual Inverness-based goNORTH Festival, which takes place this year on 4th & 5th June.

The launch was held tonight at the start of Showcase Scotland, a music industry jamboree which happens every year at Celtic Connections in Glasgow.

goNORTH Festival has been described as a mini South by Southwest... the creative industry festival which takes over Austen, Texas once a year.

I've been working with goNORTH's director, Amanda Millen, in the last few months trying to bring the work of this amazing festival to the attention of the wider world.

Denise has made a short film which will be premiered at goNORTH called Multum in Parvo (Much in Little), on a shoestring budget of £5000 together with her cousins, Rosie Toner, and ex-China Crisis keyboard player, Brian McNeill, who composed the music.

The documentary, much of which was filmed on an iPhone using a special lens which cost a few hundred pounds, is a funny and touching look at how 12 siblings, including Denise’s mother, Edith, grew up in a small council house in Toryglen, Glasgow.

As Denise said: “The film is about my family but for other people, it’s a look at inter-generational attitudes to family stories. It’s the story we wish we’d all made."

Denise's film appealed to me on several levels.

As someone whose parents are both dead, I am pulled up short by the fact I can't ask them any more about the stories which are part of our family's folklore.

I was also reminded by watching the interviews of Denise's aunties, uncles and her mum talking about remembrances of times past, that these memories are like moths.

They flit around our childhood like an irritating tick yet when you try to summon the memory up, there's nothing there but half-remembered fragments.

Humour and storytelling bind us to the past and Denise has captured this in the most poignant and funny fashion. The film also has an original twist which shows how younger generations are bored rigid by these days of bygone family glory.

More her about goNORTH Festival here.