Scottish Screen
Encyclopedia
Scottish Screen is the national body
Scottish public bodies
Public bodies of the Scottish Government are organisations that are funded by the Scottish Government. It includes executive and advisory non-departmental public bodies ; tribunals; and nationalised industries....
for film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
and television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
in Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
, established in April 1997. It took on the functions of the Scottish Film Council, the Scottish Film Production Fund, Scottish Screen Locations and Scottish Broadcast and Film Training, forming a unitary organisation.
Scottish Screen works in the areas of production, development, location assistance, exhibition and festivals, training, media education and preserving the heritage and history of the moving image; developing, encouraging and promoting every aspect of film, television and new media in Scotland. Working with the Scottish Government, their goal is to establish Scotland as a major screen production centre and project Scottish culture to the world.
It was announced in January 2006 that Scottish Screen would amalgamate with Scottish Arts Council
Scottish Arts Council
The Scottish Arts Council is a Scottish public body that distributes funding from the Scottish Government, and is the leading national organisation for the funding, development and promotion of the arts in Scotland...
to form the newly created Creative Scotland
Creative Scotland
Creative Scotland is a development body for arts and cultural industries in Scotland. It inherited the functions of Scottish Screen and the Scottish Arts Council on 1 July 2010, and has an additional remit for the Creative Industries...
, and Creative Scotland is intended to take over these functions in 2010.
The Archive
The Scottish Screen Archive was established in 1976 and previously a department of Scottish Screen, it has been part of the National Library of ScotlandNational Library of Scotland
The National Library of Scotland is the legal deposit library of Scotland and is one of the country's National Collections. It is based in a collection of buildings in Edinburgh city centre. The headquarters is on George IV Bridge, between the Old Town and the university quarter...
since 2007.
The main purpose of the Archive is to locate, preserve and provide access to moving images reflecting Scottish twentieth and twenty first century culture and history. In addition the Archive collects a wide range of written and photographic materials relating to the development of cinema exhibition and film production in Scotland over the past 100 years.
The Archive is a member of The International Federation of Film Archives
The International Federation of Film Archives
The International Federation of Film Archives was founded in Paris in 1938 by the British Film Institute, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the Cinémathèque Française and the Reichsfilmarchiv in Berlin....
(FIAF), the International Federation of Television Archives (FIAT), and is a founder member of the UK Film Archive Forum
Film Archive Forum
The Film Archive Forum represents all of the public sector film and television archives which care for the UK's moving image heritage. It represents the UK's public sector moving image archives in all archival aspects of the moving image, and acts as the advisory body on national moving image...
. The SSA is also a participating member of the Scottish Archive Network (SCAN).
Principally non-fiction, the Archive's collection to date includes some 32,000 items comprising documentary, newsreel, shorts, educational, advertising and promotional films, amateur and professional productions. The material is largely on 16 mm and 35 mm, with smaller collections of 9.5 mm and 8 mm film and videotape. This collection has been built up largely through donations from all sectors of the community, from industry, the broadcasting organisations, local authorities and individual members of the public with a nucleus of material acquired from the former Scottish Central Film Library and Films of Scotland Committee.
The strengths of the collection lie in its ability to illustrate local community life, industrial history and the changing nature of leisure. The collection as a whole reflects ways in which Scotland and her people have been portrayed in film since 1896, both by indigenous and visiting filmmakers and more recently the broadcasting sector and burgeoning Scottish film industry.
The television material in the Archive includes Gaelic language broadcast production from 1993 onwards, the acquisition of which is funded by Seirbheis nam Meadhanan Gaidhlig (GMS).
Preservation is the primary function of the Archive. Purpose built film and video vaults ensure that original masters are properly stored and protected.