The Storm Watchers, a film celebrating the Centenary of George Mackay Brown
Gerda Stevenson’s half hour film The Storm Watchers, was commissioned and produced by the St Magnus International Festival, and filmed during Covid lockdown. Gerda directed via Zoom, her cast of Orcadian actors filming themselves on their mobile phones. Originally a short stage play by Mackay Brown, published in his collection A Calendar of Love, 1967, it has since been performed, with some additions, by amateurs and professionals, in theatres throughout Scotland. The drama presents the lives, anxieties, regrets, fears and memories of women as they deal with the waiting and the aftermath of a storm with all their men at sea. In this year of Mackay Brown’s 100th birthday, this acclaimed film brings to life one of his early but also most powerful pieces of theatre.
“A beautiful short film – the camera angles are really impressive, filmed with such economy – close-ups of the women in their homes, beautiful footage of the starry night, the rocks, and the wild sea. It’s brilliant.” ‘Front Row’, BBC Radio 4
“An astonishingly powerful short film, full of haunting performances, and visual imagery that captures the spirit of place in Brown’s poetry with extraordinary vividness.” The Scotsman
