Sixty years ago this month, British television viewers were introduced to alien creatures and futuristic technology like never before. Paul F Cockburn explains how Nigel Kneale’s innovative science fiction story helped define television drama as we know it. Saturday evening, 18 July 1953. “An experiment is an operation designed to uncover some unknown truth,” intones […]
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Unveiling the Dark Knight
The wonders of space aren’t always discovered by freezing astronomers staring up at the night sky through their telescopes in the early hours of the morning. Take, for example, the Horsehead Nebula; 125 years ago this month, one of the most recognisable and admired objects in space was first identified in the incongruous setting of […]
Taboor
Writer-director Vahid Vakilifar’s Taboor is not an easy film to like. Despite its generally ochre-sepia-red colour template, it is a cold film, full of long, static camera shots that force you to observe what’s happening rather than become emotionally involved with it. The result is a long 84 minutes spent remotely viewing a lone, silent pest exterminator […]
Emma Davie and Morag McKinnon Interview
Scottish filmmakers Emma Davie and Morag McKinnon originally thought they were making a short film about Motor Neurone Disease (MND) but, as they worked with architect Neil Platt, diagnosed with the fatal condition, aged just 33, it became clear they were working on something bigger… Paul Cockburn: How did I Am Breathing, come about? Morag McKinnon: After […]
Edinburgh International Film Festival 2013
I attended this year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival in the capacity of a freelance journalist; not that it was planned, but my main focus turned out to be on several films within the festival’s documentary strand, although I’ve fitted in a few features too! • Interview: Emma Davie & Morag McKinnon, directors of I Am […]
Neil Mackay Interview
All The Little Guns Went Bang, Bang, Bang isn’t, technically, Neil Mackay’s first novel. “I can remember my gran got me an old typewriter – I think I’d been babbling in her ear about wanting to be a writer,” says Mackay. “She got me a sheaf of pink paper, because there was no white paper left […]
My Iain Banks Story
“Everyone seemed to have a Banksy story. Something personal, something funny, something inspirational. So many stories began with the phrase: “I didn’t know him well enough to call him a friend, but..” So writes the author Neil Williamson, about the online reaction to the far-too-early death of Iain Banks this weekend. I too didn’t know […]
