From Scotland with Love featuring King Creosote
Highly recommended viewing is From Scotland with Love, a brilliant and inventive film project made by Virginia Heath using only Scottish film archive. The film, which was commissioned to mark the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow this summer, features an orginal – and stunningly evocative – soundtrack by Fife’s Kenny Anderson, aka King Creosote. With neither voiceover nor subtitles, the perfectly edited footage covers themes of love, loss, family, work, politics, romance and fun
Probably one of the most inventive uses for the Welsh mines that are no longer mined is Bounce Below. Giant underground trampolines connected by spiral staircases and a 60 foot slide – all illuminated with neon lighting – must make for a fairly atmospheric day out especially when the mining cavern is twice the size of St Paul’s Cathedral. Bounce Below in Blaenau Ffestiniog, Wales opens on the 4th of
Fashion Grandpas, is another welcome variation on the theme that style is not confined to the young – although not sure how happy the subjects would be with the ‘grandpas’ tag. Advanced Style, led the way a number of years ago showcasing the style of older women and has already being featured on Avocado Sweet – you can see the new Advanced Style documentary showing at cinemas in the UK
Get a load of this place! Amangiri is a super luxurious resort nestling in a desert canyon in Southern Utah near the Arizona border. It’s stunningly designed, difficult to get to, hugely expensive… and it’s never going to happen is it?
Mary, of Mary’s Milk Bar in the Grassmarket, Edinburgh, graduated from ice-cream university. Naturally, Italy tops the University league tables when it comes to making ice-cream and Mary Hillard, originally from Yorkshire, studied at the prestigious Carpigiani Gelato University in Bologna. However, childhood visits to milk bars in Scarborough and Whitby – both of which are still open today – provided the inspiration for the Edinburgh store. Mary has introduced
Home Sweet Home is a series of domestic scenes, all captured within sardine tins, by artist Natalica. Tiny details such as the Bob Marley picture in the scene above give the scenes immense charm. The artist, who lives in Mantova in Italy describes the scenes as ‘All these different lives, different stories and …different futures, all that intimacy condensed within four walls…in little boxes that each of us calls home’.
On Wednesday 11 June at 6.30pm Man Booker Prize nominee James Robertson and one of Scotland’s best known illustrators Jill Calder will entertain audiences in Dunfermline Abbey with a stunning re-telling of the Robert the Bruce story. James Robertson, who wrote the hugely successful Testament of Gideon Mack and Jill Calder will talk about their book, Robert the Bruce: King of Scots in the historic Abbey, also the site of the King’s
