The Stone Age (2021)
HD Video with sound, 8mins. (Digital Video, 16mm, 8mm)
DP: Kirstin McMahon
Prod: White Stag Films
A film poem commissioned by the Edinburgh International Book Festival, responding to T.S Eliot award winner Jen Hadfield’s synthesis of human and non-human experience. The Stone Age explores our evolving relationships with our homes, landscapes, and histories.
Watch the Q&A with Alison, Jen Hadfield & Karine Polwart
Sound designer Oscar Prentice-Middleton worked with an abstract palette of field recordings from Shetlandic sound recordist Jenny Sturgeon. As a starting point, he built a tempo based on the sun’s path across the sky during a Shetland solstice. The soundtrack embodies a synthesis of the natural and the human-made, and includes calls from a local seabird colony (Storm Petrels, Oystercatchers and Gannets), trickling gyös, spinning wheels, and traditional musical instruments. Short excerpt on this page.
