Films We Love: Scheme Birds

18 year old Gemma knows what’s expected from young women who live in Motherwell – “you either get knocked up or locked up.” A compassionate and soulful documentary, Scheme Birds takes a close look at Gemma’s life and the people in it, expanding on this perception to show how Gemma’s sensitivity and passion motivate her to want the best from life. Filmed over the course of four years, directors Fiske and Hallin bring humanity to the way their subjects are framed, demonstrating the trust and openness they clearly developed with Gemma, being present for moments of extreme volatility but joy and tenderness too. Fresh from its UK premiere at Edinburgh International Film Festival this year, this is a special presentation of Scheme Birds, supported by Take One Action Film Festival. Take One Action Film Festival Board Member Ellie Logan will introduce the film and lead a chat following the screening. “Lives like Gemma’s are so often ignored or distorted on screen. Scheme Birds instead gives voice directly to those it portrays, creating a palpable intimacy that is deeply affecting.” – Screen Machine team Content note: Advisory age rating of 15, as Scheme Birds is not BBFC rated. Very strong language and some violence. This screening is part of Films We Love: How We Live. For our third season, we’ve chosen films that represent the experiences closest to our own. Between July – December this year, we’re screening films from the past six years that we haven’t yet had a chance to share with our audiences, but that we hope you can relate to as much as we have. Each of the films in this selection explores the complexity of balancing the different pressures of belonging and identity. Whether it’s living and working rurally, navigating adolescence through barriers of class and status or reconciling racial tension with multiple cultural identities, these are all themes that feel acutely part of the fabric of how we live now. We have films here to make you laugh, think and cry, films to move you to action and feel the warmth of recognition. We hope you’ll see something of yourself in the ideas, characters and themes explored, just as we did. These are films we love – we hope you’ll love them too. Tell us what you think of Films We Love! We’ll listen to all the feedback on this project and use it to inform our future programmes. You can get in touch via: Twitter @screen_machine Facebook @thescreenmachine Instagram @screenmachine Email info@regionalscreenscotland.org

Films We Love: Scheme Birds

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