When I embarked on TDP back in 2007 often I got lost while out on field trips despite having a map. Anyone following my journey knows that the most elusive of my destinations was the site of Cochno/Druid Stone. Of all the places mentioned by Harry Bell in his Network of Aligned Sites, at a psychic level it seemed as if the Stone was taunting me. Eight years later and it’s still a lost cause.

Bear with me. This is…

“I came here to find the past and I found the future.”

Stevie Cafferty bounds up to me on a wooded path just off the Cochno Road. He’s wearing a brown T-shirt with a Celtic knot motif that matches his brown eyes. There’s something of the urban shaman about Stevie – brimming with energy, he fires on all psychic cylinders as he gestures towards the surrounding outcrops, talking of the whereabouts of cup-and-ring marked stones in the area, stones…

Yesterday I posted a short video about the recent test dig at the Cochno Stone on Vimeo.

Here’s a link – Revealing the Cochno Stone

Back in early September I didn’t intend to do anything other than record the dig for archival purposes since a wholesale excavation and replication of the Stone has yet to be determined. But having shot over three days I realised the value of making a video not because I’ve been commissioned – I haven’t -…

Over these past few months I’ve been too busy working on my latest film, Voyageuse to pay much attention to anything else. So it was a surprise to receive an email from Raymond Strachan at The Lighthouse, Glasgow’s centre for architecture and design, inviting me to screen the film version of The Devil’s Plantation. Raymond previously worked at the Market Gallery and screened the film there in 2014, the last time it was shown in Glasgow. Hard…

Yesterday I was informed by The Lighthouse that next week’s screening of The Devil’s Plantation and talk has been cancelled due to technical reasons. Apologies to anyone who was planning to come along – I was really looking forward to showing the film and talking to Paul Stallan about his work.

I understand the venue will announce the cancellation via Facebook and Twitter. In the meantime I recommend Stallan-Brand’s exhibition, Weather Forms, currently running at The Lighthouse.

I’d love the opportunity…

To mark a decade since work began on The Devil’s Plantation I’m writing this post as a coda to sum up my feelings about the project and how for the last four years events have conspired to keep me involved.

Made with the support of the Scottish Arts Council’s Creative Scotland Awards in 2007, the project was originally proposed as a film until the SAC informed me that as a filmmaker I couldn’t practice in my own field (unlike writers,…

As I type this my hand hovers hesitantly over the keyboard because I’ve been here before. Over the last few years I’ve had the occasional request to show the film, some reasonable, others not and too often frustrated by a lack of facilities, e.g. being asked to screen on a PowerPoint projector, or for no fee – not even minimum wage. Or, as I was asked last year by the organisers of Doors Open Day, to screen at…