2023 (32 mins)
The Wireless Set
Like many island communities, older residents of Sanday, Orkney, are acutely aware of the urban-rural dynamic at play in our ever globalised world. Their efforts to access centralised health care services reveal insights about this dynamic. The film follows closely a summer in the lives of three locals over-eighty in an effort to recenter their voice in this ongoing discussion and explore the relationship between mobility and space. In time the patient observational camera opens up for deeper reflections about ageing and dying.
To cite the film: Andrews, E. (2024). The Wireless Set. Journal of Anthropological Films, 8(01). https://doi.org/10.15845/jaf.v8i01.4099
About the filmmaker
Having grown up in the Orkney Islands, Esme Andrews has an understanding of many of the problems island communities face, especially when important decisions are made by people who have never been to the isles.
She gained an Undergraduate degree in anthropology from the University of Aberdeen and then a Masters degree in Visual Anthropology from the University of Tromsø.
Now based in Edinburgh, Esme works as an advocacy worker.
The masters programme required me to write an anthropological paper and make a documentary film. I wanted my project to explore the experience of ageing and care for older people on the non-linked isles in Orkney. My first goal was to help provide an image of some of the challenges faced, for those decision-makers without knowledge of how island life can look or feel.
I remembered having read The Wireless Set by George Mackay Brown in school. As the filmmaking and writing process went on, I kept finding insight in his story which so eloquently explored the dynamics between island communities and globalisation processes. In the act of writing from the islander’s point of view, Mackay Brown recentred the island experience. When practiced with empathy, filmmaking, similarly, can be an act of attentiveness, a way to bring particular voices into focus.