The Wireless Set
2023 (32 mins)
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.
Esme Andrews grew up in the Orkney Islands, Scotland. She has an undergraduate degree in Anthropology from the University of Aberdeen and more recently completed a Masters in Visual Anthropology from UiT: The Arctic University of Norway. Her masters project brought her home to Orkney where she used film to explore the experience of ageing on a non linked isle. This in-depth project employed the camera as an act of attentiveness in hopes to recenter peripheral island voices.
She sits on this years film selection committee for NAFA (Nordic Anthropological Film Association) and works on its website and social media. Esme continues to use ethnographic film, in collaboration with charities to promote their work and enable new insights.