Edinburgh Napier University

  Howls: (Short fiction film)

Introduction:
In all my work to date, I have sought to find places where fiction and reality can naturally converge in an attempt to create more truthful storytelling.
Whilst the work cannot be described as ethnographic fiction - since my stories and characters are completely fictional - my vision is to entangle my fiction in with the roots of a real place and the people who belong there, making the truth of the place integral to the storytelling and conversely, revealing some truth about the real place through the storytelling.
Synopsis:
A young mum, Janey, runs away with her fragile son, Brodie, to a woodland hut community in Scotland. She doorsteps a boy she has recently met from the community in hope they will be welcomed.
Finding the blend:
My aim with this film was to capture something of the collective memory and the history and folklore of Carbeth - a hut community in Stirlingshire, through the telling of a fiction I had developed with Carbeth and its people as a starting point.
The screenplay is about an incomer, ‘a blow in’ and her young son - as many of the new ‘hutters’ are referenced - who have come to disappear.
There was also a mythical element to the story, which involved the boy seeing and following a wolf, which again reflected folkloric tales from the area.
Many months leading up to principle photography, I began visiting the community, meeting people and making friends. I stayed overnight in peoples' huts and sometimes camped, exploring the land on foot by day and night, discovering the politics and issues that divide the generational hutters’ from the hippy hutters’ and the holiday hutters’.
The final film features members of the community, their homes, their personal objects and folk musicians from the place and although much of the community remains hidden, there are elements of the place that peak out through the fiction.

“Powerfully drawing upon folktales and oral tradition, where nature is presented at a site of strange and ominous energies, replete with shape-shifting creatures.” EIFF programmer

Link to film: https://vimeo.com/210467729 (password: howls)

Festivals and screenings:
Edinburgh International Film Festival. 2017 (Nominated for best short film)
https://www.edfilmfest.org.uk/2017/shorts-uk-fireworks
Encounters Short film festival, 2017 (in competition and in a separate curated screening)
https://encounters-festival.org.uk/filmmakers-competition-2017/
Aesthetica Short Film Festival, 2017
http://www.creativeengland.co.uk/story/Aesthetica-Short-Film-Festival-2017
This is England - Festival du court métrage, 2017

http://www.thisisengland-festival.com/?p=seances-events2017

Norwich Film Festival, 2017
https://www.norwichfilmfestival.co.uk/blog/review-creative-england-screening/
London Short Film Festival, 2017
https://shortfilms.org.uk/films/howls-catriona-macinnes-2017
Scottish mental health Arts Festival, 2017
https://www.mhfestival.com/news/354-smhaf-2017-official-selection-films-announced
Glasgow Short Film Festival, 2018
https://www.cca-glasgow.com/programme/glasgow-short-film-festival-2018
In the Palace, (Oscar section) 2018:
http://www.inthepalace.com/en/15th-palace/festival.html