Film screenings programme hosted at the Moving Images Cinema Caravan located on Portobello Promenade, by Pipe Street (Near to the original site of Fun City Fairground).
Programme is curated by Kerry Jones (Moving Images Cinema Caravan) and Rosy Naylor (Art Walk Porty).
The programme involves a series of 10-minute reels comprising a selection of the following film shorts which you are able to choose from when you come and visit.
The cinema will run from 10am-6pm on Sat 13th and Sun 14th September. No need to book.
Programme
Reel 1
Live Before You Die 5’46” (Tom Lloyd, 2008) Travelling the length of the country and back again with a pair of horses and gypsy caravan, Live Before You Die is the ultimate horse-drawn road movie, following a band of travellers with handcarts, goats, donkeys and ponies along green lanes to fairs and festivals.
One More – The Revelator 5’31” (Holger Mohaupt, 2025) The Revelator is a collective project by the artist Stephen Skrynka. It’s a creative space, art school, theatre, gallery and 16mm cinema – all built on the Clyde in Glasgow by volunteers without using a single nail. Filmed in a single take, this micro documentary takes The Revelator back to its roots, a nomadic Wall of Death.
Holger is an award-winning German artist and filmmaker based in Scotland. He studied visual communication and anthropology at the Art Academy in Hamburg. His research practice is focused on landscape, memory and immersive storytelling. He is recipient of the New Media Scotland Award.
Reel 2
Seaside 1’48” (Michelle Deignan, 2022) Southend on Sea. The hottest day of the year. As the crowds show out, soaking up a day at the beach we stay inside and watch from behind the scenes. Looking out from our window we hear of another show, a quiet exchange of gratitude and care.
Michelle Deignan makes moving image, photographic and print works, for gallery exhibition, for cinema and for other screening contexts. These works critically examine the production and dissemination of culture now and historically, touching on subjects such as local and international identity, nationalism, feminism, class politics and aesthetics.
Michelle Deignan
The Shows 1’00” (Jane Somers, 2025) ‘The Shows’ are an integral part of the Common Ridings which take place in the Scottish Borders every summer. There is comfort in the familiar and the regular. (Canon Super8)
Jane Somers is an arts worker based in the Scottish Borders. Originally trained in Stage Management, Jane first picked up an analogue camera when working for Alchemy Film & Arts and completed a film internship in 2023 with Connecting Threads. She is currently studying an MA in Art & Social Practice at the University of the Highlands and Islands.
Wullie – Craigmillar Summer Playschemes 6’20” excerpt (Craigmillar Festival Society, 1976) This beautifully compiled archive film shows adventures of Wullie with animated sequences, including a visit to Portobello Beach and Fun City. Awarded the Isabel Elder Trophy at the 1976 Scottish Amateur Film Festival.
Reel 3
Shakespeare Shuffle 6’20” (Shaper/Caper, 2016) This film was created for the 2016 BBC Shakespeare Festival by Tommy Small, artist director of Dundee-based dance-theatre company Shaper/Caper, as part of his artist residency with BBC Radio 2. It features Radio 2 presenters, professional, student and community dancers, and some very familiar landmarks!
Thomas Small is an award-winning choreographer and graduate of the London Contemporary Dance School. He has received numerous accolades, was the inaugural BBC Radio 2 Artist in Residence in 2015 and has held residencies at The Space Dundee and The Byre Theatre, with works presented at the Royal Opera House, Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and in cities such as New York and Berlin.
Teign Spirit 2’55” (Kayla Parker & Stuart Moore) An animated ‘séance’, in which modern day Teignmouth, a seaside resort on the coast of south Devon, is haunted by joyous summers past, conjured up though archive home movie footage. Commissioned by Animate Projects for Sea Change, created through a residency with Teignmouth and Sheldon Museum in South Devon.
Kayla Parker is an artist film-maker and researcher at the School of Art, Design and Architecture at the University of Plymouth. Working with material and digital film, including 360, her current research centres on watery places such as rivers, estuaries and coastal zones.
Kayla Parker & Stuart Moore
Reel 4
Pirate Taxi 3’00” (Pirates of the Carabina) is the small-scale outdoor circus show from the internationally acclaimed creators of award-winning productions FLOWN, and HOME. Taking place in, on and around an old-school London Taxi, sometimes serious, but more often funny, PIRATE TAXI tells the directors’ own tale of finding their way via Circus to Somerset – weaving in themes of journeys, companionship, and the annual migration of birds.
PIRATE TAXI is performed by a duo on a working London Taxi fitted with a spinning, extendable ladder, which serves as a rig for aerial circus (which we like to surprise audiences with!). The show also features many elements typical of traditional circus – from hula-hooping and physical theatre, to acrobatics and juggling. The soundtrack consists of original new music written and performed by the company.
Pirate Taxi – Image: Paul Blakemore
Secret Life 5’03” (Dominika Jackowska, 2020) This animation was created in response to COVID and lockdown, during Jackowska’s artist residency with Edinburgh Printmakers. Animations were projected across different locations, connected by local cycle paths bringing people together through difficult times.
Dominika Jackowska is an Edinburgh-based animator and visual artist exploring how animation can live beyond the screen. Using stop-motion, digital techniques, and projection mapping, she creates playful, interactive work, from short films to installations like The Interactive Light Box. With over a decade of experience and a degree from Edinburgh College of Art, her practice is rooted in accessibility and hands-on engagement. She’s also part of the NEUK Collective, championing disabled and neurodivergent voices in the arts.
Reel 5
Letta’s High Class Entertainers, Portobello 3’00” (1923) Archive silent footage of Letta’s Royal Entertainers pierrot troupe, performing on Portobello Promenade, a popular local group of comedians from the early 1900s.
Andre Letta’s Royal Entertainers were a popular concert party group in Portobello, Edinburgh, particularly known for their performances in the 1920 and 1930s. They initially performed in the Prom Pavilion and later moved to a large tented structure on Bath Street. The group was also referred to as “Letta’s High Class Entertainers”.
Fairground Fever 6’23” (Linda Hughes, 2024) Excitement grows when the annual fair comes to Kirkcaldy. Three teenage friends meet up and enjoy going on the rides then one is drawn into a surreal adventure of her own. The film is about growing up in Kirkcaldy and the seafront’s transformation when the Links Market comes every Easter.
Linda Hughes grew up in Kirkcaldy, Fife and studied illustration at Edinburgh College of Art. She went onto the Royal College of Art in London, studying for an MA in Animation, now working as a freelance animator and illustrator.
Reel 6
Portencross 8’00” (Matthew Robinson, 2025) A meditative exploration into the acoustics of an old steel buoy on the shore at Portencross, Scotland. Richard Youngs draws music from these strange and beautiful objects. How old are they? Where did they come from? Why do they sound so good?’
Matthew Robinson is a filmmaker and artist creating short films inspired by people doing unusual, creative things. Richard Youngs is an experimental musician and library assistant.
Matthew Robinson
Groyne 3’57” (Anna Tallach Kennedy, 2024) Black and white film. Scenes of the groynes in Portobello, a place for people, birds, dogs, the sea to play, with a riff on ‘Oh I do like to be beside the seaside’ in the background. (Or as Google AI describes it, ‘a film that explores the theme of the male gaze’).
Anna Tallach Kennedy lives in Portobello. She walks, writes and makes short films in answer to the questions, ‘Where was I? Where am I now?’ Her brother, Jules, adds the music. Neither of them know where they are going. He calls this ‘limbo’, she calls it ‘intuitive expansion’. The truth is probably somewhere in between.
Reel 7
Motion/Static 10’46” (Peter Gerard, 2009) A childhood dream of travelling funfairs dances with the reality of a family manufacturing thrill-rides and their life on the road.
The colourful whirl of the fair rolls into town each summer, bringing wondrous excitement and laughter. When the rides and caravans vanish mysteriously one morning they only leave traces on a child’s imagination. The showpeople family finds great pleasure in sharing their simple joys with communities across Scotland. They not only travel with the rides, they also create and build them. Directed by Peter Gerard with music by Mick Cooke. Short documentary funded by Scottish Documentary Institute.
Peter Gerard
Reel 8
Skin & Salt 10’00” (Soul Water Sauna) Skin & Salt explores the rich and playful history of sauna and bathhouse culture on the UK coastline and the public bathing space as community playground. This new experimental docu-art film draws from many archives and frames sauna spaces as historical and contemporary acts of performance, ritual and community connection.
Soul Water Sauna