Caithness screening for controversial big-game documentary
WICK film-maker David Graham Scott claims his latest documentary will be his last and is inviting the public to come along with an "open mind" to see it at Lyth Arts Centre.
David has made a series of controversial and hard-hitting films that he describes as "authored works" and the latest documentary, The End of the Game, is scheduled to play on the new BBC Scotland channel later this year.
The feature-length film, shot between Caithness and Africa, is about the journey David takes with an old colonial relic living on the Caithness moors as he prepares to head to Africa on his last big game hunt.
The twist is that the director of the film is a vegan.
"On the face of it, this documentary looks like it's a straightforward battle of wills between a vegan and a hunter as I journey to Africa with the eccentric old fellow," David said.
"It's much more than that, however. I see it more as a character study of an old man in decline and a muse upon the end of the British Empire."
In the film, David first encounters Guy Wallace living in a ramshackle caravan, farming an area of bleak and barren moorland on the Thrumster estate. Guy, in his mid-70s, harks back to his "glory days" in the African bush and hopes to go on one last great expedition to bag a fearsome Cape buffalo – one of the so-called Big Five, a term coined by big-game hunters to describe the five most difficult animals in Africa to hunt on foot.
"Guy Wallace is the clichéd image of an old colonial big-game hunter with the way he looks and speaks. He could be out of a Monty Python sketch and has even been likened to the big-game hunter in the Jumanji film," David said.
"The man is documentary gold dust, there's no doubt about it."
The oddball relationship of the director and his subject is the central drive of the film as David explores the ethics of big-game hunting and even comes to understand some aspects of the hunting mentality.
"Make no bones about it, I am a committed vegan and have been for most of my life. But, as a documentary maker, I am willing to go that little bit further to try and understand what motivates the characters I film.
"The journeys I take in my films have a certain intimacy due to the fact I often work on my own, operating the camera myself. I spend weeks, months or even years building up a relationship with the subjects I film."
Working with Hopscotch Films in Glasgow, David has made a variety of authored documentaries over the past 25 years, earning him a Bafta nomination and some major awards. "I work as a reporter at the John O'Groat Journal and Caithness Courier now as I felt my documentary work had come full circle to a nice neat ending with The End of the Game.
"I started in 1995 with a portrait of a belligerent old man who worked at the execution chamber of Barlinnie Prison and now end with a similar character."
David says he finds his current line of work at the newspaper quite similar to documentary making. "I put together factual articles with text and a mix of the photographs I take. It's not dissimilar to making a documentary, in fact, but costs much less and takes a lot less time to put together."
He says that the documentary is not pitched specifically at a vegan or hunting audience and, though there are questions about the ethics of hunting and conservation, the film is more of a "character study" and has a "depth beyond straightforward polemics".
"It really is quite a poetic film and I hope people can see what I am trying to achieve with it. I urge people to come with an open mind," he added.
The End of the Game will screen at Lyth Arts Centre on Thursday, October 10, at 8pm, with a discussion afterwards.
There is the option of having a special pre-screening vegan meal beforehand from 6.30pm made by Whaligoe Steps Café.
Tickets are £6, or £16 with meal option, and can be booked here.
The film contains some strong language and is suitable for a mature audience.