Week of Sound 2026 | Film Screening - lorram

The first cinema documentary entirely in Scottish Gaelic (with English subtitles), Iorram I Boat Song is a lyrical portrait of fishing communities, past and present, in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides.

Director Alastair Cole takes the audience on an immersive journey, blending contemporary observational footage with archival sound recordings of stories and songs from the mid-20th century, set to an original score by acclaimed folk musician Aidan O’Rourke.

At the core of the film is an extraordinary trove of sound archive, recorded by pioneering Scottish ethnographers, who visited the Outer Hebrides to capture the hardship and romance of life lived in precarious balance with the sea. These recordings preserve an oral history of lore and legends, tall tales and tragedies, passed down through generations of Gaelic speakers reaching back hundreds of years.

The screening will be followed by a post film discussion with the Film’s director Alastair Cole and School of Scottish Studies Archives Curator, Cathlin Macaulay.

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Host or Publisher Edinburgh College of Art