Name: Suzy Lee

Exhibitor: ATLAS Arts

Screening: Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story plus Shorts

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Tell us about your organisation

ATLAS Arts is an award winning, pioneering producer and commissioner of contemporary art that creates connections between artists and audiences and responds to the unique qualities of this region, its landscape, its culture and its people. ATLAS is an itinerant arts organisation that celebrates and explores the specificity of place within a local, national and international context. An organisation ‘without walls’, they are uniquely placed to help to deliver a contemporary arts programme in a dispersed remote rural setting.  ATLAS will provide opportunities for artists to extend their practice through commissions, socially engaged projects, exhibitions, cultural exchanges, residencies, workshops, educational programmes and projects that strongly connect communities.

In 2015, we launched SCREEN-IT, our monthly film club showing artist moving image, artist film, documentary and indie film. We screen in many different venues across the island from Dunvegan Castle to laundrettes.

Tell us about your Scalarama event this year

We are going all F-rated for Scalarama Skye. To mark the centenary of women getting the vote, we wanted to highlight some of the remarkable female directors, writers and pioneers in film.

We have two events, the first; Alexandra Deans 2018 documentary Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story, which reveals the full story of this incredible film icon. Having been branded the most beautiful woman in the world, her real passion was science and her research led to the invention of Bluetooth and WIFI, which went without recognition. Our film screening could not be complete without showing a selection of shorts including the one of the first films ever made – in fact it is a remake of the 1896 film of the same name La Fée aux Choux by French film pioneer Alice Guy-Blaché, made just four years later. Everyone looks to Eadweard Muybridge or Thomas Edison as the inventors of moving image but it was Guy-Blaché who made the first narrative film, before going on to make over 1000 films in her lifetime. Our second short film is by French artist Celine Duval entitled L’Edifice Ephemere. Both films are silent and will be accompanied by contemporary soundtrack selected by our collaborator Neil Hepburn. These are followed by Mahogany Now by Ghanaian-American filmmaker Akosua Adoma Owusu, which is a reimagining of Mahogany starring Diana Ross from 1974.

Later in September, we are celebrating the centenary of Orcadian filmmaker Margaret Tait with a screening of five of her short films including Calypso and Happy Bees showing the breadth and depth of her filmmaking career. To bring it right up to date, we will be screening ‘April’ by Glasgow-based artist Sarah Forrest, the recipient of the Margaret Tait Award in 2017 and the film she has made from this award.

Tell us what Scalarama means to you

This is the first time we have taken part in a national film programme and we are super excited to be included in Scalarama. It’s great to take our SCREEN-IT programme and be part of a bigger community that is passionate about moving image. The programme is diverse and there is something for everyone. We’ve had so much fun curating our events and it has allowed us to expand our audiences and come together collectively to sit back and watch incredible films.

Why should people come to your event?

We want people to get to see and hear about these incredible women pioneers, their history or ‘herstory’ that has been hidden for too long with our #DirectedByWomen night showing some incredible works in film by women who have pioneered not only film but scientific technologies that we take for granted today. At ATLAS, we provide unique environments to watch cinema and we are delighted to be back at Dunvegan Castle with drinks and nibbles in their magnificent dining room before entering a bespoke screening room that we have established over the past four years.

What Scalarama event(s) besides your own are you looking forward to?

Really looking forward to seeing more of the Highlands and Islands’ programme and catch some of the Screen Machine showings particularly Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday.

Anything else you want to tell people about?

If you’ve not been to an ATLAS event before, then Scalarama Skye is a great place to start.