Sometimes in the past at this film festival, I have accidentally picked myself really grim selections of films, or really hard-going selections - whether that means lots of death and murder or lots of political heavy thinking films - but this year I appear to have picked myself a selection of really sad films. They’ve been generally excellent films but I have spent a disproportionate amount of time crying in La Scala this year.

I do enjoy the slightly scattershot nature of the retrospective strands at the Inverness film festival. In 2023 it was a couple of Powell and Pressburger films as part of a larger BFI re-release of all their films, a few years before that it was Iranian cinema - the Afternoons in Iran season. This year it was the documentarian Frank Wiseman, presumably prompted by screening his latest release…

On of my favourite things about the Inverness Film Festival is the commitment to showing all kinds of short films, and as many Scottish shorts as they can. Short films are of course a vital part of the independent film ecosystem, but outside of specialist nights, they tend not to get screened in actual cinemas. (Outside of the film festival, if I go to a screening of short films, it’s highly likely that a high percentage of the audience will be there because they know someone involved in making one of the films.) As a fan of short films, it’s always a delight when you show up for a film and there’s a surprise short film at the start.

The Inverness Film Festival is upon us once more! I’m planning to watch - and write about - twelve feature films and two sets of short films over the next week. In an exciting development, for me, the timetable for this year’s festival has worked out in such a way that it is in fact possible for me to see every last documentary that’s showing - short films included - so obviously I structured the entire rest of my film festival attendance around doing just that.

The other reason I never made it to the Waterlily House, was that the other - smaller but more immediate - reason that I wanted to go to Kew Gardens on this trip was a long standing desire to go and experience ‘The Hive’. The Hive is artist Wolfgang Buttress’ rendering of a human sized bee hive in light, sound, metal and toughened glass.

I’ve wanted to visit Kew Gardens since I was a small child, but I can still remember, I must have been about six or seven, and the then Blue Peter gardener - I think her day job was in fact working at Kew - crouched by the side of a pool in one of the glasshouses at Kew holding forth about those giant water lilies, yet somehow it’s never made it to the top of the priority list on previous trips to London, but this time around I finally made it.

This year’s Hallowe’en treat was a screening of Phantom of the Opera (1925) with a newly commissioned score for it’s centenary. Unusually, this isn’t actually the first time I’ve seen this film on the big screen with a live accompaniment. In fact I think it was either the second or third silent feature film I saw on the big screen with live accompaniment.

November has sneaked up on me this year. One moment I had loads of October left to work with and all these plans to finish off some half-written projects to give me a clean slate for November, and do some post planning ahead of the start of Nablopomo and the next it was suddenly the first of November. However, what is November - and Nablopomo more widely - than an excuse to take some time to dedicate to writing and to take stock on what I’m doing and what I’m writing about.

A list of 54 films compiled on Letterboxd, including Die My Love (2025), The Testament of Ann Lee (2025), The Shepherd and the Bear (2024), My Father's Shadow (2025) and Pyre (2024).

A couple of years ago, having seen a particularly excellent gig by the Scottish Ensemble, I treated myself to one of their albums, Anno on vinyl, which turned out to be a reimagining of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons that they commissioned from Anna Meredith for the Spitalfields Music Summer Festival festival back in 2016. Earlier this year I happened to treat myself to a copy of Max Richter’s Recomposed, which is…

Behind the scenes of a multi-media reimagining of The Four Seasons

Extinct in central Europe for 300 years, 36 northern bald ibis are following an ultralight aircraft on their long-forgotten migration route from Austria to Spain

For centuries bells were the fastest means of communication, calling people to meetings, warning about wildfires, and were even believed to offer protection from storms – now they are being given a ne...

There was a mini film festival on at Eden Court the other weekend, not only that, but it was a Gaelic film festival, which is doubly relevant to my interests. Even better, it was scheduled for a weekend when I wasn’t working - not even on the Friday night - so I was able to go to everything that I fancied without juggling shifts or worrying about start and end times.

Jupiter Artland is one of those arts locations that I somehow didn’t know existed when I actually lived close enough to visit regularly. Or if I knew it existed I didn’t realise where it was - I think I’d conflated it with Northumberlandia, or the Yorkshire Sculpture Park - so when I discovered it was just outside Broxburn of all places I was a bit discombobulated.