Award: Best Memory Submission – £750

This award will be given to the submission which gives the best response to the question, “What do you wish you had seen?”

The winner of this award is selected by a guest reviewer and Northern Lights Creative Director, Nick Higgins.

Winner

Andy Williams – T in the Park

Like the festival, this has a real energy about it. I loved the footage, which captures the colour, excitement, buzz (and mud!) of a large-scale music festival from a fan’s point of view, crammed inside it all, instead of the airbrushed coverage we get on TV. The voice-over too had some wonderful observations – about having to choose between favourite bands, about the importance of T in the Park to Scottish culture, even about ploys for squeezing your way to the front – which gave it an authentic feel, both personal and universal. A wonderful testament to the festival spirit. - Alan Bissett

Runners-Up

Chris Leslie – St Peter’s Seminary
I found this very haunting, the way we moved slowly through the enormous, ruined seminary. The urban ‘deprivation’ is offset by the inventiveness of the graffiti, the abandoned spirituality replaced by the new ‘gods’ of popular culture (Gollum, Hulk). Some of the graffiti was rather spooky too! (‘we are inside our own nothingness’) and the atmospheric music really added a layer.  There’s a clarity about the images too.  This lingered with me. - Alan Bissett

Graham Bell – I Can’t Remember My Name
This is so subtle, but so effective.  The early sections, which feature subtitles, suggest absence, dislocation, fogginess, very much place us inside the mind of a stroke victim. The blurry, rain-soaked images heighten this quality.  The ‘interview’ section, in which the victim saying ‘I can’t remember my own name’ is a victory of sorts, is incredibly affecting, and to see him riding a bike a few feet, giving a triumphant thumbs-up, gives a sense of his physical and mental journey.  This film manages so much in such a short space of time. - Alan Bissett