Dreaming Bog screened at Skerray Hall
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A SCREENING of filmmaker Robert Aitken's environmental film the Dreaming Bog was held at Skerray Hall on April 1.
Mr Aitken, a Sutherland native, directed and produced the film which is based on the opening act of Caithness poet George Gunn’s epic new poem Six Thousand Years of Sunlight.
Both Mr Aitken and Mr Gunn were present at the Skerray event which also featured a recital of the poem by Mr Gunn and poetry from Highland researcher, ethnologist and archaeologist Cait McCullagh O'Neill.
The Dreaming Bog merges poetry with environmental concerns through the backdrop of the bogs and peatlands of northern Scotland and the mires and swamps of Finland.
NorthWest 2045 and the Highlands and Islands Climate Hub worked together to bring the screening to the Sutherland community.
NorthWest2045 Regional Land Use Partnership manager Rachel Skene helped to organised the event along with Nadine Malcom and Konstantina Pateraki.
Funding came from NorthWest2045 through the Regional Land Use Partnership Pilot Project, with support from the Scottish Government and NatureScot.
Ms Skene said: “The film traverses time via the heathered undulations of the bog: the flows, the tract of land in the north of Caithness and Sutherland which we now know is a globally significant carbon store.
“This peatland sequesters about 400 million tonnes of carbon – a huge number, equivalent to more than double the amount in all the UK’s woodland combined.
“This peaty blanket is the most intact and extensive bog system in the world and many a large number of people are now working to ensure it is restored for all our sakes- now and for the next generations.
“The Dreaming Bog seeks to explore our relationships to the bog, past, present and future.”
