Guth Gafa Documentary Festival 2008

Second Sight
Scotland/Canada, 2008, 52 min
Director: Alison McAlpine

Fri 16th • Óstán Loch Altan • 3:30pm

Handsome and gallant, with a ready smile, eighty-year-old Donald Angus MacLean invites us to discover the truth about ghosts. A man of the church, and a lover of women, he takes us on a cinematic journey full of spectres, ghost cars, premonitions and the ‘second sight’. We hear of death foretold and explanations of the small mysteries abounding in an isolated community swirling with mists and fitful sunshine, battered waves upon the shore, pathways winding over the rough green hills.
Second Sight is anchored by the charismatic Don Angie MacLean's investigation of ghosts and the ‘second sight’. It is also a personal, humourous story of his daily rituals: writing up his notes by the fire, scrambling through crazy cabinets filled with research, walking the seashore with his faithful dog. His poetic, human musings of life and death reveal his love for his late wife, Nina. When asked, "Do you believe in ghosts?" Don Angie avoids a direct answer. "There are things around us, lights and visions..."
Cinematically, this is non-fiction noir with a Scottish twist. Traveling with Don Angie on a wild and windy isle, our camera is both confidant and witness as he visits other elderly friends and storytellers. The tale is collected in fragments, personal experiences coming together to portray a country life about to disappear. Second Sight features the last generation of a Scottish Gaelic oral tradition, a community that grew up without TV and electricity. Rich in humour, the film is a reflection on life and mortality, and a celebration of extraordinary characters we come to know, many of them no longer with us. Haunting landscapes and soundscapes as pure as nature reveal a magic, real isle full of spine-tingling ghost stories and unforgettable islanders.