Hermits around the web – Hermitary
news, sites, and pages of interest about hermits and solitude
Bogancloch is a 2024 documentary film about the Scotish hermit Jake Williams, directed by Ben Rivers. Boganbloch is the name of Williams’ dwelling. The video is one hour and a half in length; the trailer is about one minute and a half.
URL (trailer): https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x93gswu
A summary of the life ofRodney McGlynn is presented in an obituary in The Scotsman in June of 2023.
McGlynn was born into a Scottish Romani community. As an adult he lived in a “secluded stone-walled ‘bender’ with an impermanent thatched and canvas roof, a fireplace and seven small stained-glass windows.” Initially he had women partners and fostered a family but soon came to live alone. He was often surrounded by people seeking to help him in household tasks, and he frequently joined them in similar labor. As a musician, bard, singer, poet, and performer, McGlynn often traveled to festivals to perform.
Life on the Rocks is a 20-minute documentary film about a newsly-wed husband and wife naturalists who spent three years in virtual isolation on a rugged Scottish island studying the bird population. From Psyche Films:
“Two newlyweds carve out a life on a small rock island, among the seabirds
The Bass Rock is a small volcanic island just off the east coast of Scotland. Prominent in the Scottish imagination for its steep terrain and location in the Firth of Forth near Edinburgh, the island has had a sparse and intermittent human population across the centuries. Its most notable and sustained inhabitants are the northern gannets that have dwelled on the island’s jagged cliffs throughout recorded history. With a population of roughly 150,000 birds, their colony is the largest in the world.
The English naturalist June Nelson is one of the few people who have lived on the Bass Rock. For three years in the early 1960s, she and her late husband, the ornithologist Bryan Nelson, who was researching gannets at the University of Oxford, made the island their makeshift home. Living and working out of a small, derelict chapel, they dedicated themselves to observing and recording the behaviours and ecology of the birds. The then-newlyweds had little contact with the outside world, but forged a happy life together, thriving in conditions most would find gruelling.
In the short documentary Life on the Rocks, Nelson revisits her full and focused years on the Bass Rock. Combining sweeping, cinematic black-and-white shots of the island with a string score, the UK director George Pretty crafts a poignant account of Nelson’s cherished time there, as well as her emotional return. Mining Nelson’s memories and old photographs, the film explores how the husband-and-wife team found happiness on this peculiar patch of Earth, and among its many avian inhabitants. But, more than just a fondness for the past, Nelson communicates an impassioned urgency to protect the plummeting global sea-bird population – which has declined by 70 per cent in her lifetime – asking ‘What right have we to deprive [future generations] of this wonderful place?”
URL: https://psyche.co/films/two-newlyweds-carve-out-a-life-on-a-small-rock-island-among-the-seabirds; also available at https://vimeo.com/376345749
Eremitism has its parallels, including solitude and “intentional community.” This last is the context for Against the Tide, a 13-minute documentary film produced by Aeon Video.
From the website: (byline): “Living off-grid on a remote Scottish island is a mix of rejection and acceptance.” Text: “On the small Scottish island of Erraid, members of an off-the-grid community seek to live as close to nature as possible, pursuing a sustainable alternative to the consumerism of the outside world. This means days spent working the land and relying on one another. Against the Tide follows a woman named Gill who decided to upend her life after a relationship breakup, and ‘risk the unknown’ by moving to the island. Capturing the contemplative pace of life on Erraid, the Scotland-based filmmaker Giulia Candussi follows Gill as her six-month trial stay comes to a close, and she and her fellow community members decide if she’ll become a permanent resident.”
In May 2022, the Edinburgh International Children’s Festival presented the play “Hermit,” a nonverbal mime performance. The Festival has posted a one-minute trailer and this description:
“There is a square. Is it a house? There is sound. What happens inside? A lid opens. Is there something inside? What is inside? Who is inside?
Hermit is an original, visual, funny and moving performance about being alone and coming home.
With a background in music theatre and modern mime, Simone de Jong creates work based around music, movement and imagination, with performances which appeal to the multiple senses of its young audience, in a secretive way.”