The Cairngorms in Winter with Chris Townsend

This pioneering documentary film depicts the lives of the indigenous Inuit people of Canada's northern Quebec region. Although the production contains some fictional elements, it vividly shows how its resourceful subjects survive in such a harsh climate, revealing how they construct their igloo homes and find food by hunting and fishing. The film also captures the beautiful, if unforgiving, frozen landscape of the Great White North, far removed from conventional civilization.

Alex Norton discovers how showbusiness has handled the portrayal of the Scottish accent. For over 100 years audiences have struggled to understand our braw brogue: silent Harry Lauder films attempted an accent in the captions, and in Hollywood's golden era , everyone wanted to paint their tonsils tartan- but as examples from Katharine Hepburn, Orson Welles and Richard Chamberlain show, they couldnae. Then Disney made Brave and proved that it disnae have to be all bad!

Work. Eat. Sleep. And back to work. For a long time skippers in the North East of Scotland could not find locals to work on their fishing vessels. That was until Filipino fishermen started coming to town for work. Both nationalities strive to shorten the distance between two very different worlds.

For 12,000 years wolves roamed Scotland. However, over three centuries ago, we exterminated them. This film reveals the rise and fall of the Scottish wolf and explores the question of whether they should be re-introduced. Wolves arrived as the last ice age ended, following the herds of deer and reindeer that crossed a now-lost land bridge from Europe. For thousands of years, wolves and humans shared the landscape as apex predators, with the wolf entering human art, myth and belief. However, farming put wolves and humans on a collision course, and, after centuries of persecution, wolves became extinct in Scotland. Since then, deer numbers have exploded, and many of Scotland’s woodlands have been stripped bare. Some argue for the wolf’s return. Could we, and should we, hear the howl of the wolf once more in the Highlands?

Best-selling author Graeme Armstrong reveals his passion for rave, meeting some of the superstar DJs and hardcore party people who created the vibrant and little-explored world of the Scottish rave scene.

The Boxer from Somewhere Else is a feature documentary film which charts the life and career of Ken Buchanan. The story is told through the words of Ken Buchanan himself as he talks through his life in chronological order.

In southern Germany, winter can still be admired in all its glory every year. With its white coat of snow and icicles and myriads of small crystals that look like geometric works of art. In the valleys and on the slopes the snow is still so thick every year that the alpine huts are snowed in up to the windows. Cows and dairymen are safe in their farms at lower altitudes. But not the wild creatures of the mountains! They need strategies to survive the cold season and to defy snow masses, cold and ice. And some seem to do it so easily that they even raise their young in the middle of winter. But how do animals, plants and fungi cope with the annually recurring ice age, which from our perspective is a time of need? The many adaptations in nature prove that winter is an integral part of the natural cycle of the year and the living environment of species. They are adapted to cold and frost. That is why the animals and plants at the edge of the Alps suffer particularly from climate change!

Robert Burns was well aware of the revolution taking place across the Atlantic as he grew up. The poet was inspired. And America was to be inspired by him. From Abraham Lincoln to Frederick Douglass, and Walt Whitman to Bob Dylan, some of the most significant figures in American politics and culture have cited Burns as an influence.

In 1980, Jack Shae and Allen Moore, two ethnographic filmmakers from Harvard University, moved their families to the island of Berneray in the Outer Hebrides. Over the course of 18 months they documented the everyday lives and struggles of the crofters they lived among, whom were even then a vanishing breed. The film is in English and Gaelic. This carefully observed documentary by filmmakers Jack Shae and Allen Moore is a poetic ethnographic film in the style of their mentor, Robert Gardner (“Dead Birds”). It follows the rhythm of life on a wind-swept island in the Outer Hebrides through the four seasons and in the filmmakers’ observation of the day-to-day struggles of a vanishing society we see the deep-time legacy of their kind. The film is in English and Gaelic.

A series of vignettes captured in Brevard, North Carolina at the end of December.

Everyone knows Neil Armstrong came back from the Moon in 1969 – but it wasn’t until three years later, when the people of a tiny Scottish town stepped in, that he finally got home. Neil Armstrong and the Langholmites is a film about the day one of the world’s most famous men visited the small ‘burgh’ of Langholm and the profound emotional effect the place, and its people, had on the normally stoic astronaut. From Industria Studios and Duncan Cowles, director of acclaimed 2024 feature Silent Men, comes a wry and beautiful slice of Scottish life and a unique, lesser-known tale about one of America’s most famous sons.

A documentary on the surviving syncretic pagan midwinter customs of the British Isles, focusing on nine ritual celebrations ranging from the Moray Firth in the north, the Somerset Levels in the south, Humberside in the east, and County Kerry in the west. Featuring music by the Albion Band and narration by John Tams.

Explore the growth of Aberdeen’s sparkling streets.

Multi-award winning E11 tells the story behind the first ascent of Rhapsody, a route considered to be the hardest traditional rock climb in the world. Told in an offbeat dramadoc style the film attempts to understand what it takes to climb a route of this standard and strives to get inside the head of its first ascentionist, the understated yet quite remarkable Dave MacLeod.

In the Norwegian lands south of Trondheim, not far from the Swedish border, temperatures can drop to -50°C in winter. Yet this harsh climate lends the landscape a special beauty. Ella Kjosnes, 16, is a sled dog leader. She prepares her six huskies for the 200-kilometer Femund race. While the lakes and rivers freeze over, Jan Moen goes ice fishing in the mysterious Hessdalen valley. If he doesn't catch anything, he may be able to observe the strange and partly unexplained light phenomena that regularly appear in the valley's skies. Not far away, Tone and Rolf Eriksen run a hotel on a lake that is only accessible by plane in winter.

By the time he was 30, Jesse Dufton's vision was reduced to just light perception with around 1 or 2% field of view. As a life long climber, Jesse flies in the face of adversity training for world cup events and leading traditional rock climbs with his sight guide and fiancee Molly Thompson. As his sight degenerates, his climbing continues to make remarkable progress. Despite his devastating condition, Jesse attempts to be the first blind person to make a ‘non-sight’ lead of the iconic Old Man of Hoy sea stack in Scotland.

Pedro lives in Cofete, an isolated beach of Fuerteventura. He abandoned his lifestyle to find out the obscure history of his family’s old house. “The three steps” tells a story of a man who decides not to give up and struggle against the elements.

There are as many paths as there are people. Some choose to be carpet salesman, others choose to be skiers. These behaviors are part of life's routine, and consciously or not, we're all slaves to it somehow. But you can't have the result without the process- you must get up to go down. Let this be your field guide to the minutia, the frivolities and of course the addiction to pure, uncut, freedom. Go ahead, scratch that itch. Because after all, we are creatures of HABIT.

A man steadily bashes through the snow. He disappears and the trees, covered in white, shift and show a beautiful array of hidden colors. A poetic, meditative short film about letting go of the past and embracing the unknown future.

Sunlight in a winter forest.