WELCOME > SCHEDULE > SCREENINGS > RUM AN MILK

HEART OF HAWICK
THURSDAY 1 MAY
19:00 – 21:30 / 121′ + Q&A

SOLD OUT

Mark Lyken will be present for the Q&A.

This film has descriptive subtitles. 

Advisory age rating: 15+ years
Content warning: contains strong language. 

PROGRAMME NOTES
by Michael Pattison

Alchemy Film & Arts are proud to present a special preview of a new feature film about Hawick Common Riding ahead of its completion and world premiere later this year. Produced by Alchemy and directed by artist Mark Lyken in collaboration with community partners, Rum an Milk is a documentary portrait of Hawick’s rich heritage and the town-wide labours that underpin one of its oldest annual traditions.

Hawick’s is one of numerable ‘common riding’ traditions across the South of Scotland, relating to the centuries-old equestrian practice of riding the commons of a town to mark its boundaries and prevent invasion and encroachment. Hawick’s own variant is, let’s say, a thing: the first and biggest of the Common Ridings, it dictates the calendars of local businesses, provides longstanding clubs their raison d’être, and even determines the local school curriculum.

Every year, planning and preparations for the Common Riding begin months in advance – encompassing a quietly epic build-up of labour and coordination efforts that Rum an Milk approximates through its own cinematic sense of scale. Committee meetings give way to band rehearsals. School competitions are followed by the cleaning of buildings, statues and flowerbeds. Shop windows are wholesale re-designed; flags are ceremonially inspected; event spaces are refurbished. The borderline forensic rituals of creating bespoke, year-specific souvenirs are filmed with a sense of beguiling spectacle.

Scene by scene, an image of a town and its heritage emerges. The event’s sprawling nature and rich ensemble of characters – each of whom granted Alchemy unprecedented access in making the film – compel the cameras to go where the material takes them. This being a more or less ancient custom, not everything makes sense: if at times the film is largely observational in form, at others it resembles something that’s impossibly staged, warmly capturing proceedings even when their intense strangeness resists easy explanation.