WOMAN’S LONE QUEST

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22422, 17 November 1934, Page 24

WOMAN’S LONE QUEST

ROMANCE OF THE FILM The only one-man film unit in the world is run by a woman. Miss Jenny Brown, who financed, produced, photographed, and edited The Rugged Island,” a film of the Shetlands, has signed a contract to show her film in Canada and to lecture about it. When Jenny Brown went dewn from Glasgow University, she determined to makl pictures. Without experience of any kind, except that she knew how to “load” a camera, she went off to the Shetland Islands. There she lived on one of the emsllcst of tbem« » “ There were only 20 sheep and myself on the islqnd,” Jenny said to a Sunday Chronicle correspondent in “There I lived alone for two months. All my food was tinned, except when the crofter fishers kindly brought me fresh haddock. I had to carry water fiom the mainland in beer casks and stone jars. For two months, Jenny lived on the small island “shooting” the hfe of wild birds. When she bad herself edited her film she took it to the. Entire Marketing Board, So greatly impressed was Mr John Grierson, the head of the films de partment. that he advised her to go back to the Shetlands to make another film. The result is “The Bugged Island. To date the film has coat Miss Brown £I2OO of her own money. It took nine months to make. She went and lived among the crofters, building up a story around their lives and their industries. All the activities of the crofters on the “Mainland” arc shown. The “Mainland ” is the name which the natives have for the largest of the Shetland Isles. Then romance came, Jenny engaged a crofter blacksmith, John Gilbertson, to play the leading man’s part. Now they are married, chancing the success of “The Rugged Island:” Together they are going to fulfil this new Canadian contract, with their camera. They may or may not make a film in Canada.