Andrew Paterson

Allegedly one of the earliest narrative films made in Scotland, and one of first to be made in the Highlands,a Paterson used the natural setting of the coast at North Kessock to make a silent movie involving smugglers, which premiered in the Central Hall Picture House, Academy Street, Inverness, on 29 June 1913. In 1912 one of the Gaumont area salesmen selling photographic equipment persuaded Paterson to buy a cine camera. Paterson was much involved with amateur theatricals in Inverness at the time and decided to experiment with the new medium. During the spring the storyline was written by Paterson and his wife Jenny. Paterson owned a holiday cottage in North Kessock where the family stayed each summer, so locations were chosen close by in order to facilitate transport of the camera, equipment and cast. Locations include the shoreline east of the present Kessock Bridge at Kilmuir, below Croft Downie (ex-Craigton Cottage), and possibly an exterior scene filmed at Kessock House. Mairi: The Romance of a Highland Maiden, his silent, black and white film, runs just over 17 minutes and is the dramatised account of Mairi, a young girl in love with a Revenue Officer, who is caught up in a fight to catch smugglers. It is one of the few purely indigenous fiction films of the time and while presenting well the beaches and cliffs of North Kessock, the romance and smuggling story is inconsequential. In 1953 the film was re-edited by James Nairn, who added a written introduction, intertitles and credits. This is the version that has since been preserved, and it was shown again in June 1983 and November 2012 at the Eden Court Theatre in Inverness. It is possible this existing print is much shorter than the original. Paterson's synopsis has several scenes before the current print begins. Whether they were ever filmed or not, or have been lost or destroyed is unknown. Written, produced, directed and filmed by Paterson, the cast included local amateur actors Evelyn Duguid as Mairi, Tom Snowie as Bates, Dan Munro, Jack Maguire, Dan Dallas, Alex Paterson, Hector McIver and Luis Lyon. The story involves Highland whisky smuggler Lovat MacDonald, whose daughter Mairi is in love with Revenue Officer Bates. Alpine, one of the smugglers, is also in love with Mairi and swears revenge. The Revenue Officers follow the smugglers to their cave hideout, and a fight ensues in which Bates is dashed down to the rocks below. Mairi sees Alpine watching over the still form of her lover and seeks help, whereupon Bates recovers. The other smugglers are smoked out of the cave. At the end Mairi reconciles Alpine with Bates, and everyone lives happily ever after. The scene where the two men are fighting on a cliff top, before Bates is exchanged for a dummy and thrown over the edge, is a nice example of early special effects, and the film stands in comparison with most of the professionally made films at that time. It was a considerable achievement for a photographer and cast without any film experience. As a portrait photographer, it would have seemed logical for Paterson to feature a substantial amount of facial close-ups in the film, a trait of the silent movies where close-ups were used to display emotion, but there are none in the film at all. Leading man Tom Snowie, a cabinet maker also heavily involved in the local dramatic scene, eventually went on to play Rob Roy for many years. Tall, of fine physique and commanding presence, Snowie made an imposing Rob Roy in his Highland garb. He was later a manager of the old Central Hall Picture House but never mentioned his participation in the film during his lifetime. Evelyn Duguid, who played the title role of Mairi in the film, also featured in the 1915 stage production of Rob Roy, playing Diana Vernon. In 1920 she married a Canadian barrister, Winfred Withrow and emigrated to Nova Scotia. She is remembered there as a vital, enthusiastic woman, with a passion for all things Scottish, and described as "the spirit and life of the Celtic Society," encouraging people to learn Scottish dances and songs. She also stayed involved with local amateur dramatics. Paterson later made two short documentary films of Scottish scenery on behalf of the old Highland Railway Company, taken from the footplate of one of their railway engines. Unfortunately, he made no further films because he was not that impressed by the new moving picture technique. When interviewed for the Glasgow Herald in June 1983, his son Hector G.N. Paterson said: "The story of Mairi was written by my father and my mother in 1912 and filmed on the rocks and shore of North Kessock, on the Moray Firth. My father bought a cine camera from Gaumont Graphic, and after a short period he decided he was wasting his time going out and doing cine work, and he asked the Gaumont Graphic people to take the camera back, which they did with regret, but my father insisted that portrait photography for him was much more important."

Between 1897 and 1980 the Andrew Paterson Studio accumulated well over 100,000 glass plate and film negatives, but they disappeared from the scene after Hector Paterson, who was initially going to destroy them, sold the archive to the German photographer Andreas von Einsiedel, who required two vans to take them away. "The irony is that the only important Andrew Paterson work left in Scotland is that film which he made in 1912," wrote reporter Joe Mulholland in the Glasgow Herald in 1983. In the late 1990s the archive resurfaced but it was broken up in 2001, with many scenic and military images being dispersed to other collections. The remaining bulk of the archive, consisting mostly of the portrait legacy of Paterson, was once again saved from destruction by Adrian Harvey and Fergus Weir and put into deep storage until 2008, when they founded the Scottish Highlander Photo Archive to preserve the images, with the added intention of uploading them online for use by genealogists and family history researchers. Negatives, prints and other related ephemera were returned to the collection and made available online.

Paterson won 23 awards and diplomas, both national and international, for his work. He held exhibitions both at home and abroad. In 1935, the Glasgow Daily Record noted that "his portraits...have been regarded as setting new standards of excellence in the expression of character. He was one of those who helped to elevate portrait photography into an art form equalling that of an oil painting." His highest honours for portraiture included The Salon, Royal Photographic Society London, Paris 1902, Paris 1903, Brussels, Glasgow, Dundee, Bolton, Croydon, Southampton, Southsea, Frome, Hove, Wigan (two awards), Newbury, Nottingham, Scottish National Edinburgh 1908, Scottish National Glasgow 1911, Edinburgh Photographic Society 1920. The award from the Edinburgh Photographic Society was for the portrait of James Barron, proprietor of The Inverness Courier who had died the previous year. Paterson was the only Scottish photographer to gain such a distinction in the annual EPS open exhibition of 1920.