More screenings have been announced for Paul Fegan’s brilliant documentary ‘Where You’re Meant To Be’ featuring the inimitable Aidan Moffat and the late, great travelling balladeer Sheila Stewart. With its premiere in Glasgow’s Barrowland Ballroom already sold out, seats for this run of eleven preview screenings will no doubt disappear rapidly so visit the website below and snap up some tickets…
Where You’re Meant To Be – Official Website | Facebook
Background
In the spring of 2014, Scottish cult‐pop raconteur Aidan Moffat and award‐winning filmmaker Paul Fegan made plans to tour the length of Scotland – to socialise with local characters, carouse into the early hours, and explore the country’s music traditions as part of a folkloric pop voyage called Where You’re Meant To Be.
It was meant to be the basis for a film depicting Moffat’s road trip. It was meant to be a film that celebrated Scotland’s communities and lore, as the former Arab Strap frontman toured his modern re‐interpretations of old folk songs. But just before they hit the road, Fegan and Moffat met Sheila Stewart: a 79‐year‐old force of nature, the last in a line of travelling folk royalty, and a balladeer whose life – and unexpected death in September 2014 – upturned Moffat’s folk assumptions, and diverted the course of Fegan’s film.
The ensuing film, Where You’re Meant To Be, is a warm‐hearted and open‐armed journey through Scottish music, landscape and time. It’s also a moving, wry and enlightening depiction of two of our country’s most distinct and vital voices, as they cross paths (and words): Moffat believes Scotland’s oldest songs are ripe for re‐working against a contemporary urban backdrop. Stewart does not.
Following Moffat’s initial encounter with Stewart last spring, and with her wrath ringing in his ears, we see him embark on a trip around Scotland’s remote parts with his band in tow, to immerse himself, and his bawdy muse, in folk clubs, gatherings, our oldest songs. He encounters myriad colourful myths and characters along the way: feuding monster hunters at Loch Ness; a heartbroken crofter singing at his kitchen table on the Isle of Skye; a gaggle of chain‐mail clad warriors, re‐animating history in a village cemetery outside Oban; and many singers, tales and songs.
When Moffat’s tour of Scotland comes full circle – back to Glasgow, where he lives, and where it all began – he finds himself cornered as Stewart takes her last stand at the Barrowland Ballroom. The world‐famous venue is a fitting locale for their crowning face‐off: a symbol of social gatherings past; the best‐loved rock stage in the world; and a recurring character in a film – and love story – with a sense of community at its heart.
On bringing the film back to the communities involved director Paul Fegan commented, “I’m excited to show the film first within the communities that we toured and where the characters within the film live. All the songs and stories shared with us over the past three years have helped shape the film greatly. It’s been a long journey since we first started and I can’t wait to share the finished film with our Scottish audiences first, and then further afield. ”