The concept of 'medium' in the films of Margaret Tait, c.1960-1980

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The significance of the work of Margaret Tait has been chronically neglected by scholars. This thesis will aim to reinstateTait within the history of British avant-garde film by taking seriously her engagement with the filmic medium. Throughclose attention to the visual and auditory texture of Tait's work, this thesis will explore her films through the perspective oftechnology and the senses. Tait wrote of her relationship to technology in embodied terms, speaking of her technique as'breathing' with the camera. The majority of her films featured poetic narration, echoing the narration of the earlier Britishdocumentary tradition encapsulated in The Night Mail (1936). Using the work of David Toop this research project willexamine the spectral resonances of Tait's audioscape in comparison to Tina Keane's Shadow of A Journey (1980). Ideasof media and spiritualism will also be explored with parallels sketched between Tait's interest in light waves, andVictorian spirit photography in which women were figured as mediums for channelling souls. Tait's sensitivity to themateriality of the film strip supports this reading, as it intersects with theories of contact in relation to the transfer of spiritsonto the photographic surface. This overlaps with the contemporary feminist concern to give voice to the ghosts of pastgenerations, present in the work of historian Carolyn Steedman and in the films of Tina Keane, which provide a widercontext to this 'spectropoetic' reading.