The minutiae of daily life on Edinburgh's Rose Street in the fifties is presented in this impressionistic documentary piece.

Brightly coloured animated figures dance to the traditional tune 'John MacFadyen', as played by the Orkney Strathspey and Reel Society in this hand painted piece by Margaret Tait.

The three portrait sketches of the title are called 'Claudia', 'Fernando Birri' and 'Saulat Rahman'. Presumably made when Margaret Tait was a student at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematographia, Rome.

Interiors of Margaret Tait's room when she stayed at 21 Via Ancona, Rome, Italy. Brief shots of her belongings (shoes, films, teacup) and then views of the street as seen from a balcony window.

Perugia and its Italian University for foreign students.

Hand painted directly onto film stock by Margaret Tait, this film features animated dancing figures, accompanied by authentic calypso music.

This film poem evokes childhood happiness on the island of Orkney. Footage includes wildflower meadows, toddlers playing in garden, friends fishing together and images of the sea.

A film interpretation of the poem 'The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo' by Gerard Manley Hopkins. Margaret Tait speaks the poem throughout the film.

The streets of Kirkwall, Orkney come to a standstill as the "Down the Gates" and the "Up the Gates" battle it out in this traditional Norse ball game. Margaret Tait records the sights and sounds of this game 1954 - 1980, the commentary featuring interview with Ba' winners, music and poetry.

A set of three 'film poems' composed around the theme of the garden - the central one featuring hand scratched animated drawings. Margaret Tait described them as follows: 'Round the Garden' - right round and round again, 'Garden Fliers' - flighty cartoon and a stunner of a piano piece and 'Grove' - grave and sonorous.

Again a proof of Tait's genius for portraiture, and a film about the notion of portraiture itself and the investure of love in the seen portrait. What is film for? Why is it different from still photography, where it comes to seeing its subject? What can it tell us about someone? How somebody moves. How somebody is still. Her mother sits in a landscape, keeping time to a tune with her hand. Detail is how to know someone. How she smokes. How she smiles wryly, or looks away. A close-up of her mother's hands and the delicacy of them taking the wrapper off a very sticky sweet tells us everything we can know about this woman, and the care and the necessary distance, both, with which we observe those we love. A long-shot of her mother, from behind, almost running almost dancing along a rural road beneath a greyed-out rainbow is, in that miraculous Tait way, so placed, so unquaint and so natural, as to leave its viewer renewed and knowing again what it is, simply to be alive.

In 1990s Edinburgh, Barbara Thorburn reflects on memories of her poet mother, Greta, and her tragic death.

"Aerial" is a 4 minute silent film, telling the seasons over in a variety of colour washes. Pretty, but not as potentially absorbing as "Land Makar". In this film, Tait followed the daily farming routine of her neighbour (Mary Sinclair, from memory) from spring to autumn. The camera reproduces very accurately the infinite shift of variations on a theme of the farming life, never going beyond the fields around the house, the pond, and the house itself. It is beautiful, in the sense that the known object, painfully laboured over, is beautiful, and Tait's achievement is in putting this across. But I couldn't understand a word of the accompanying monologue by the farmer (in her native Orcadian accent). I was so frustrated by what I was missing on the soundtrack that I found it hard to concentrate on the screen alone.

Colour Poems (1974, 12 mins) 'Titles within the film are: Numen of the Boughs, Old Boots, Speed Bonny Boat, Lapping Water, Incense, Aha, Brave New World, Things, Terra Firma. A poem started in words is continued in images - Part of another poem as an addition to the picture - Some images formed by direct-on-film animation - Others 'found' by the camera"