Allen Moore

In 1980, Jack Shae and Allen Moore, two ethnographic filmmakers from Harvard University, moved their families to the island of Berneray in the Outer Hebrides. Over the course of 18 months they documented the everyday lives and struggles of the crofters they lived among, whom were even then a vanishing breed. The film is in English and Gaelic. This carefully observed documentary by filmmakers Jack Shae and Allen Moore is a poetic ethnographic film in the style of their mentor, Robert Gardner (“Dead Birds”). It follows the rhythm of life on a wind-swept island in the Outer Hebrides through the four seasons and in the filmmakers’ observation of the day-to-day struggles of a vanishing society we see the deep-time legacy of their kind. The film is in English and Gaelic.

In 1981 Allen Moore completed “The Shepherds of Berneray,” a study of the centuries-old crofting traditions of the island of Berneray, and a portrait of the Gaelic speaking people whose lives reflected the underpinnings of this heritage. Moore has continued a decades-long friendship with the islanders, and beginning in 2016, he spent 10 years revisiting the community to document what traditions have remained and how life has changed on the island. Weaving together 16mm outtakes from the late 1970’s with contemporary HD digital material, “Returning to Berneray” is a personal portrait of a place and a filmmaker’s relationship to it.