Polaris

Jun 27, 2012

0h 15m

★ 0.0

Overview

Work. Eat. Sleep. And back to work. For a long time skippers in the North East of Scotland could not find locals to work on their fishing vessels. That was until Filipino fishermen started coming to town for work. Both nationalities strive to shorten the distance between two very different worlds.

Genres

Documentary

Production Companies

Scottish Documentary Institute

Polaris Trailers

No Trailers found.

Cast

No Cast found.

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.

7.0

The Betrayal (Nerakhoon)

Nov 21, 2008

Co-directed by acclaimed cinematographer Ellen Kuras and subject Thavisouk Phrasavath, this haunting documentary chronicles a refugee family’s epic journey from Laos in the aftermath of the secret war waged by the United States there to New York, where they find themselves fighting a different kind of war on the streets of Brooklyn. Filmed over the course of 23 years, THE BETRAYAL is a visually and emotionally stunning look at the complex ways in which the political shapes the personal.

0.0

Dream Me Up Scotty!

Dec 23, 2013

Alex Norton discovers how showbusiness has handled the portrayal of the Scottish accent. For over 100 years audiences have struggled to understand our braw brogue: silent Harry Lauder films attempted an accent in the captions, and in Hollywood's golden era , everyone wanted to paint their tonsils tartan- but as examples from Katharine Hepburn, Orson Welles and Richard Chamberlain show, they couldnae. Then Disney made Brave and proved that it disnae have to be all bad!

7.0

Displaced Perssons

Aug 23, 2013

Per Persson left Sweden 40 years ago. In Pakistan he fell in love and became the father of two daughters. Trouble starts when the girls grow up and the family decides to emigrate to Sweden. When they end up living in a caravan outside Hässleholm, all their expectations are dashed.

6.0

Billy Connolly: Portrait of a Lifetime

Jun 14, 2017

Celebrating Billy Connolly's 75th birthday and 50 years in the business, three Scottish artists - John Byrne, Jack Vettriano and Rachel MacLean - each create a new portrait of the Big Yin. As he sits with each artist, Billy talks about his remarkable life and career which has taken him from musician and pioneering stand-up to Hollywood star and national treasure.

4.8

Against the Tide

Jan 20, 2023

Two friends, both Indigenous fishermen, are driven to desperation by a dying sea. Their friendship begins to fracture as they take very different paths to provide for their struggling families.

0.0

Latvian Coyote

Dec 1, 2019

An absurd game of “finding happiness” is being played by local Latvian coyotes* and illegal immigrants on the Russian and the European Union border. It is a game with no winner – all participants are driven to play by the sense of despair. While one side leaves home and undertakes a perilous journey to the other side of the globe, hoping to spend the rest of their lives in a free country, the other side risks their freedom to earn a chance to stay right where they are, in their homeland. *coyote – someone who smuggles illegal immigrants

7.7

Wild Shetland: Scotland's Viking Frontier

Jan 23, 2019

Ewan McGregor narrates a captivating portrait of wild Shetland and traces the course of a breeding season as the animals on these remote islands battle for survival.

0.0

Mayor of Lowell

Mar 21, 2025

This short documentary chronicles the culture and arts of Cambodian Americans and the Lowell, MA community through the eyes of Sokhary Chau, the first Cambodian American Mayor in the United States. Chau immigrated to the U.S. at seven years old to escape the Khmer Rouge genocide. Through this unique story that showcases the best of Lowell—immigrant success, assimilation, history, and the development of the arts—we see a man born into a war-torn country who comes to America to be a first-in-the-nation leader.

0.0

The Boxer from Somewhere Else: The Ken Buchanan Story

Jun 4, 2025

Charts the life and career of Scottish boxer Ken Buchanan, the 1970-71 undisputed lightweight world champion.

0.0

Travelers

Jun 3, 2023

The diaspora of Filipinos around the globe is driven mostly by the economics of supply and demand. The yearning for something better, stability, and self-validation leads a handful of sojourners from the provinces of the Philippines into the arms of one of its former colonial masters — the USA. But what happens when they finally get what they want? And how? Filmmaker Dennis Empalmado explores the musings of Filipino expatriates and hopeful immigrants in "Naglalakbay" (Travelers).

0.0

Burns in the USA

Jan 25, 2017

Robert Burns was well aware of the revolution taking place across the Atlantic as he grew up. The poet was inspired. And America was to be inspired by him. From Abraham Lincoln to Frederick Douglass, and Walt Whitman to Bob Dylan, some of the most significant figures in American politics and culture have cited Burns as an influence.

10.0

The Last Baron

Sep 17, 2021

The meaty saga of Burger Baron, a rogue fast-food chain with mysterious origins and a cult following, run by a loose network of fiercely independent Arab Canadian immigrants.

7.0

Scotland the Rave

Aug 24, 2021

Best-selling author Graeme Armstrong reveals his passion for rave, meeting some of the superstar DJs and hardcore party people who created the vibrant and little-explored world of the Scottish rave scene.

0.0

The Pearl Fishers

May 15, 1960

Documentary about Japanese pearl fishers.

7.2

Deep Water

Dec 15, 2006

DEEP WATER is the stunning true story of the fateful voyage of Donald Crowhurst, an amateur yachtsman who enters the most daring nautical challenge ever – the very first solo, non-stop, round-the-world boat race.

0.0

24 Days in Brooks

Jan 1, 2007

Over the course of a decade Brooks, Alberta, transformed from a socially conservative, primarily white town to one of the most diverse places in Canada as immigrants and refugees flocked to find jobs at the Lakeside Packers slaughterhouse. This film is a portrait of those people working together and adapting to change through the first-ever strike at Lakeside.

7.2

God Grew Tired of Us

Dec 31, 2006

Filmmaker Christopher Quinn observes the ordeal of three Sudanese refugees -- Jon Bul Dau, Daniel Abul Pach and Panther Bior -- as they try to come to terms with the horrors they experienced in their homeland, while adjusting to their new lives in the United States.

0.0

Neil Armstrong and the Langholmites

Jun 9, 2025

Everyone knows Neil Armstrong came back from the Moon in 1969 – but it wasn’t until three years later, when the people of a tiny Scottish town stepped in, that he finally got home. Neil Armstrong and the Langholmites is a film about the day one of the world’s most famous men visited the small ‘burgh’ of Langholm and the profound emotional effect the place, and its people, had on the normally stoic astronaut. From Industria Studios and Duncan Cowles, director of acclaimed 2024 feature Silent Men, comes a wry and beautiful slice of Scottish life and a unique, lesser-known tale about one of America’s most famous sons.

0.0

Long Story Short

Mar 2, 2008

Tells the story of Larry and Trudie Long, a popular Asian American nightclub act of the '40s and '50s, told through the eyes of their daughter, actress Jodi Long.