Lights, camera, action! Feature film starts shooting in East Lothian
Parts of Haddington and surrounding villages will be returning to the 1970s as scenes for a new feature film are shot in the area.
Borges and Me is described as a classic road movie set in the 1970s and based on the true events featured in Jay Parini’s ‘novelised memoir’ of his time as a graduate student in St Andrews during the period. In frantic flight from the Vietnam War, Parini leaves the United States for Scotland. There, through unlikely circumstances, he meets famed Argentinian author Jorge Luis Borges. The pair embark on a trip to the Scottish Highlands, and on the way the charmingly garrulous Borges takes Parini on a grand tour of western literature and ideas while promising to teach him about love and poetry.
The cast includes Fionn Whitehead, who previously appeared in Dunkirk and Black Mirror, Alan Cummings and Peter Mullan, Frasier and Desperate Housewives' Harriet Sansom Harris and Chilean-Italian actor Luis Gnecco.
Gifford, Garvald and Haddington
The production team began filming internal and external scenes at the Tweeddale Arms Hotel in Gifford at the start of October with another property on the High Street featuring (see picture below). Towards the end of the month they will be filming at the Garvald Inn, then moving to Haddington High Street which will double as Market Street in St Andrews.
The team behind the production has been working closely with council departments, particularly roads services, and Film Edinburgh on their arrangements. Film Edinburgh is the council’s film office, based in Edinburgh Council but working with East Lothian Council for over 20 years.
East Lothian on screen
In total, East Lothian has appeared in nearly 600 films and TV shows over the past 25 years. Eagle-eyed viewers will have spotted Tyninghame as a backdrop for Agatha Christie’s Murder is Easy which aired on BBC One last Christmas. Recently, a new production of Frankenstein was filmed at Gosford and Seacliff Beach, as did The Buccaneers and Outlander.
Outlander has also filmed at The Mart in East Linton, Preston Mill, Newhailes House, Tyninghame Woods, Belhaven Bay, Ravensheugh Beach – in fact most of the coastline between North Berwick and Dunbar! And of course Haddington and Yellowcraig beach appears in a Hallmark romantic drama called A Scottish Love Scheme while Yellowcraig beach and Cockenzie were locations that will appear in a feature film called The Fall of Sir Douglas Wetherford, filmed last winter with assistance from council teams.
Find out more about East Lothian on Screen from the Visit East Lothian website.
