Robin Haig

About

Biography:

Robin Haig is a Writer and Director from the Highlands of Scotland who draws great inspiration from the people and landscape of her homeland. She recently graduated with an MFA in Advanced Film Practice from Screen Academy Scotland. Her graduation film Hula, starring Blythe Duff, won Best Drama at the BAFTA Scotland New Talent Awards 2016. Hula premiered as the closing film to a full house at XpoNorth 2016, Scotland’s leading creative industries festival. Robin has been nominated twice previously for BAFTA Scotland New Talent Awards, Best Director and Best New Work, for her directorial debut Dear Dad. Her UK Film Council/Scottish Screen funded short Saltmark was nominated for Best Newcomer at Rushes Soho Shorts Festival and is on the BBC Film Network website. Her fiction and documentary films have screened internationally. Focusing on human connectedness, they examine our relationship with self, each other and the land. The intention behind her work is to inspire reflection and stimulate change.

Robin studied Fine Art at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design before working in the film and television industry for several years. She gained invaluable set experience working on productions such as Andrea Arnold’s Red Road, Douglas MacKinnon’s The Flying Scotsman, BBC TV series Monarch of the Glen and STV series Rebus. She spent six years in Amsterdam where she was selected to participate in The Bookstore Project, a urban renewal project combining artist residencies with social design. She also assisted and worked alongside photographer Pieter van der Houwen on various projects in the Netherlands and Africa, undertook an internship at advertising agency Kesselskramer, and developed her documentary The Getaway, at the IDFAcademy Summer School. Robin assisted artist filmmaker Isabel Rocamora on her new work Faith which premiered at the Loop Video Art Festival in Barcelona and recently received a solo show exhibition at Summerhall in Edinburgh.

Robin is currently developing her first feature film Beyond the Silent Glen, part of a trilogy spanning the 1800s to the present day, based on the Highland Clearances, as well as a TV drama series based on her award-winning short Hula, and a long-form documentary on the subject of crofting. Robin was selected with Beyond the Silent Glen for participation in the 2016 Edinburgh International Film Festival Talent Lab.

Robin makes commissioned documentaries for rural-centric organisations such as the Scottish Crofting Federation and the Scottish Rural Parliament. The films have been used to document landmark events and inform policy makers, and have screened in settings such as the Scottish Parliament. Of note is Crofting's New Voices which has been viewed over 3000 times on Vimeo and taken the filmmaker to Hungry for Rights in Milan and the Elders Voices Summit on Vancouver Island. Robin was invited to be part of a five-person delegation representing Scotland at the biennial 2015 European Rural Parliament in Austria, and is a founding member of the Scottish Crofting Federation Young Crofters. She is undertaking a course with Nourish Scotland to develop Highland cattle beef on her father’s croft (croft; a small-scale sustainable farm geographically located in, and inextricably linked to, the Highlands and Islands of Scotland).