Dummy Jim: Special Screening, Book Launch and Conversation with the Director

Dummy Jim (2013, 87 mins)

‘A totally unique mixture of documentary, fiction and playful visual poetry’
—Edinburgh International Film Festival

‘Very beautiful and utterly bonkers’
—The List

This festive evening will see the director Matt Hulse in conversation with Gareth Evans before the screening of his touching and poetic film Dummy Jim. The night will also see the launch of a new edition of James Duthie’s 1951 book, I Cycled into the Arctic Circle, upon which the film was based, and in which, amongst so many wonders, Duthie discovered the inestimable Scandinavian sage Emanuel Swedenborg.

Nominated for the Michael Powell Award (EIFF 2013) Dummy Jim weaves fiction, documentary, animation and archive to explore the eccentric adventures of profoundly deaf Scots long-distance cyclist James Duthie who hailed from the close-knit Aberdeenshire fishing community of Cairnbulg and Inverallochy. In 1951, he set out on a lone cycling tour to Morocco. After three months of pedalling, he reached the Arctic Circle. ‘If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans’. 12 years in the making, Hulse crafts a multi-layered memorial to a quietly determined maverick and the community that shaped him, with present-day village inhabitants emerging as creative participants. Deaf actor Samuel Dore leads.