(2021)

9 minutes

A narrator attempts to explain to a heron why it is unwise to fish in Polmadie Burn.
They move through the story of John and James White of Shawfield Chemical Works, their exploitative labour practices and the legacy of Chromium VI contamination from disposing waste under the city of Glasgow in the 19th century.

Keep breathing. Taking the story of a strange occurrence with the breath of Scottish factory workers in the nineteenth century as its point of departure, Fionn Duffy’s The Story of White’s Whistlers is a wry essayistic interrogation of labour and capital and modern environmental disaster. Church window overlays of a shot of Glasgow’s polluted Polmadie Burn slyly subvert Victorian values in this assertive, politicised work.
-- Benjamin Ali for Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival 2022