‘Shadow of a Journey’ was filmed on a ferry going to the Isle of Harris from the Isle of Skye. On the screen light and shadow play across re-worked images of the sea, the reflections of passengers and birds broken apart and reconstituted by the moving waves. On the sound­track Peggy Morrison tells the story of the Highland Clearances in Harris, her poetic, lilting voice juxtaposed with the harshness of a story remembered across generations of women. 

The songs and story in ‘Shadow of a Journey’ weren't recorded on that visit [in 1978] but over the course of several years Peggy sent me tapes of her singing and the story of the Highland Clearances in Harris which I was to incorporate into the final version of the film. I used the super-8 film of shadows on the sea as a sketchbook which I worked on, blowing a portion of it up to 16mm and then adding the sound which contrasts the bitter story with the almost abstract beauty of the waves. I wanted to give the film an edge, a sense of the continual moving away from and returning to the island from that moment in history, but still retain the real-time element of that journey – my journey, your journey, their journey. 

– Tina Keane

The full significance of Tina Keane's work does not lie in any of the separate elements but in the resonance of the juxtapositions she contrives. Her work is a sum of magnitude which greatly exceeds the unassuming parts she puts together.

– Tam Giles, Undercut

Description source: Circles Catalogue (circa 1983). Compiled by Helen MacKintosh and Margaret Gillan. Edited by Felicity Sparrow.