Sana Bilgrami

I was born in Pakistan and moved to Canada when I was eighteen to study philosophy and film.

When I first moved to the UK, I lived in Oxford. It was a culture shock in different ways to my experience in Canada. For instance, it took me a while to understand the regional accents.

There was quite a large Pakistani community in Oxford and it was fascinating for me to see people from my part of the world, who have settled here for over half a century, and who still hold on to cultural values that have changed in Pakistan itself. It was interesting to see how I was perceived by people around me, and I became increasingly aware of my ethnicity.

While I was in Oxford, I would travel up to Scotland for walking holidays. I first visited Edinburgh just for a weekend and I fell in love with the city. I moved here permanently when I got a place at Edinburgh College of Art to study Film and TV.

I felt at home very quickly. There was an environment at the college that engendered creativity. I had studied film theory in Canada, and had briefly worked on films and for television in Oxford, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, but now I had the opportunity to author a creative film.

I’m aware that people feel there aren’t enough opportunities for black and minority ethnic communities in the arts scene in Scotland. Efforts are being made by different individuals to address this, and it’s the source of a big debate. But I find it hard to enter that debate, even though all my films are about ethnic minorities and ‘otherness’, because I don’t identify myself first and foremost through my ethnicity.

My work focuses on migration and exile. Scotland’s history of immigration is fascinating. There is a Pakistani community in the Outer Hebrides whose story formed the basis of my film “Across the Waters”.

After the Second World War there was an influx of economic migrants to the UK from Pakistan. They went to Oxford and then to Glasgow – interestingly, a similar route to the one I followed. They worked as peddlers, travelling by foot and selling clothes from suitcases door-to-door. They spread out from Glasgow to Dundee, Aberdeen and along the North West coast.

Some would catch the ferry to Lewis and Harris, initially staying for just a few days at a time. But two brothers decided to stay and bought a house. My film is about the wife of one of the brothers, who came to Stornoway aged sixteen, five months pregnant and with no English, having never been out of her village before.

Their home became a place where other men from Pakistan stayed when they first came to the island, and the door-to-door business was a successful venture on the island. Eventually some of the peddlars bought shops in the centre of Stornoway and became quite wealthy. Today, there is still one man on the island who is peddling from door-to-door, although now he uses a van.

I’ve found the Scots to be very welcoming and I’ve never experienced any racism in Edinburgh, but then my experience has been fairly privileged. I think to some extent Scotland defines itself as a minority within Britain, so there is a sense of otherness over here that in a certain context might make it easier to be an immigrant in Scotland.

Scotland feels like home to me. I have no plans to leave at the moment. I’m teaching part-time at Napier University and I’m trying to make films. Of course, I also think of Pakistan as home because my parents live there.

When I first came here, I had no idea what living in Scotland would be like - I was familiar with the landscape but not with the people, so I didn’t know what to expect.

What I love best about the Scots...I think they carry their history as a part of their identity and I think from this springs an incredible warmth, openness and sentimentality...a feeling one has that they understand other people's pain.

Sana Bilgrami

Sana is an award-winning film maker based in Edinburgh whose work has been shown at film festivals around the world.

Her short film “Under my Skin” (2001) was made for her Masters degree at Edinburgh College of Art and won the Best Short Documentary Award at Chichester Film Festival 2002, Best Factual Film at the 2002 Scottish Students on Screen, and was shortlisted for the Saltire Society Grierson Award at the 2002 Edinburgh International Film Festival. Sana’s 2004 film, “Tree Fellers”, was nominated for a BAFTA Scotland award for Best Television Documentary.

You can find out more about Sana’s work at www.blanko.org.uk

• Scottish Screen
• Scottish TV
• Edinburgh College of Art
• Edinburgh International Film Festival
• Glasgow Media Access Centre
• BAFTA Scotland