This is my first post in months. Since then I've had an emergency re-admission to hospital so I guess it's fair to say I've had better years. My only film-related work so far is an overdue return to writing the final draft script for the Tilo project and my voting duties for the British Independent Film Awards (BIFA) in the Raindance Maverick category - this year there are 57 entries.

Those following this blog might know my story but sometimes I wonder myself how much of it is true. An online search for "May Miles Thomas" or "Elemental Films" lists articles about me/my work but virtually none tells the whole story, lost among trivial errors; misspelt names, incorrect dates and misquotes. Does it matter?

Well, yes and no. From an ego perspective, I don't care because having to watch 57 films has a humbling effect and besides, it's always about the work, not me. However, what does matter is when false information about my work, if consigned to posterity, is unearthed decades later by some academic or researcher and presented as fact or worse, excluded on a false premise. When omissions and partial truths are reincarnated as fact what are we expected to believe?

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Across the world, things are happening that no prayers or pieties can undo, events so terrible they make the dysfunctional nation I call home appear normal. Here on the periphery of Europe, I have the luxury of thinking about writing and filmmaking. On a good day it’s my highest aspiration. On a bad day, it’s a lost cause. I'm not alone. Many in Scotland share the same thought - how can I have a career in the arts or creative industries and not die of disappointment?

For the working classes today there’s no route to becoming a professional anything in the arts, not when the portal to free higher education was slammed in our faces last century. Whether through creativity or patronage, art is once again restored as the plaything of the moneyed, the unpaid interns able to work for free at the expense of those who can't. In this context and in the absence of a living wage, who gets to make art?

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