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After months of travelling the world’s film festival circuit Breadmakers will be screened closer to home at the Heartland Film Society’s Autumn Scottish Film Weekend in Aberfeldy. The screening will take place on Saturday 25th October 2008 at Dewar's Distillery, Aberfeldy. The audience vote for their preferred film and the winner receives the Palme Dewar award with an appropriate prize.

Heartland Film Society (HFS) was formed to enable the showing of films on a big screen in an informal and friendly atmosphere. In 2004, HFS won the British Federation of Film Societies Best New Film Society award. The judges made special mention of the novel and unique method (the bean-o-meter) that HFS uses to evaluate the success of each film shown. Not only that but it received commendation for the programme notes issued for each screening.

HFS is run as a self-funding venture – fees cover only the cost of putting on films and the hire of the Locus Centre. Why not join? You don't have to join in advance – just come along to any of the performances.

Breadmakers will be shown at the Quebec International Ethnographic Film Festival.

This internationally renowned ethnographic film festival has moved from being a Montreal based event to one that now spans the province of Quebec. The University of Chicoutimi has joined the festival’s committee, thus reaffirming the success of their annual events devoted to the discipline of visual anthropology.

This year, the FIFEQ is celebrating its fifth anniversary and they will be holding events in Montreal, Quebec City and Chicoutimi on January 25-27 2008. Photography exhibitions, discussion tables and conferences will be presented in order to enhance their wide variety of films chosen for the festival…all of which are free of charge for everyone!

Dedicated to the promotion of ethnographic films, the FIFEQ will screen films created by new filmmakers from both Canada and abroad as well as from renowned figures in the discipline of visual anthropology and the social documentary genre. The festival is both a celebration of the discipline of visual anthropology, as well as a reflection on the debates and ethical issues surrounding the utility and relevance of employing visual media when studying cultures and societies.

This has all been made possible due to the efforts of anthropology students from Concordia University, Universite de Montreal, McGill, University of Laval and the University of Chicoutimi. The FIFEQ creates a forum for professors, professionals, students and others passionate about films and anthropology to watch contemporary ethnographic films on the big screen and in turn to exchange ideas, pose questions and learn more about film media within the domain of the social sciences.

An article by Jim Gilchrist of The Scotsman newspaper.

All hands to the table. There is the heavy thump of dough on flour-dusted stainless steel as the morning's batch of loaves and rolls takes shape; there is banter, snatches of a Christmas carol, and much whistling from Thomas. The baking of bread may be a linchpin of human existence, but for the workers in Garvald Bakery - tucked away behind a Volkswagen dealership on Edinburgh's Gorgie Road - making bread is more than just an age-old craft: it is their therapy and their key to broader integration into society.

For the breadmakers of Garvald Bakery are surmounting a wide spectrum of learning disabilities, from Down's syndrome to autisim spectrum conditions. Round the bakery table, they mix, knead and pummel their way into teamwork and job satisfaction, producing a range of organic breads for bakeries, delis and grocers in and around Edinburgh. And now this extraordinary little bakery is enjoying international recognition: a short documentary film about it, having won an award at this year's Edinburgh film festival and a Scottish BAFTA nomination, is bound for Hollywood legend Robert Redford's prestigious Sundance Film Festival in Utah next month.

Not only has the acclaim attracted by Yasmin Fedda's ten-minute documentary Breadmakers placed a welcome spotlight on the bakery and the Rudolf Steiner-inspired charity, Garvald Edinburgh, which runs it, but it also resulted in several of its bakers enjoying red-carpet treatment at the BAFTA Scotland awards in Glasgow last month. Among those hobnobbing with Lorraine Kelly and other glitterati at the awards ceremony were Sian Mayne and Nathan Reid, both of whom were kilted for the occasion. "I enjoyed the BAFTAS a lot," says Nathan, an affable 25-year-old. "I spoke to Lorraine Kelly - she's on TV - and I was dancing."

A trip to the Sundance Festival seems an unlikely prospect, given the costs and logistics, but Nathan is quite taken with the idea: "I've never been to America, but I'd like to try for the Sundance."

The baking, he says, is a satisfying business, "and I'm a great worker. I've done baking at my home and at school as well. And I've done special needs. I am special needs because..." he grins, "I'm very special."

"Special" they may be, but the establishment's Steiner ethos capitalises on abilities rather than dwelling on disabilities, explains Victor Chlebowski, the director of Garvald Edinburgh. "One of the beauties of this form of working is that it doesn't really matter what the dependency level or ability level of a person is, they all contribute to producing what will eventually be a loaf of bread, whether [they're] sweeping flour off the floor, kneading the dough or mixing it. People find their own level."

The attention generated by the Breadmakers has been a real bonus, says Chlebowski: "Yasmin, the director, was a one-to-one worker here for a while and because her background was in film-making, she saw potential in what was here. We were basically interested in a promotional DVD to go to parents and potential new members, but also to show the work we do in our own, Garvald way.

"But now there has been the added bonus of all the publicity, of people from here going off to the BAFTAs and now being recognised. It's just fantastic. It can't be anything other than helpful."

The Garvald presence at the BAFTA awards took the whole concept of inclusiveness that bit further, he adds. "It was all about integrating. They came away with autographs and with memories - they're still talking about it."

Breadmakers also went down well at a film festival in Teheran. Part of its apparent ability to travel well is doubtless down to its lack of any spoken narrative and its simple, direct but engagingly evocative recording of this most universal of occupations, accompanied only by snatches of conversation and singing, by the satisfying wallop of the dough off the table - and concluding with a virtuoso whistling solo from Thomas Griffiths.

Garvald Edinburgh, the charity which prompted the film, started in 1969 with a community house (named after a Steiner-inspired school established in Garvald House, West Linton, in 1944), and now operates from nine sites, providing "curative education" and social therapy. It is one of six Garvald operations in the Lothians and Borders, each with its own management and board structure. Some 115 people use the charity's services on a day basis, while a further 40 or so live in a care home or in supported tenancies. Productive activities include puppetry and puppet making as well as other craftwork, and refurbishing tools for Third World use. The Gorgie Road bakery opened in a former ice-cream factory in 1982.

As we talk, the morning production line is in progress, starting with Jamie Scott sorting out the day's orders - he flicks through the list for my benefit - it includes Butterflies Café, Real Foods, Tattie Shaws. One of the members will also accompany the van driver, explains Chlebowski:

"That's another aspect of integration, getting to know the routes, handling the money, social aspects of meeting the shopkeepers, so there's more learning going on." (And the van runs on an LPG and unleaded petrol mix, furthering the environmentally friendly Garvald ethos.) The members can also enrol for training modules in various skills - baking or otherwise - tailored to their abilities, in an accreditation programme run in partnership with Borders College.

Back at the table, Chuck Hong-Fung doesn't talk much - he has hearing problems - but keeps a quiet handle on the proceedings as he chops up a large wad of dough mix for the others to knead and roll into shape. Among the group is Donna Padget. When I ask her whether she likes working in the bakery she tells me she hates it - while beaming enormously - and that she'd rather have a rich boyfriend and a limo... to which there is no reply, really.

They don't play any music while they work - that would pose an unwelcome distraction - but there is continual chatter, snatches of song, whistling and the odd burst of what one might call baking aerobics from Thomas. While his baking skills may be limited, what he adds to the proceedings - and indeed to the film - in terms of spontaneous musicality are invaluable.

Also at the table is one of the centre's part-time one-to-one workers, Andrew Mill, a young graduate who helps Thomas. He loves working here, he says. In the meantime his other half has gyrated away from the table: "Thomas," hollers Andrew, thumping a wad of dough, "let's make bread." After the morning shift, he's taking Thomas swimming - cue a chorus of the Jaws theme tune.

Amid all the joshing, however, there is serious purpose here. As Chlebowki points out, these members are engaging in meaningful activity, with a clear end product which is in demand. The neatly rolled bread and rolls are now accumulating on racks, waiting to go into the prover, where they will rise, and then into the oven. Michael Valente is brushing baking tins with organic palm shortening (an alternative to margarine) while Nathan is placing rice-paper labels on each tin.

One of three workshop leaders, baker Stephanie Taylor, explains that in the morning session, they generally produce large and small wholemeal loaves, white country loaves and white and brown rolls. The afternoon shift makes a variety of "specials", such as Russian, Tibetan, oatmeal, walnut and malted grain breads.

How does such a disparate group work together? "They're coming here to do a job," she says, "most people take a lot of pride in their work. I think, myself, that we have as much to learn from them as they do from us."

It is, she agrees, a very elementary human occupation. "There's a lot to be gained from all coming round the table and kneading bread."

The director of Breadmakers, Yasmin Fedda, confesses to being taken aback by the enthusiastic reception for her ten-minute film. "I did it because I wanted to make a film about that subject and that place," says Fedda, who spent a year as a relief worker at the Garvald Edinburgh bakery, "but I've been really surprised at the response."

Fedda, who is Lebanese-Canadian, came to Edinburgh University in 1998 to study social anthropology and went on to do a masters in visual anthropology at Manchester, Now, 27, she lives in Leith. She worked with young asylum seekers in Newcastle and in 2004 spent two months in a Syrian monastery which encourages Muslim-Christian relations, where she made a documentary, Milking the Desert.

The Breadmakers project arose with the offer of funding from the Bridging the Gap initiative, run by Scottish Documentary Institute to encourage new talent and funded by Scottish Screen, the National Lottery and the Skillset Film Skills Fund, among others.

After winning a Short Scottish Documentary Award at Edinburgh International Film Festival in August, Breadmakers was selected for the first International Documentary Film Festival in Iran where, again, it was well received, possibly due to the universality of its subject matter, and of course its lack of spoken narrative dispensed with any language barriers. "The only narrative," Fedda says, "is the bread."

Now the film has been chosen for the Sundance Film Festival in Utah: "That was another surprise, but it's really great. It will be good to share the work of the bakery and its approach to social care, and I hope to meet some interesting people and get ideas and feedback."