Ever since the first screening of a film in Scotland (which took place in 1894 at H.E. Moss’s Christmas Carnival in the Waverley market) the cinema has occupied a special place in Scottish culture. Right from the earliest years of film production Scotland saw an explosion in the number of purpose – built cinemas. By 1920 four of the top twelve cinema chains in Britain were Scottish and by 1950 Glaswegians were going to the cinema almost twice as often as their English counterparts.

Quite a few films were produced during this period which were set in Scotland, but many of these were made either in England or America. Examples include Young Lochinvar, a film based upon a novel by Sir Walter Scott. Such literary adaptations formed the basis of many Scottish set films. The earliest films to feature Scotland as the setting were Lochinvar (1909), The Bride of Lammermoor (1909), Rob Roy (1913) and Kidnapped (1917). All of these films, with the exception of Kidnapped, were based on Scott’s novels with Kidnapped being based upon the novel by Robert Louis Stevenson. All of these particular films were American. The first Scottish version of Rob Roy to appear was in 1911. Around this time a few attempts were made to kick start drama production in Scotland. A former tram depot in in the Rouken Glen area of Glasgow served as a film studio. It was here that the Ace Film Producing Company made The Harp King (1919). Despite the fact that the film was very popular in Glasgow the company went bankrupt shortly after its release. The studio was eventually taken over by Broadway Cinema Productions but was forced to close in 1924.

The vast majority of Scottish films from this period, which also included Football Daft (1921), Mairi - The Romance of a Highland maiden (1912), All for the sake of Mary (1920), I love a lassie (1920), Huntingtower (1927), have all been lost.

By the 1930s indigenous Scottish film making had all but disappeared. Scottish talent was incorporated within the larger forum of the British film industry. The list of Scots actors which were to make a contribution to British cinema included Jack Buchanan, John Laurie, Deborah Kerr, Gordon Jackson, Ian Bannen and Sean Connery. Possibly the most famous talent behind the camera was Alexander McKendrick, the director of films such as Whiskey Galore !, The Maggie, The man in the white suit and The Ladykillers for Ealing Film Studios. McKendrick later moved to America where he directed The Sweet Smell of Success starring Tony Curtis and Burt Lancaster a film which is now regarded by many as a forgotten classic.

By far the biggest contribution which any Scot made to the cinema, however, is the contribution made by John Grierson to the documentary film. Grierson came from Stirlingshire and attended Glasgow University before joining the Empire Marketing Board. This organisation was created by the government after the First World War in order to try and strengthen economic links amongst the countries of the commonwealth. At this time the majority of countries which still had imperial ties to Britain were pushing for independence.  Many people at the time thought that the First World War would only be the first stage in a larger pattern of global conflicts, and the Commonwealth was one way of maintaining strong links and alliances with former British colonies. When Grierson arrived at the Marketing Board he campaigned for the importance of film a means of communication and education. In 1929 Grierson persuaded the board to establish a documentary unit with him at the head, and in the same year the unit released its first film Drifters. This was subsequently followed by films such as Song of Ceylon and Night Mail, possibly the most famous early documentary. The film showed the journey taken across Britain by the train carrying the night mail and was accompanied by a rhythmic and atmospheric piece of poetry by W.H. Auden. The films use of rhythm in both soundtrack and editing was heavily influenced by the work of Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisentstein and opened up a different vocabulary of film to a much broader British audience.

One of the key aims of Grierson's work was to highlight social interdependency. For Grierson the promotion of citizenship, education and community life was one of the main functions of film. The importance which John Grierson had on the development of the documentary form was underlined in 1960 when Grierson came up with the proposal for Seawards the Great Ships for the Films of Scotland panel. Directed by Harry Hillis the film subsequently went on to win the Oscar for best documentary.

The Films of Scotland committee was originally formed in the late 1930s to produce a series of films to be shown in the 1938 Empire Exhibition in Glasgow. The films served as an advertisement for the economic reconstruction of Scotland after the depression which followed World War One. They also came during a period which began to see the growth of a serious home rule movement in Scotland.

The documentary movement continued to form the basis of film production in Scotland until the 1970s. It was only then that Scottish filmmakers began to show a renewed interest in fiction films. Filmmakers such as Murray Grigor, Charlie Keaton and Bill Forsyth consciously began trying to set up the foundations for film production in Scotland. Bill Forsyth's That Sinking Feeling was released in 1979 and was the first truly Scottish feature film since the 1920s.  A number of initiatives took place during this period to try and encourage growth.  These  included the Film Bang conference, an attempt to bring together filmmakers in Scotland. The conference led to the publishing of a directory of Scottish film personnel, which is still released annually.

One of the main opportunities for filmmakers during this period was television drama. Much of the success in television drama during the 1920s stems from the strength of Scottish theatre writing at the time and plays such as Willie Rough, Benny Lynch, The Bevellers and The Cheviot, The Stag and the Black, Black Oil were all successfully adapted for for TV. Scottish screen writing also started to flourish with made for TV dramas such as Just Another Saturday and Only a Boy's game. Such success eventually led to the BBC commissioning Tutti Frutti by John Byrne, a drama series which firmly established a Scottish presence in mainstream UK television production.

When Channel Four was established at the start of the 1980s it allowed writers and directors to cross from television production to film production. Scottish film maintained a constant presence in Channel Four commissions and eventually Trainspotting became a runaway success. In the wake of Trainspotting a flurry of film making activity took place and in the six years since the films release more feature film production has taken place in Scotland than ever before. With the availability of work in the film sector combined with the availability of work in TV sector it has at last become possible to talk about a Scottish film industry which is strong enough to sustain a respectable level of production.