Don't get me wrong - I love the film and find much to enjoy about it, and all Tim Neat's other work. And I have the utmost regard and respect for the culture that the film depicts.

I just think if it were made nowadays it'd probably be done quite differently, as sensibilities and attitudes are different now. I do wonder particularly about the decision to include only songs, stories and music recordings rather than speech of Travellers, their own testimony beyond the cultural artefacts they are (rightly) heralded for. At best, that choice seems to present a kind of one-dimensional, romanticised image of them as 'the people of song', and that alone. At worst, it arguably denies them a voice in the fuller sense.

Technically, it wouldn't have been any greater a challenge to include Traveller speech than what's on the current soundtrack. Presumably the footage was shot on a 16mm camera, which doesn't record sound, with soundtrack added afterwards. Hamish Henderson and others (notably, in Perthshire for example, Maurice Fleming) had by that point made hundreds of hours' worth of recordings of Travellers, not only their songs, stories and music but speech, oral histories, etc too. I'm assuming that the field recordings used in the film are those made by Henderson (an assumption based on his strong involvement in the film.) It would have been technically no more difficult to include Traveller testimony in the soundtrack than what's currently there.

Just a minor point. Overall I agree that it's a great and important piece of work!