Paul’s narrator role at Hippfest
Silent film show welcomes screen star
Screen actor Paul McGann will be in attendance at the 10th Silent Film Festival ‘Hippfest’ in Bo’ness in March.
The actor – who starred in cult 1987 black comedy ‘Withnail and I’ as well as numerous acclaimed television roles – will provide live narration for the festival’s closing night on the Sunday, March 22 screening of L’Homme du Large (1920), a powerful tale of a fisherman and his family living on the Breton coast.
Festival director Alison Strauss saw Paul’s narration of the film at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival last year and invited him to reprise the role at ‘Hippfest’.
The festival, organised by Falkirk Community Trust, is at Scotland’s oldest purpose-built cinema - the Hippodrome – in Hope Street, Bo’ness, between Wednesday, March 18 and Sunday, March 22.
The annual event is Scotland’s only festival dedicated to silent film – recently scooping two accolades in the international Silent London Poll - winning ‘Best Venue for Silent Film’ and an honourable mention as ‘Best Festival 2019’.
This year’s programme is packed with silent films featuring masked crusaders, real-life martyrs and mysterious femme fatales, worldclass live music accompaniment, talks, workshops, tours and - in true Keystone fashion - a massive custard pie fight to kick off the festival.
All films at Hippfest are accompanied by live music and for the 10th year organisers see the return of skiffle and blues band the Dodge Brothers (Mike Hammond, film critic Mark Kermode, Aly Hirji, and Alex Hammond) and broadcaster, pianist and HippFest favourite Neil Brand performing the Scottish premiere of their new live score for FW Murnau’s City Girl (1930).
This year we also sees the return of Andy Cannon, one of Scotland’s leading storytellers and founder of Wee Stories Theatre collaborating with musicians Wendy Weatherby, Frank McLaughlin and David Trouton on a new music and storytelling piece written for the world premiere of a new restoration of The Loves of Mary,
Queen of Scots (1923) - an extremely rare British feature film full of intrigue, betrayal and scandal.
The Friday festival gala is The Mark of Zorro (1920) with swashbuckling screen-idol Douglas Fairbanks as
Don Diego Vega aka ‘Zorro’ - the original caped crusader. Audiences are encouraged to dress ‘Zorro-esque or HippFest glamour’ and to enjoy the pre-screening birthday celebrations at a reception featuring Scotland’s own Mariachi band, ‘Rapido Mariachi’.
Other screen highlights include the premiere of Laurel and Hardy’s recently restored ‘Duck Soup’ (1927) (later remade with sound as ‘Another Fine Mess’), screening with two other comedy classics ‘Two Tars’ (1928) and ‘Liberty’ (1929); and Danish superstar Asta Nielsen taking the lead role in Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’ (1921).
In this version there is a controversial twist as Nielsen plays a cross-dressing Hamlet whose true sex is kept secret to secure the future of the throne. This screening is complemented by a talk on Silent Shakespeare from Pamela Hutchinson (writer, critic and founder of silentlondon.co.uk) illustrating why audiences loved to watch Shakespeare without dialogue and how filmmakers learned to ‘suit the action to the word’ when adapting his plays for the big screen.
Also highlighted in the talks programme this year is ‘Wartime Propaganda and Peacetime Diplomacy’ with Dr Lawrence
Napper from King’s College, London, to complement the opening night screening of ‘Dawn’ (1928). This is one of the most controversial films of the 1920s and tells the story of British nurse Edith Cavell who was shot at dawn by the Germans in 1915 for helping hundreds of Allied soldiers escape from German-occupied Belgium.
Programme is packed with masked crusaders, real-life martyrs and mysterious femme fatales
Other international highlights include Julien Duvivier’s ‘Poil de Carotte’ (1925) based on Jules Renard’s famous novel about an unloved, red-headed farm boy; Ernst Lubitsch’s ‘Lady Windermere’s Fan’ based on Oscar Wilde’s hit play; Chinese silent ‘A String of Pearls’ (Yichuan Zhenzhu) (1926) based on Guy de Maupassant’s short story ‘The Necklace’, about a social-climbing middle-class housewife who cajoles her husband into borrowing an expensive necklace to wear at a party which is then stolen; and the festival’s community screening ‘Filibus: The Mysterious Air Pirate’ (1915) an exciting, witty, feminist, steampunk, cross-dressing aviatrix thriller about a baroness come jewel thief and master of disguise, who uses an airship as her means of getaway.
Honouring one of the oldest cinema traditions of the 1920s is the Saturday morning Jeely Jar screening, which offers audiences two-for-one admission if they bring a jam jar to our double bill of ‘Behind the Screen’ (1916) starring Charlie Chaplin, and ‘Sherlock Jr’. (1924) with Buster Keaton as a ‘crime-crushing’ detective.
For more information go to www. hippfest.co.uk