Silent film festival celebrates success

SCOTLAND’S only silent film festival had its biggest audience to date this year. Nearly 3000 tickets were issued for the Hippodrome Silent Film Festival, which closed on March 24 with the world premiere of a new restoration of Victor Sjostrom’s 1928 film The Wind.

Audiences travelled from across the country and internationally to the festival in Bo’ness and enjoyed talks, workshops, an exhibition, and film screenings over the course of the five-day event.

In total, 2970 tickets were issued with an additional 1390 views of the festival’s online programme, HippFest at Home, which livestreamed talks and full-length features to audiences across the globe.

Highlights included the Friday Night Gala, Mantrap, with post-film entertainment from Miss Behave and Debay De Lux; the Audience Awardwinning community screening of The Flying Scotsman at the Barony Theatre; Our Dancing Daughters with jazz age accompaniment from Maud Nelissen, and Scottish director Frank Lloyd’s Oliver Twist, starring Jackie Coogan and Lon Chaney, with music from Neil Brand.

The premiere of a new score from Shetland musicians Inge Thomson and Catriona Macdonald for Scottish filmmaker Jenny Gilbertson’s The Rugged Island: A Shetland Lyric, had more than 300 people watching in person and online – the largest audience the cinema has seen since the early 20th century.

The festival prioritises accessibility for local audiences and young people, and all spoken content was live-captioned for the deaf and hard of hearing. The Pay It Forward scheme allowed carers and service users of Friends of Scottish Settlers to attend for free, and young audiences were supported through a range of ticket schemes, special events, and workshops.

HippFest director Alison Strauss said: “The whole team are thrilled by the success of this year’s festival celebrating silent film with live music – and what a celebration it was!”

HippFest will return next year for its 15th edition, running from March 19-23.