HippFest 2024: The Return of Silent Film

This week, Scotland’s only Silent Film Festival is back in Bo’ness for its 14th edition.

The festival, known as ‘HippFest,’ will take place from March 20th-24th in one of Scotland’s oldest cinemas – the Hippodrome.

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This year, the programme includes various screenings, as well as exhibitions, workshops and talks.

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Alison Strauss, HippFest’s Director, said: “It’s not just films on a screen with live music – which are amazing in themselves – but it’s loads of other stuff… it’s really celebratory and fun and accessible…it’s a full experience.”

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With some tickets costing just £5 for those aged between 16 and 25, Strauss encourages everyone to “bring a friend and come and try it.”

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“There’s a shuttle bus we are running to make it a little bit easier, so if you get on the train to Linlithgow and hop on the shuttle bus… you can definitely make a day out of it and you can do it quite affordably if you buy our ticket deals,” she added.

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In order to reach a wider audience, the festival also has online offerings. Strauss said, “[we’ve got] three feature films and two demonstrated talks that will be livestreamed this year… because of the experience when we had to go online for 2021, we’ve really honed our ‘HippFest at Home’ offer.”

Not only is the name of the festival inspired by the venue, but so too is the theme. “Basically a festival… was very much a way to put the cinema on the map and rise the profile of the cinema – but the reason that it’s a silent film festival rather than any other kind is because the heritage of the building. It just makes perfect sense if the cinema [was] built in the silent era…to put on a festival that celebrated that era and the films of that era,” Strauss said.

The Blue Bird (1918) HippFest 2023,
Image Credit: Tom Duffin

With 14 years of success so far, Strauss told Blether Magazine why she thinks the festival has become so popular: “I think because its unique…it’s not just for professionals or academics – although they enjoy it as well. It’s [for] all ages, people that like film for all types of reasons.”

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To view the 2024 HippFest Programme and buy your tickets, please click here.