CANNES it may not be, but Tilda Swinton is hoping to place her quiet Scottish hometown on the world stage.
The award-winning actress is behind a film festival which will be launched in the Moray community of Nairn this summer.
The Ballerina Ballroom Cinema of Dreams event is the brainchild of the Chronicles Of Narnia actress along with Mark Cousins, a
former director of the Edinburgh Film Festival, and the Oscar-winning writer/director Joel Coen.
The Edinburgh Film Festival was this year staged in June for the first time, so the Nairn event may prove a new August destination for film buffs in Scotland and further afield.
The festival is due to take place between August 15 and 23, based at the old Ballerina Ballroom in the town's high street.
A bingo hall until it closed last year, the ballroom was, in its heyday, a centre of arts and entertainment – John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Pete Best played there as the Silver Beatles in May 1960, on a tour of Scotland backing Johnny Gentle, as well as other bands such as Cream, Pink Floyd and The Who.
The festival is a labour of love for Oscar-winning Swinton – who has a home in Nairn with her partner John Byrne, the Scottish artist and writer – and Cousins. He said that one of the aims of the festival was to add some romance to the industry-dominated film festival circuit, as well as showing films which are outside the rigid confines of cinema release schedules.
"This festival grows out of a passion that Tilda Swinton and I have for trying to get as imaginative films as possible to young people," Cousins said.
He added that the festival will be unlike any other major film festival: no red carpets, awards or huge parties. "There will be no champagne receptions, absolutely not, no opening addresses and no politicians – it will be purely triple-distilled cinephilia."
Cousins said that the festival will show some new films "but what we are not trying to do at all is compete or stamp on the toes of those festivals that are trying to be premiere festivals".
The long-term aim of the event is "to reinject some romance into the film festival circuit" and to escape "the shackles" of release schedules.
Full details of the programme have yet to be revealed but the list of movies already mentioned include many older films than are usually shown at festivals, including Powell and Pressburger's I Know Where I Am Going and Henry Hathaway's romance Peter Ibbetson, from 1935, which has been described as one of Swinton's favourite movies.
The closing film is Federico Fellini's classic 8 1/2, the 1963 black and white movie which is a regular on lists of the greatest films ever made.
The guests invited to the festivals are expected to include a mix of festival directors, film producers from the UK, curators, journalists and local children. Swinton and Cousins are also collaborating on another project, setting up an "8 1/2 Foundation" aimed at building enthusiasm among young cinema-goers.
The full article contains 531 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
