Hippfest – Scotland’s ever-popular silent film festival centred around the historic Hippodrome cinema in Bo’Ness – has announced its 2026 programme, with a stellar line-up of silent films, presented with live musical accompaniment, plus talks, workshops, behind-the-scenes tours of the cinema, an exhibition, and plentiful online material.
The festival is celebrating its sixteenth annual outing this year and is featuring films from across the globe, from Europe and Scandinavia, through Asia and across to the US.
As in previous years, comedy greats Laurel & Hardy (a double bill, 22nd March) and Buster Keaton (The Cameraman) will grace the Hippodrome’s screen, but the net is cast widely, with screenings from Norway (Fante-Anne), Iceland (The Outlaw and His Wife), the Alpine peaks (Mountain of Destiny) and Brittany (Finis Terrae, with a newly composed original score by Edinburgh-based multi-instrumentalist Dan Abrahams and French drummer Philippe Boudot). Following the Fante Anne screening, audiences are invited to a Folkemølje at Linlithgow Burgh Halls – a no-pressure dance workshop and club night.
HippFest’s traditional Jeely Jar screening (2-for-1 tickets with a clean jam jar) is Buster Keaton’s slapstick, stunt-filled The Cameraman, packed with hilarious set-pieces and precision gags, and Sunday’s Laurel and Hardy Double Bill comprises two newly-restored rarities – With Love and Hisses (featuring local connection James Finlayson) and Slipping Wives – all farcical mishaps, mistaken identities and pantomime tussles.
Scotland is represented by Kidnapped, with live piano accompaniment, and Conan Doyle’s enduring detective is brought to life in Silent Sherlock: Three Classic Cases, a triple bill of entertaining adventures with live accompaniment from Günter Buchwald on piano and – suitably – violin; Maurice Tourneur’s The White Heather is a sensational melodrama about class, morality and social ambition which features underwater sequences that enraptured its contemporary audiences, and still thrill today.
There’s a step back into the roaring twenties with April Fool, with live musical accompaniment from pianist, composer and improviser Meg Morley, followed by one of the earliest examples of science fiction in High Treason (Britain’s 1929 answer to Metropolis with a bold Art-Deco aesthetic: from 21st Feb there is an exhibition, Art Deco Scotland: Design and Architecture in the Jazz Age, curated by Professor Bruce Peter, who will also lead a walking tour of Art Deco Bo’ness, including a visit to the well-known Gresley Buffet Car at the town’s heritage railway.
This year’s Friday Night Gala screening is Why Be Good? a ‘champagne’ reception and a flapper-themed after-party, with live accompaniment for the film from Meg Morley and Frank Bockius. The Jazz Age theme continues on Saturday 21st March with jazz-age comedy Saxophone Susy, accompanied by piano, percussion and saxophone – sure to get audiences on their feet – and on Sunday 22nd March the Roaring Twenties Charleston Workshop – a masterclass led by professional dancer Rowan Mitchell.
HippFest’s popular Platform Reels returns in the form of A Phantom Tram Ride Around the UK, in which Dr Lawrence Napper guides audiences through the city streets of Britain from the vantage point of the new electric trams in an entertaining and informative show, accompanied by Mike Nolan, featuring glimpses of Glasgow and Rothesay at the turn of the last century.
Other HippFest highlights are the New Found Sound initiative, which invites young musicians from across the Falkirk District to accompany shorts from the National Library Scotland’s Moving Image Archive, a Saturday night feature ‘Old Dark House’ thriller horror-comedy The Bat, which is said to have inspired artist Bob Kane in designing The Batman; the far east appears in Mikio Naruse’s quietly devastating Apart From You, and a story of unrequited love in Song. King Vidor’s masterpiece of the American dream, The Crowd, with live accompaniment, rounds-off HippFest 2026.
The supporting programme also includes the chance to join artist Marianne Greated on Friday 20th March at 10am at Callendar House near Falkirk, for a special look at her This Island Earth exhibition; more such events include a Rosebank Distillery Tour and Foreshore Fragments – a hands-on walking workshop on the practice of mudlarking.
Launched in 2011, the Hippodrome Silent Film Festival, aka HippFest, has become a key annual event in the cultural and cinematic calendar, drawing audiences from across Scotland: it is a project of Falkirk Council and is supported by Film Hub Scotland, part of the BFI’s Film Audience Network, and funded by Screen Scotland and National Lottery funding from the BFI. It centres around the award-winning Hippodrome Cinema in Bo’ness – a stunning pre-Art Deco picture palace dating back to 1912, and reopened in 2009 following major restoration.
Tickets are now on sale via the festival’s website.
