Entrance fee to Tilda Swinton�s venture is a tray of cakesBy Edd McCracken, Arts Correspondent
It promises to be as playful and unorthodox a film festival as the movies it plans to show: there will be no new films, everyone sits on beanbags, entry is either £3 or a tray of fairy cakes and it will be held in an old bingo hall converted into a Las Vegas daydream. When there are no films on, everyone will be encouraged to go for a swim or a bike ride, and it is all being organised in a Highland town by an Oscar-winning actress and a few of her famous friends.
The Ballerina Ballroom Cinema Of Dreams is the brainchild of actress and Nairn resident Tilda Swinton. Held in a disused hall on her home town's main street, the festival aims to be the "anti-film festival film festival", a reaction to the current crop which are "stuffy and business-orientated", according to organisers.
The idea so engaged Joel Coen, who won an Oscar for No Country For Old Men, that the director will programme the two Friday night screenings in the sleepy Moray Firth town.
Speaking exclusively to the Sunday Herald, Mark Cousins - the filmmaker and former director of the Edinburgh International Film Festival who has organised the festival with Swinton - said this festival has everything to do with "that first moment when you fall in love with cinema".
"Film festivals are terribly serious, business-orientated, but this is totally playful," he said. "It's almost like a circus we're trying to put on, with the emphasis on entertainment and surprise and a certain quixotic quality."
Swinton and Cousins have commissioned Glasgow designer Claire Halleran to turn the Scots baronial building into "something exciting and escapist like Blackpool or Las Vegas" for the duration of the festival - August 15-23.
Everyone is expected to pay the £3 cover charge, even the famous names invited to attend, although tray bakes will be accepted in lieu of payment.
The programme consists of old and foreign films selected by Swinton, Cousins and Coen, including several Norman McLaren animations, Senegalese revenge drama Hyenas and Roman Polanski's The Fearless Vampire Killers.
The opening film, chosen by Swinton, is Peter Ibbetson, described in the programme as a "brilliant, forgotten expressionist film about amour fou" starring Gary Cooper.
Coen was offered the chance of programming the festival after Swinton starred in his forthcoming film, Burn After Reading. "Because he comes to Scotland regularly he loves the idea," said Cousins. "You would expect this festival to take place in New York, LA or Paris, the places that invented cinema, but it's taking place in Nairn."
Swinton's partner, artist and playwright John Byrne, will also select some of his favourite short films and Monday, August 18, will be the festival's singing day, including a screening of Singin' In The Rain.
Cousins said their playful approach to programming has been greeted with a sigh of relief around the film world.
"From Poland to Senegal we've had the same reaction: thank God someone is doing this," he said.
"Tilda and I feel strongly that in a place like Nairn we're doing something this international that isn't trying to make money, isn't trying to help the marketing strategy of a film, isn't trying to be part of the juggernaut of Hollywood. It is quite independent of that."
Aside from a seed grant from HiArts, the £15,000 venture has been funded entirely by Swinton, who won the best supporting actress Oscar this year for her portrayal of a duplicitous lawyer in Michael Clayton.
The actress came up with the idea when she stumbled across the Ballerina Ballroom, fell in love with it and, on the spur of the moment, decided to rent it for a year.
If this year's festival is a success, the organisers plan to hold the event every year.
