Ask the average filmgoer to list the greats of the Silent Era and they’d manage Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, of course. They might even name a director or two – king of the historical epic Cecil B DeMille, perhaps, or DW Griffiths, whose 1915 film The Birth Of A Nation is both hailed as a technical landmark for American cinema and decried for its explicit racism.

But ask filmgoers to name the female stars of the time and you’ll likely draw a blank, even as recent films such as Damien Chazelle’s Oscar-nominated Babylon revel in the men and women who contributed to the Silent Era’s lawless spirit and gawdy glamour. Yes, there’s Louise Brooks, but she’s more celebrated today for her haircut than her silver screen appearances. Which kind of proves the point.

Enter HippFest, Scotland’s acclaimed celebration of silent cinema which returns for its 14th edition this month at the historic Hippodrome Cinema in Bo’ness. Already selling popcorn for three years when The Birth Of A Nation was released, it’s the country’s oldest purpose-built film theatre.

The Herald: Clara Bow in Mantrap. Picture: Park CircusClara Bow in Mantrap. Picture: Park Circus (Image: free)

This year’s programme doesn’t make explicit the question: ‘Where are all the women in the story?’. But with a line-up of films celebrating the biggest female stars of the era it does answer it. Among them are Clara Bow, Mary Pickford, Lillian Gish and an actress who first found fame in the Silent Era before skilfully navigating the world of the ‘talkies’ – Joan Crawford.

The inestimable Crawford can be seen in Our Dancing Daughters, a raucous drama not only set in the Jazz Age of the 1920s but actually filmed during it. Mary Pickford and Lillian Gish appear in 1918’s Stella Maris and 1928’s The Wind respectively, and Clara Bow stars alongside Edinburgh-born actor Ernest Torrance in 1926 film Mantrap. “How she vamps with her lamps,” quipped industry bible Variety in its glowing write-up.

“Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton seem to get a lot of the oxygen and a lot of the attention when we talk about silent film, but some of these actresses you really can describes as iconic,” says critic and silent film expert Pamela Hutchinson. “A character based on Clara Bow was recently portrayed by Margot Robbie in Babylon and Taylor Swift has written a song about her on her new album. So I think these people are still here in the culture, they still continue to fascinate us.”

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Bow was in fact the original It Girl. The term was coined from It, the film which made her a star and which was based on a novella by British writer Elinor Glyn. And Taylor Swift has indeed paid tribute on upcoming album The Tortured Poets Department, naming the closing track after her. Toronto-born Mary Pickford, meanwhile, may have been dubbed ‘America’s Sweetheart’ for her on-screen persona and crowd-pleasing roles but she was also a smart business woman who produced her own films and went on to co-found the movie studio which would become United Artists.

“The stories of some of these women are really quite fantastic,” says Hutchinson. “Clara Bow came from the direst poverty and so did Mary Pickford and they became these huge, huge stars. Mary Pickford’s story is one of a woman who developed her own persona and became the biggest star in Hollywood. She really got to a higher level.

“The studio system [in the 1950s and 1960s] really tries to make stars into a commodity owned by them. Everything is controlled by the people who run the studios. But in the Silent Era, you still have stars with a bit of power who are controlling their own films and controlling the kid of stories they are in. Mary Pickford is the classic example.”

Also featured in the programme is Peggy, which marks the screen debut of actress Billie Burke as an American heiress and socialite who has to swap New York for a life in rural Scotland. Daughter of a circus clown and married to Ziegfeld Follies founder Florenz Ziegfeld by the time Peggy was made in 1916, Burke would go on to achieve cinema immortality as Glinda, the Good Witch of the North in The Wizard Of Oz.

The Herald: Mary Pickford in Stella Maris. Pic Mary Pickford FoundationMary Pickford in Stella Maris. Pic Mary Pickford Foundation (Image: free)

But HippFest celebrates women behind the camera and in the writer’s room too. Chief among them is scriptwriter-turned-director Frances Marion, who penned the screenplays for both Stella Maris (at Mary Pickford’s request) and The Wind, and went on to helm two features.

One of them, 1921’s Just Around The Corner, is screening at the Hippodrome. As well as being one of the earliest female directors in Hollywood, Marion also became the first screenwriter to win two Oscars. She wrote around 300 in total and on top of that she spent the First World War as a war journalist and was one of the first across the Rhine after the Armistice.

“There are two ideas you have to shake off when you think about the Silent era,” says Hutchinson finally. “One is that women didn’t have creative control, because they did. They’re working as screenwriters, especially, and as executives. The other thing is the role of the screenwriter. We think of them today as the person who presents the script and is then banished from the set. Frances Marion was there every step of the way. She was there on set right through to the final edit when she was writing the inter-titles – for her being a screenwriter was making a film from beginning to end.”

HippFest opens on March 20 at the Hippodrome Cinema, Bo’Ness (until March 24)