Happy 66th birthday to Paul McGann!
(14th November 1959)

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Happy 66th birthday to Paul McGann!
(14th November 1959)
Paul is a narrator of the silent film L'Homme du Large, closing the HippFest in The Hippodrome Cinema in Bo'ness, Scotland tonight. Thanks @infineight for finding them.
Photo credits: J.L. Preece.
Doesn't he look gorgeous?😍😍
Silent London hits the road
Silent London hits the road
London’s great, it really is, but sometimes a blogger has to seek wider horizons. So this year I will be packing up my laptop and getting my soy cappuccino to go. I’m hitting the road to report on the silent film festival circuit – more of which anon – and I may possibly be popping up in a cinema near you. First, an exciting announcement! The British Silent Film Festival is back this year. We…
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Hippfest's Sweet 16: Check out the lineup
Great news from the north, as Hippfest today launches the lineup for its 16th festival, taking place next month: five days of silent film, live music, workshops, talks and a chance to do the Charleston. All in the vintage splendour of the beautiful Bo’ness Hippodrome. You can read and explore the full lineup here, but here are a few of my highlights. Hope to see you there! Continue reading…
A Taste of Silents, and more, by HippFest
Is it a little hot in here… or is it just me? Outside the weather is turning autumnal, inside here I am contemplating the sizzling lineup for HippFest’s Taste of Silents season, which opens next month. Complete with Greta Garbo and John Gilbert sharing a cigarette, and much more, in Flesh and the Devil (Clarence Brown, 1926). Stephen Horne will accompany Flesh and the Devil on piano and flute at…
Frances Marion for Hippfest at Home
Hippfest approaches! But before the IRL festival in Bo’ness, 20-24 March, the Hippfest at Home programme promises online treats for you to enjoy in the comfort of your own home. And the first event is coming up very soon indeed! Next Friday evening, 26 January, I will be delivering a lecture called Frances Marion: Hollywood’s Favourite Storyteller, with clips accompanied by the brilliant Mike…
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Thinking Aloud About Film: Hippodrome Silent Film Festival 2023 Bo'Ness
Intrepid investigative journalist Richard Layne returns to the Hippodrome Silent Film Festival to report on the films and the glamour of Silent Cinema in Bo’Ness, a model of what place and event can do together: a site of scholarship, restoration, fandom and even the commission of aspects of production, bringing together a cultural intersection of the local and the international. An unmissable…
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Hippfest 2023: the early days
I don’t want you to get the idea I am wanted by the authorities, but I tend to move around a lot. So for the second year in a row, I was only in town for the first half of Hippfest – or the early, funny stuff, as I like to think of it. I’ve said before that the programming at Hippfest, now in its 13th year, is impressively eclectic. I’d say that with extra emphasis during the midweek portion of…
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