Screenings 15 August 2025
HippFest Taste of Silents 2025
Scotland’s only silent film festival, HippFest is thrilled to unveil the lineup for its 2025 Taste of Silents season - an entertaining interlude ahead of the main festival in March.
This year’s programme has been put together by the Festival’s Young Programmers: HippFest’s educational programme to support future cinema programmers and film exhibitors. The season celebrates the power of silent cinema with a bold and dynamic selection of films, live music accompaniment, fun wrap-around activities and on-demand digital content, bringing silent cinema to vivid life for new and returning audiences.
The season begins on Saturday 20 September with director Clarence Brown’s smouldering love triangle drama Flesh and the Devil (1925), a steamy tale of tragic romance starring a trio of silent era screen icons: Greta Garbo, John Gilbert and Lars Hanson. Known for its stunning ‘horizontal’ and intimate love scenes, this swooning drama was Greta Garbo’s third American picture and secured her place in Hollywood’s starry firmament. The HippFest Taste of Silents presentation will feature live accompaniment by internationally celebrated silent film musician and composer Stephen Horne.
On Saturday 04 October, HippFest marks the 100th anniversary of one of cinema’s most iconic films, Battleship Potemkin (1925) with a thrilling live accompaniment by Scottish improvisational ensemble S!nk, acclaimed for their immersive and explosive soundscapes. Banned in the United Kingdom upon release for fear it could incite revolution, Sergei Eisenstein’s dramatised reconstruction of real events is a cinematic landmark, hailed by critics as one of the greatest films of all time. With its bold composition and rhythmic editing, it showcases the radical energy of young Soviet cinema and continues to inspire filmmakers today. Eisenstein hoped a new score would emerge for Battleship Potemkin every twenty years to ensure the film continued to captivate new audiences – S!nk’s performance promises to do just that.
Buster Keaton is at his best in Go West (1926) on Saturday 18 October, co-starring Brown Eyes the cow. When Brown Eyes is chosen for slaughter, Keaton will do anything he can to save her, in this hilarious buddy comedy. Acclaimed silent film musician, and HippFest regular Mike Nolan will provide live piano accompaniment. Saddle up for a great afternoon’s entertainment with a family-friendly pre-show including HippFest’s ‘Horns on the Bull’ game and free dairy-cow ice cream, courtesy of screening partner Mackies.
Battleship Potemkin (1925) Film still courtesy BFI
For those who can’t make it to Bo’ness in person, HippFest at Home returns with an online reprisal of Neil Brand: Key Notes, first filmed in March 2025 and available again for a short time on-demand. One of the hottest tickets from HippFest 2025, tune in for a high-speed voyage into the art of silent cinema accompaniment presented by the world’s foremost proponent of this specialised artform, Neil Brand. A unique and memorable show that will leave you in awe of the great filmmakers of the silent era and the artistry of the accompanists who breathed life… and sound into their work.
Talking about this year’s Taste of Silents programme, HippFest Young Programmer Callum Edwards said: “We want to show audiences the breadth of stories that are told through silent cinema and we hope people will enjoy the films we’ve selected as much as we enjoyed choosing them.”
HippFest Festival Director Alison Strauss added: “The films selected by our first team of Young Programmers for the in-person programme are an absolute joy, and they have lots of brilliant ideas to turn each screening into a proper event. They bring imagination and a sense of fun - from interactive games and dressing up, to themed cocktails and free ice cream - plus, of course, the brilliant musicians. I am expecting truly magical and memorable experiences.”
HippFest Taste of Silents in-person screenings will take place at the Hippodrome Cinema in Bo’ness. All the screening introductions will include captions for D/deaf and hard-of-hearing audiences, and a special bus shuttle service between Linlithgow train station and the Hippodrome cinema is available to book via the HippFest website, with free rides for under-26-year-olds. Shuttle bus tickets are £3.50 each-way with a limited number of free bus tickets for under-26-year-olds.
Tickets for the HippFest at Home online stream are just £6 / £4.50 conc., and pricing for the in-person events start from £14 / £11.50 conc. for advance bookings (£0.30 booking fee). Audiences can also pre-book all three of the in-person screenings for just £36 / £30 conc. Tickets and further information can be found here.
