The Goddess & By the Law, Bo'ness Hippfest 2017

Perched alongside the Forth and without a direct rail link to Edinburgh, the sleepy former mining town of Bo’ness (or Borrowstounness to give it its full title) may be an unexpected location for a festival of silent film. Bo’ness has a trump card however, for it is home to the beautiful Hippodrome, thought to be the oldest purpose built cinema surviving in Scotland.

Opened in 1912, the cinema underwent a major restoration to reopen in 2009. Since 2011 it has played host to the Hippodrome Festival of Silent Film (or Hippfest for short), a five day programme of screenings, live performances and panel events exploring the vast terrain of silent movies from studios around the world. The films are screened with live scores, from traditional piano accompaniment to bespoke commissions from contemporary artists.

The 2017 programme is typically diverse, taking in films from around the globe, and a highlight of the programme was a celebration of women in the silent film industry. Programme notes offer the sobering fact that female representation at every level of said industry was in fact better 100 years ago.

Chinese classic The Goddess screens

On the Saturday, we are treated to a screening of China’s The Goddess following a brief introduction from Edinburgh University’s Dr Julian Ward. This focus on the social and historical context of the films is one of the fascinating aspects of Hippfest – it offers the audience the tools of interpretation to better reflect what it was to be an audience member at the time of release, and also to see how that fits into our current understanding. The 1934 work stars Ruan Lingyu, heroine of the Chinese industry who committed suicide while awaiting trial for adultery in a tragic mirroring of one of her roles.

Recently restored, The Goddess is a remarkably contemporary-feeling work of social realism. Ruan plays a prostitute in 1930s Shanghai, struggling to provide a brighter future for her beloved son in the face of male coercion and societal injustice. The daily oppression she faces reflects a harsh reality of female life that endures today in locations around the world. She is trapped by circumstance, constantly abused and undermined in her efforts to improve her son's opportunities. The film's ending is tragic yet oddly optimistic – it is a realistic end and the best that can be hoped, given the circumstances. The screening is accompanied on piano by John Sweeney, offering a flavour of a trip to the cinema a century ago.

RM Hubbert scores By the Law

Later, one of the Hippfest special commissions is unveiled as RM Hubbert debuts his brand new guitar score for Soviet Western By the Law. Shot in 1926, the film is an adaptation of a Jack London short story set in the Yukon, a wild territory in the gold rush, which is here played by the Moscow river.

A dramatic tale set in the claustrophobic surrounds of a freezing cabin that's been inundated by the river, By the Law is a work of socialist realism filmed less than a decade post-Russian Revolution. The proletarian protagonists struggle to reconcile their moral and ideological choices in an environment where nature represents a physical, overwhelming force. Aleksandra Khokhlova, a member of the Moscow intelligentsia of the era, provides an incandescent performance on a pared down, minimalist stage.

R.M. Hubbert’s delicate guitar is a perfect soundtrack, his contrapuntal melodies surpassing the apparent limitations of his instrument, and here reflecting the undulating rhythms of the river in which the protagonists find themselves stranded. The mesmerising live performance is set to tour Scotland’s screens later in the year.

The joy of Hippfest lies in this collision of eras. The beautiful space of the Hippodrome is redolent of the first days of cinema, a period when attendance occupied a specific community role, and during Hippfest it's filled with work that springs from that time. What could have been an exercise in nostalgia is in fact both a history lesson and a demonstration of the constancy of human concerns – we are not so far from that time as we may think. The contemporary collaborations bring the works smack bang into the 21st century, creating something both enduring and entirely new for a present day audience.