Ballerina Ballroom, Nairn, 15-23 August 2008

Wendy Hiller and Roger Livesey in I Know Where I'm Going

IN THESE days of instant digital availability, the inevitable question is: ‘why would anyone go and see a DVD screening of an ancient black and white film, when for less money they could watch it in the comfort of their own home?’.

Well, on a sunny Sunday afternoon in Nairn, the Ballerina Ballroom of Dreams provided a resounding answer. So many people wanted to see Powell and Pressburger’s 1945 masterpiece I Know Where I’m Going that a second screening had to be arranged immediately after the first.

So astoundingly extensive has the media coverage been, that hardly anyone can be unaware of how Nairn-based screen star Tilda Swinton and former Edinburgh Film Festival Director Mark Cousins came together to devise a film festival with a difference, in a disused venue in the heart of Nairn.

What is now known as the Ballerina Ballroom is hidden away behind two shop fronts on the High Street and I imagine that even most people in Nairn were unaware of what lay behind the anonymous front door. Not any more, as flags festoon the entrance and queues form for tickets, just like the old days when some of the biggest bands of the 60s played here.

This is certainly an auditorium with a difference. Red Chinese lanterns provide the pre-show lighting. In the neighbouring café area, a festoon of mirrorglobes rotate. As the lights dim, Doris Day singing ‘Secret Love’ swells up on the soundtrack, and a follow-spot plays over the audience, who are divided between those who have elected to recline on bean bags (remarkably comfortable), those who have taken to classic seaside deck chairs, and those who arrived too late for either and had to take conventional seats at the back.

Tilda and Mark mount step ladders at either side of the screen and hold up a giant banner proclaiming ‘The State of Cinema’. In honour of the setting of the main feature, a piper strides round the auditorium. The lights go down for the last time, and in good old moviehouse tradition, we get a short-Spike Jonze’s video for Bjork’s It’s oh so quiet. A highly appropriate tribute to the great Hollywood musicals.

I Know Where I’m Going is a truly wonderful piece of cinema magic. For all its fairytale story, it actually seems to present the Hebrides in a more realistic light than the later, and better known, Whisky Galore. It is a revelation to see a classic black and white film like this projected from a DVD on high quality digital equipment. The image is glowing, burnished, enchanting, the sound remarkably good.

For 90 minutes no-one stirs. As the credits roll, spontaneous applause bursts out. We beanbaggers clamber to our feet, and stumble out of the Ballroom of Dreams into the summer sunshine, squeezing past the next audience, already queuing for the repeat screening.

This could easily become addictive.

© Robert Livingston, 2008

Links

• Ballerina Ballroom Cinema of Dreams

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