Rare 1930s footage of pioneering Scottish female pilot to be set to live music at silent film festival

The footage, part of a series of short films to be shown in tandem at the HippFest silent film festival in Bo'ness, shows pilot Winnie Drinkwater preparing for flight.

The Near Shore: A Scottish and Irish Cine-Concert, shows a series of short films about life in Scotland and Ireland, accompanied by a live performance from avant-guard improvisational pianist, Paul Smyth.

Ms Drinkwater, then just 20 years old, was the world’s first woman commercial airline pilot and Scotland’s first female licensed aircraft engineer.

The footage of Ms Drinkwater is one of a collection of five amateur films made by Irish people about Scotland and vice versa shown together at the event, compiled by Sunniva O’Flynn, Head of Irish Film Programming at the Irish Film Institute.

The film, made by a filmmaker known only as Mr Dick, opens with scenes at Renfrew airport where Ms Drinkwater, and a male pilot are seen preparing for the flight. Ms Drinkwater worked with Midland and Scottish Air Ferries, where she requested and secured equal pay with her male counterparts.

While in Ireland Mr Dick, also films in the busy city of Galway and in the less photographed smaller towns of Dundalk, Westport, Ballina, Sligo and Londonderry.

Another film to be shown as part of the Near Shore compilation is one of an 1899 yacht race made by a Belfast chemist Dr Robert A Mitchell. The footage was long thought to be the first film made by an Irish filmmaker in an Irish location on Belfast Lough - but HippFest’s historians found out it was actually shot at the Royal Clyde Yacht Club Regatta at Hunter’s Quay, in Scotland’s Firth of Clyde.

Another of the short films documents the honeymoon journey in 1958 of amateur filmmaker Ernest Tiernan and his young wife Kathleen from Scotland to a small farm in Cornamuckla, Co Leitrim, home of her Irish relations.

Formally known as the Hippodrome Silent Film Festival and named for the Hippodrome Cinema in Bo’ness, HippFest’s 2025 programme will celebrate over 100 years of filmmaking from cinematographers across the globe.

HippFest, which is in its 15th year, takes place from 19 to 23 March.

Festival director, Alison Strauss, said: “The team and I are thrilled to be sharing this superlative line-up of silent films presented with unrivalled live music accompaniment.

“We are proud that HippFest has reached this milestone edition, and can take its place alongside the best arts festivals that Scotland has to offer, cultivating an international and ever-growing community of people with an adventurous appetite for extraordinary cinema.”

Sambrooke Scott, head of audience development at Screen Scotland said: “HippFest is a one-of-a-kind celebration of silent cinema, bringing rare cinema gems to life through wonderful live musical scores performed by fantastic musicians from Scotland and beyond.”