Hello there China as star's festival heads east

IN A disused ballroom in the Highlands, the audience sat on beanbags and paid for their tickets with fairy cakes.

But now the actress Tilda Swinton is taking her off-beat film festival from her home town of Nairn to the other side of the world – Beijing.

Cinema fans in the Chinese capital will be treated to Scottish classics, from the urban grittiness of Trainspotting to the 1945 romance I Know Where I'm Going!.

The Ballerina Ballroom Cinema of Dreams – the title of the film festival named after the disused ballroom Swinton rented for her eight-and-a-half day event in Nairn last August – will run in Beijing from March.

The festival's co-creator, film-maker and writer Mark Cousins, confirmed that he and Swinton went to China earlier this year to look at establishing the festival. He stressed the project was still in its early stages.

He said: "We would be playing the great Scottish films with the best of Scottish music, to try to create a Scottish cinema in downtown Beijing."

Last year Cousins, whose recent work has included a documentary in Iraq, helped bring the Cinema China Film Festival to Scotland.

The actress Maggie Cheung, the leading Asian screen star of films including Hero, flew into Edinburgh for the event.

The success of the festival in Nairn attracted attention from Edinburgh to Hollywood, and the presence of Swinton, who this year won the Oscar for best actress in a supporting role, will be a major boost in China.

In Nairn, Swinton and Cousins set out to bring back the "child-like awe" of film, and her former long-time partner, the playwright and artist John Byrne, decorated the walls with thunderbolts and stars. Films there ranged from Singin' in the Rain to world cinema from Iran and Poland. Tickets cost 3 or some home-baked cakes.