THE celluloid versions of Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Laurel and Hardy will be just some of those tipping the nod to the history of Hexham’s very own Forum Cinema during this year’s Wide Skies Film Festival.

For the otherwise diverse programme – which includes The Grapes of Wrath, Mean Girls (starring Lindsay Lohan and Rachel McAdams) and the original version of West Side Story – was designed as a celebration.

In short, the Forum Cinema is 80 this year.

General manager Tamsin Beevor said: “This year’s Wide Skies Film Festival is very much a celebration of cinema in Hexham, to reflect our 80th anniversary.

“It also recognises that the past year has seen something of an overload of referendums and elections and we want to offer some light relief!”

Sure enough, laughter, music and dance are on the menu, accompanied by a generous portion of drama.

The nine-day festival begins on Friday June 9 on a high note, with the return of Brazilian pianist Tony Berchmans.

The specialist in improvised accompaniment to silent films wowed an Hexham Abbey audience last year when his soaring music complemented the 1922 Dracula spinetingler Nosferatu.

The event was sold out and Tony said afterwards, ‘The acoustics in the Abbey made for an amazing event’. Knowing a sure-fire winner when she saw one, Tamsin launched a Crowdfunding campaign to raise the £1,000 needed to bring him back this year.

The result: two very different performances from the maestro on the same night. At 6pm, he will accompany a mixed bill from those old black and white knock-abouts, confident in the knowledge it will be a very family-friendly affair.

“For children it may well be their first experience of these icons of the 20th century,” said Tamsin, “and what better introduction could they get than the excitement of combining film with the risks of live improvisation?”

Tony will be back at 9pm for the screening of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1927 silent thriller The Lodger: A story of the London fog. Widely acknowledged as the film in which Hitchcock found his voice, it stars the late, great Ivor Novello as the mysterious boarding house tenant who makes unexplained trips out into the night.

Tony said: “Silent cinema has never been totally mute. Almost always, the cinematic projections of this period were accompanied by music performed live.

“I improvise the soundtrack using themes inspired by the style of the time, such as ragtime, polka and traditional jazz, and always in sync with the action and emotion of the film.

“The screen is my score.”

The main criteria of the Wide Skies Film Festival is that its contents should expand audiences’ horizons by exploring topical and challenging themes.

To that end the steering group, which includes representatives of the Forum Cinema, the Queen’s Hall and Hexham Book Festival, generally seeks out the views and interests of as wide a range of community groups as possible before drawing up the programme.

However, sometimes it also just goes for pure, good old fashioned entertainment, and no more so than in a year when a party is called for!

Hence, we have the Disney Pixar blockbuster Up, the heartwarming animation about bereaved septuagenarian Carl Fredricksen, who attaches thousands of balloons to his house in order to fulfill his dream of flying to South America.

Then there’s the chance to see a recording of the production of Peter Pan originally broadcast live from the National Theatre; a film that has become a modern classic, The Secret Life of Bees, about a young girl living in America’s Deep South of the 1960s; and, part and parcel of a ‘German evening’ being run in conjunction with Hexham Town Twinning Association, the award-winning feature debut A Coffee in Berlin.

There’s also The Barley Mow, a documentary recording the folk music, dance, customs and sport that prevailed in 1912, and a screening of Finding Vivian Maier, the real life nanny who secretly took over 100,000 photographs that remained unseen during her lifetime.

One of the highlights, though, will be on Sunday, June 11, when author Pat Barker will be at the Forum Cinema itself to talk about her work. The film Stanley and Iris, based loosely on her early novel Union Street, will be shown afterwards.

The second weekend of the festival (June 16 to 18) will take place in the format of a retreat, entitled Losing the Plot and bearing its own programme of offerings, in Burnlaw near Allendale.