Hebden Bridge News

Red Carpet Rolls Out For Local Film Festival

A cinematic coup is on the cards as a festival of locally made films kicks off next month. The festival – 90 Years of Hebden Royd at the Movies – is part of the exciting mix of HB500 events, which celebrates the 500th anniversary of the stone bridge that made Hebden Bridge.

Local film-maker Nick Wilding and the Picture House will be presenting a season of movies that have used the local area as a backdrop to their stories.

The programme will include A Boy, a Girl and a Bike, Fanny and Elvis and My Summer of Love at fortnightly intervals. The festival opens on Thursday, April 15 with a chance to see Nick’s Hebden Royd at the Movies.

Nick will take the audience on an intriguing 90-year odyssey, showing extracts and trailers from a variety of locally-shot films, and talking to local people who took part, watched…or simply got in the way of filming!

This journey into the cinematic past of Hebden Bridge and its surrounding area played to a packed cinema back in September 2008. Since then, Nick has updated it to include more recent developments.

It’s hoped the climax of the festival will be the return to Britain of the lost film Helen of Four Gates, not seen in this country for 90 years.

If this coup comes off, Hebden Bridge will be the very first place in Britain to screen the silent classic picture since its original release in 1920.

“It’s right that Hebden should be the venue for the first screening as the film was written by a local author and was shot in the hills and valleys around Hebden Bridge,” said Nick.

“The British Film Institute will be screening it the following month as a key part of their Lost and Re-discovered Films festival. Cecil Hepworth, who produced the film, was a pioneer of cinema and it is a rare example of one of his many full-length features, nearly all of which were, sadly, burnt or destroyed.”

Helen of Four Gates would be screened on Thursday, June 10 at the Picture House, with live accompaniment – just as it would have been shown at its premiere in 1920.

Other dates for the Hebden Royd at the Movies festival screenings at the Picture House are April 15, April 29, May 13 and May 27. On May 20, there will also be a fascinating insight into the TV series How We Used to Live at the Little Theatre.

Freda Kelsall, who wrote the programmes throughout the series’ 27-year history, will tell a mixture of intriguing and funny stories interspersed with extracts from the programmes.

Tickets can be booked for the opening night of Hebden Royd at the Movies from Hebden Bridge tourist information centre, the Picture House and the Victoria Theatre in Halifax.

As well as the film festival, the HB500 calendar is packed with more than 30 happenings, including walks, talks, a Civil War re-enactment, the Handmade Parade, music, drama and more. A birthday bash and civic celebration of the bridge are set for June 19.

There’s a full listing of HB500 events at www.hebden500.co.uk.