Tilda
Tilda Swinton plays the pyjama game

It's Sunday morning and Tilda Swinton is decked out in Clark Kent glasses, blue pyjamas and big fluffy slippers. She's not the only one. Huddled round her is a group of cinemagoers ranging from the toddler-young to the pensioner-old and all wearing a fantastic array of nightgowns, pyjamas and bathrobes.

Some combine their outfits with boots, some with sneakers, some follow Swinton's lead with slippers. An elderly woman is dressed head-to-toe in a multi-coloured set of Kaftan pyjamas.

"A round of applause for the best pyjamas in the front there," whoops Swinton as the group scrunch closer together for a photograph.

A voice asks, "So, is this the alternative red carpet?"

Actually, this is day two-and-a-half of The Ballerina Ballroom Cinema of Dreams, a new eight-and-a-half day film festival that Swinton has organized in her hometown of Nairn in the Scottish Highlands. The festival's quirky insistence on marking time in half-days is part tribute to its closing night film (Fellini's 8 1/2), part romantic belief that 8 1/2 is the perfect age to fall in love with cinema and part acknowledgement that the festival has its roots in a conversation Swinton has been having with her co-organizer, Edinburgh-based writer, broadcaster and filmmaker, Mark Cousins, about setting up a foundation to provide children with their own cinema day on their 8 1/2 birthday.

It hardly needs to be said, but this is not the kind of thing that normally happens in Nairn. A few days ago its biggest cinematic claim to fame — apart from Swinton's residency here for the past six years — was that Charlie Chaplin used to vacation in the nearby Newton Hotel during the latter years of his life. That was back when Nairn was known as the "Brighton of the North."

Now the town, with its 11,000 population, its smattering of coffee shops and pubs, its seafront promenade and its annual day-long Highland Games (the 131st edition of which has coincided with the Ballerina Ballroom's first weekend), is playing host to one of the most unique film festivals around: a "hand-knitted" celebration of cinema co-organized by one recent Oscar-winner (Swinton) and endorsed by another (Joel Coen).

That Swinton is putting Nairn thoroughly on the map is evident from the roll call of nationalities attending. In the audience for a sold-out screening of Powell and Pressburger's 1945 Scottish-set romantic adventure, I Know Where I'm Going!, there are shout-outs for Papua New Guinea, America, Germany, England, Canada, China, France, Ireland and Japan. Some are holidaying in the area anyway; some have made the trip exclusively for this, which isn't bad going considering it's not a festival of new cinema, but an eclectic selection of classics and rarities compiled by Swinton and Cousins.

Cupcakes
A tray of cakes gets you free admission at the Ballerina Ballroom

Established crowd-pleasers such as Singing in the Rain, All About Eve and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes are screening alongside less well-known or more esoteric fare like Peter Ibbetson, a Gary Cooper film from 1934, and Fassbinder's twisted 1972 take on All About Eve, The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant. Swinton describes it as a festival of favorites. Cousins says, "They're all quite expressive, non-realist pictures. Highly designed, I would say, and most of them are very droll."

That's certainly the case with guest programmer Joel Coen's opening night choice of Ray Enright and Busby Berkley's 1934 musical Dames. The witty, precise dialogue, highly stylized choreography and mordant sense of humor results in numerous discussions about how much it has influenced The Big Lebowski and The Hudsucker Proxy.

"It was very honest of him to show that film," says Swinton a couple of days later. "He was basically saying, 'This is my lexicon, take it.'"

The allure of Coen's involvement, and the opportunity to mingle with an A-list actress without any of the attendant VIP bullshit that separates audiences from stars at most festivals is doubtless part of the reason why all the films are playing to capacity crowds (even an un-subtitled Danish children's movie called Palle Alone in the World sells out twice in the space of a morning). But it's not the sole reason. A lot people are just curious and up for experiencing something different.

Which is why Swinton is currently standing around in her pyjamas. On the first day (or day 1/2), she decided that anyone who turned up wearing pyjamas to this morning's 10.30 am screening of the Miss Marple adventure Murder Most Foul would get in for free. Why? Because that's what people do anyway on a Sunday morning — sit around in their pyjamas watching Miss Marple. "Especially in my house," she says.

And people have taken her at her word, getting into the spirit of the festival, much like they have with the festival's ongoing offer of free entry to anyone who brings a tray of home-baked cakes.

"What's completely amazing about the cakes is that we're getting the right amount per day," marvels Cousins. "The number of cakes is roughly equal to the audience's appetite for them. And even if the screenings are full up and people can't get in, they hand their cakes in anyway. Their attitude is, we baked them for you, so we want you to have them."