The Victorians called it the Brighton of Scotland and a little later Charlie Chaplin would visit for his holidays, waddling down the promenade and turning into the bracing wind that whips off the Moray Firth.

But if there has always been something raffish about the air blowing around the stony facades of Nairn, it is a certainty that this little seaside resort in Inverness-shire has never staged an event quite like this. A film festival has opened here, curated by an Oscar-winning star. The entrance fee to see each film is just £3, or you can get in for nothing if you happen to bring along some home baking to exchange with your fellow cineastes.

Well, if Robert Redford can do it for Sundance why can't Tilda Swinton do it for Nairn? The town's most famous inhabitant has taken it upon herself to start her very own event. The Ballerina Ballroom Cinema of Dreams - to give the festival its full flamboyant name - opened just after lunch yesterday with a screening of Peter Ibbetson, a little-known Hollywood film from 1935, which stars Gary Cooper.

If the movie seems an eccentric choice, the setting is unusual too. The Ballerina, most recently a bingo hall, was a dancehall in its heyday. It has been transformed by John Byrne, the artist and writer who is Swinton's partner, and inside the main hall vivid orange and reds zigzag over a base of midnight blue. The posters and publicity also bear Byrne's unmistakable hand.

“He has turned it into a magical place. It feels like you're sitting in a ghost train,” said Mark Cousins, Swinton's friend and co-curator of the festival.

Deckchairs are dotted about the place, which accentuate the feeling of being at a seaside fun fair. And yesterday, as the matinee audience filed in, the building rattled to the sound of I Saw Mummy Kissing Santa Claus, one of a selection of Christmas hits from the 1950s that had been specially chosen for the occasion, because ... well, just because they had.

At two o'clock, as the action was about to begin, Ms Swinton and Mr Cousins held up a sheet with the words “the State of Cinema” written across it, before letting their banner fall to reveal the screen. The same performance will precede every film. “We wanted the festival to serve as a reminder that cinema exists outside of the multiplex, that going to the pictures is more than just a question of checking into the latest oversold commodity, that having a favourite film, like discovering a new one, is one of life's true riches,” said Swinton, who won her Oscar for her performance as a corrupt corporate lawyer in Michael Clayton, which also starred George Clooney.

“This is a happening inspired entirely by a love of film. We have nothing to sell, no industry to serve, no studio to placate,” added Swinton, who has broken from filming near Milan, where she is playing in Io sono l'amore, to attend the festival.

In her programme notes Swinton thanks her “fellow dreamers, local and international, professional and grungy” for the enthusiasm that has made the festival possible. She has twice served on a jury at Cannes, and Mr Cousins is a former director of the Edinburgh International Film Festival, so both have form on the festival circuit; their event has received a grant of £10,000 from Scottish Screen.

The Ballerina Ballroom Cinema of Dreams stretches out over the next eight and a half days, ending with Frederico Fellini's 8½. Along the way visitors can enjoy many of Swinton and Cousins's favourite films, from Margaret Rutherford in Murder Most Foul, Singin' in the Rain and Sylvain Chomet's The Old Lady and the Pigeons.

John Byrne's film, Boswell and Johnson's Tour of the Western Isles, which stars Robbie Coltrane and John Sessions, is a highlight of Sunday (or day 2½ as the programme calls it).

Two films have been chosen by the director Joel Coen - Dames, a Roy Enright and Busby Berkely musical from 1934, and Low, a Japanese film from the 1960s.

Mr Cousins's own favourite is an often-overlooked silent classic of Japanese cinema from 1932, I Was Born, But which will be screened on Monday, with a new score written and performed for its Ballerina presentation by Simon Fisher Turner.

Mr Cousins denied that the film festival was pretentious. “It just cheap and easy and something for local people to enjoy. And the fairy cakes which are arriving look great,” he said

Explore UK News

• Crime News

• Education News

• Health News

• Scotland News

Times Recommends

• Fern Britton: 'I still can't see that I was wrong'
• Extreme cooking
• Easy French: Tarte Tatin