Shot at her studio-camp in Idaho, during a time of personal and financial hardships, White Water comes at the end of Canadian-born Nell Shipman’s career as a leading actress and independent producer, screenwriter, editor, and co-director. Like many of Shipman’s films, this reverent and earnest story (the third in her Little Dramas of the Big Places series) is set in the great outdoors; here, Shipman’s character, Dreena, surrounds herself with animals and wildlife and proselytises on the wonders and holiness of the natural world. When two orphaned brothers show up at a nearby logging camp, Dreena comes to their rescue, later literally saving the weak younger boy – with an assist from her dog (and, eventually, the cowardly older brother) – from the churning rapids that give the film its title. By 1925, Shipman’s company was bankrupt and she was living in New York (her animals were at the San Diego Zoo), making White Water one of her final cinematic odes to the beauties and dangers of “God’s Country”.

Kate Saccone

As a bonus to this year’s screening of The Boatswain’s Mate, festival attendees can also enjoy “Vitagraph Girl” Florence Turner in this short comedy produced in 1911, when Turner was at the height of her fame that, as Jennifer Bean puts it, “mocks cultural anxieties associated with hypnosis, with the idea that one person can control the will, spirit or behaviour of another”.

Oliver Hanley

This charming adaptation of a story by British humourist W.W. Jacobs, stars the irrepressible Florence Turner, the former “Vitagraph Girl”, who had been one of the most popular American movie stars in the 1900s and early 1910s, and Victor McLaglen, before he went off to make westerns with John Ford. The story tells of an ex-boatswain (a sailor) who is eager to win the hand of the landlady at the local pub. He bribes an ex-soldier to stage a house-breaking, so that he can win her in a heroic last-minute rescue. The plan begins to unravel when the faux-burglar (McLaglen) and his victim, the landlady (Turner) are instantly smitten. It’s the feisty shotgun-wielding landlady who puts the boatswain in his place. At only 30 minutes long, this delicious little featurette has very funny stick-figure, illustrated intertitles and the sight of Turner’s “little woman” (as the Boatswain describes her), sitting up at midnight reading Dracula and munching biscuits is a rare joy. The skill is in the adaptation to film by Britain’s best screenwriter of the 1920s, Lydia Hayward.

Bryony Dixon