I suspect the one-page programme for The Ballerina Ballroom Cinema of Dreams was artfully designed to look like it's been thrown together, rather than actually being just thrown together. (The fact there's a John Byrne poster on the back cover might be a bit of a giveaway.) But this mini film festival, which begins tomorrow in Nairn, is a true labour of love. "We hope our festival acts as an indispensable reminder that cinema exists outside of the multiplex and is not always accompanied by half a stone of popcorn," write curators Tilda Swinton (John Byrne's partner, which helps explain that back cover) and Mark Cousins, "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."

The riches on display in a reconditioned ballroom include the familiar (All About Eve, Singin' in the Rain and Michael Powell's gorgeous hymn to the Scottish landscape, I Know Where I'm Going), high-period European auteurism (Fellini's 8, Rainer Werner Fassbinder's The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant and the world premiere of Matt Hulse's 8mm short God Gives Nuts, But He Does Not Crack Them), and truffles from cinema's far-flung spaces. How often do you get the chance to see a movie by Senegal's Djibril Diop Mambety (Hyenas) or Ukraine's Sergei Paradjanov (Shadows of our Forgotten Ancestors)?

Of course you could argue with the choices. If I'm watching Fassbinder I'd rather see Veronika Voss, and The Fearless Vampire Killers may be my least favourite Roman Polanski movie (I'd go for The Tenant). But then it's Tilda and Mark's game and they get to pick the players.

The best thing about it is that it exists at all. There is a terrible tendency in the media to talk about the movies only in terms of money. What did The Dark Knight take in its opening weekend? But, really, those are not conversations about movies. They're about marketing.

What we should be talking about, arguing over, getting all hot and bothered about is how well or ill directors, actors, cinematographers, animal wranglers and everyone else involved turn, as director John Boorman (Charley's dad) once put it, money into light.

And you could argue that for those of us who want something more than the monoglot multiplex film culture that this is the best of times. Film4 - which previously considered a season of Carry On films cutting edge - has just screened an Ingrid Bergman season and a round-up of the latest American indie scene mumblecore.

In Edinburgh at the moment comedian Paul Merton is giving us the chance to see the silent screen comedy of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd on the big screen at the Filmhouse. And DVDs and internet downloads mean that more and more of the treasures of world cinema past and present are at our fingertips. According to this month's Sight & Sound there are new editions of the films of Wim Wenders, Satyajit Ray and Terence Davies all on DVD, as well as such less heralded pleasures as a Fukasaku Kinji collection (no, me neither).

If you can't make it up to Nairn you can organise your own film festival in your living room. Me, I'm planning a revival of my favourite university film-club double bill: The Bride of Frankenstein and the original Cat People. "She knew strange, fierce pleasures that no other woman could ever feel!" was the tagline of the latter. My, they knew how to sell movies in 1942.

The Ballerina Ballroom Cinema of Dreams runs until August 23.