The 20th Bradford International Film Festival in partnership with Virgin Media takes place over 11 days next year from March 27 to April 6.

Festival co-director Tom Vincent said: “In today’s tough economic climate it’s a huge achievement for any regional film festival to reach such a milestone, and to celebrate this outstanding achievement we are planning a cracking line-up for our 20th event.

“The 2014 Festival will include revisiting some of our greatest past triumphs, inviting some very special guests, as well as looking forward with premieres of stunning new work by the cinematic stars of tomorrow.”

The full festival programme will be announced in February. Features so far confirmed include a special compilation from this year’s Virgin Media Shorts Awards, Britain’s largest short film competition.

UK film director Sally Potter will receive a Festival Fellowship Award on March 30. A retrospective of her films will be shown including Ginger and Rosa (2012), Rage (2009), Yes (2004), The Man Who Cried (2000), The Tango Lesson (1997), Orlando (1992), The Gold Diggers (1983) as well as a selection of her short films.

The Dodge Brothers and Neil Brand are back after the past two years’ sold-out performances to present the premiere of a new score for the little-seen 1916 silent western Hell’s Hinges, starring the original screen cowboy William S Hart as gunslinger Blaze Tracy.

The Dodges feature film critic Mark Kermode.

Fans of movie scores will be familiar with silent-film pianist, composer and writer Neil Brand after the critical success of his three-part BBC4 series, Sound of Cinema: The Music that Made the Movies.

The Dodge Brothers and Neil Brand presenting Hell’s Hinges will premiere on April 3.

Uncharted States celebrates James Benning, an important figure of the American avant garde since the late 1970s. Benning has been consistently championed by festival co-director Neil Young.

Five of his engrossingly enigmatic landscape pieces have been screened in Uncharted States of America since 2007. This tribute will premiere his new feature BNSF, plus a selection of work by Benning’s students at CalArts (California Institute of the Arts) where he has taught for 25 years.

Benning will be present in Bradford to introduce BNSF.

Widescreen Weekend, which runs from April 10-13, will pay homage to the 60th anniversary of the VistaVision process which was created by engineers at Paramount Pictures in 1954.

Rendered commercially obsolete after only seven years, its heritage is still relevant today as it became a creative testing ground for many high resolution cinematographic ideas which evolved into 70mm formats such as Imax which are still in use.

Other highlights include West Side Story (70mm with special sound mix); Big Trouble in Little China (70mm), and premieres for restored versions of the Cinerama classics Seven Wonders of the World and Search for Paradise.

Passes are on sale from January 7 and tickets from February 26. Go to bradfordfilm festival.org.uk.