Film / News
Date set for the Slapstick Gala 2027
The Slapstick Festival of silent film and visual comedy returns to Bristol for its 23rd annual outburst of mirth from Wednesday 10 – Sunday 14 February 2027. The organisers are still working on the programme, but it’s just been announced that the centrepiece of the flagship Slapstick Gala at the Bristol Beacon on Friday 12 February will be a 100th anniversary screening of the Buster Keaton classic The General.
Keaton’s undisputed masterpiece is a Civil War adventure-comedy packed with great sight gags, which stands as one of the all-time great comedies – silent or otherwise. Buster plays Confederate railroad engineer Johnny Gray – a man with only two loves: his locomotive and the sweet Annabelle Lee (Marion Mack).
It’s screened with live musical accompaniment from the acclaimed European Silent Screen Virtuosi, led by internationally renowned silent-film musicians Günter A. Buchwald and Frank Bockius.
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As usual, the evening will also feature two classic comedy shorts. Charlie Chaplin’s fast-paced tale of mistaken identity The Adventurer (1917) is the last of the films the great comedian made for the Mutual Film Company. It’s a highly inventive comedy in which the Little Tramp is cast as an escaped convict who saves a lovely girl (Chaplin regular Edna Purviance) from drowning and then joins her upper class social whirl.
The early Laurel & Hardy short With Love and Hisses cast Stan as an incompetent soldier who continually exasperates his superior (Ollie, obviously).
Guests and the host are yet to be revealed, but tickets are on sale now here.
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