Help us celebrate 100 years of the silent mvoie maetros, Charlie Chaplin.
The Silent Film Festival and the Newcastle Museum are proud to present a tribute to Charlie on Saturday 13 September at 2pm with digital restorations of 4 of Charlie’s classic silent short comedies. The first two on the program are the very first two films released to the public in 1914.

• Making a Living (1914) Kid Auto Races (1914)
• The Champion (1915) The Vagabond (1916)

Charlie’s genius captivated and enchanted audiences around the world within a very short period of time. That relationship has never ended. The whole world claims Charlie as its own: the qualities in his roles as director, actor and composer are timeless and universal.

When: 2pm, Saturday 13 September
Where: Theatrette

Making a Living (1914) 13 minutes

Charlie’s first film at Keystone and the first released to the world presents him as a poor and disreputable dandy who takes on the world, a girl’s affections and a chase for a scoop. All with mixed results. His dress is of high fashion gone to seed, not yet the garb of our beloved Tramp. This first film is more in the music hall tradition with Charlie not yet settled on his Tramp persona.

Moving Picture World wrote: The clever player who takes the role of the nervy and very nifty sharper in this picture is a comedian of the first water, who acts like one of Nature’s own naturals. It is so full of action that it is indescribable, but so much of it is fresh and unexpected fun that a laugh will bee going all the time almost. It is foolish-funny stuff that will make even the sober-minded laugh, but people out for an evening’s good time will howl.

Kid Auto Races (1914) 6 minutes

Charlie here teases and interferes with a cameraman trying to film a race with children in billy carts. It is this second film in which Charlie appears dressed in his familiar garb: pants too big and baggy, the coat too tight, the hat too small, and the boots too small. This first outing for the Tramp to the public is described in Charlie’s autobiography: “….I had no idea of the character. But the moment I was dressed, the clothes and the make-up made me feel the person he was. I began to know him, and by the time I walked on to the stage he was fully born.

 The Cinema wrote: Kid Auto Races struck us as about the funniest film we have ever seen. When we subsequently saw Chaplin in more ambitious efforts our opinion that the Keystone Company had made the capture of their career was strengthened. Chaplin is a born screen comedian; he does things we have never seen done on the screen before

Bookings

Tickets $20/$15 concession purchase via festival website www.ozsilentfilmfestival.com.au or via 0419 267 318. Cash sales only at the door (or festival pass to both sessions $30/$20)

PLUS All Quiet on the Western Front

Sunday 14 September

All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) is the first major anti-war film of the sound era, faithfully based upon the timeless, best-selling 1929 novel by Erich Maria Remarque.

When: 2pm, Sunday 14 September
Where: Theatrette

Bookings

Tickets $15/$10 concession purchase via festival website www.ozsilentfilmfestival.com.au or via 0419 267 318. Cash sales only at the door (or festival pass to both sessions $30/$20)