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Bristol’s silent comedy festival returns for its seventh edition, bringing hilarity to Bristol in the first few weeks of the New Year. Arnolfini in partnership with Slapstick festival present three major events with live musical accompaniment and special guest hosts. www.slapstick.org.uk

Fri 28 Jan 2pm
Clara Bow in Mantrap (U)
£7.00/£5.50 Concs & Bristol Silents Members
Introduced by Oscar© winning documentary filmmaker and film historian Kevin Brownlow.
Clara Bow wasn’t just the ‘IT’ girl of a generation, she was also a fine actress and comedienne. Staring in one of her funniest films, Bow plays a sexy young manicurist living with her older backwoodsman
husband in a small Canadian town who finds herself attracted to a young, rich and famous divorce lawyer who comes to town on vacation.
Dir: Victor Fleming, USA, 1926, 1h 26m

Sat 29 Jan 2pm
The Circus (U)
£7.00/£5.50 Concs and Bristol Silents Members
Too often overshadowed by his more legendary comedies, The Circus boasts Chaplin’s most brilliant gags – playing a side-show dummy, a frantic chase in a hall of mirrors, a hair-raising scene in a lion’s cage, the spectacular climax on the high-wire, assaulted and de-trousered by a pack of vicious monkeys. Comedy never came better than this.
Dir. Charlie Chaplin, USA, 1928, 1h 9m
Plus Circus Drawings (2010, 9m), triple Oscar© winning Richard Williams’ short film in which drawings of a small Spanish circus in the 1950s spring into animated life.

Sun 30 Jan 2pm
Slapstick & The City: Silent Comedy and The Metropolitan Playground
£8.00/£6.00 Concs & Bristol Silents Members
An illustrated lecture plus a classic Harold Lloyd comedy set in the big apple! Some of the most vivid sequences in silent comedy involve an extravagant use of city architecture. This illustrated presentation by Dr Alex Clayton, Lecturer in Screen Studies at the University of Bristol, explores and celebrates the consequences.
Plus Harold Lloyd’s classic feature For Heaven’s Sake (U) (1926, 58m), with live musical accompaniment from The Slapstick Boys.

www.slapstick.org.uk