Following last year’s triumphant screening of Buster Keaton’s Sherlock Jr with live score, we asked the BBC’s Stephen McCauley to pick another silent movie gem and curate the live soundtrack – and he went with one of the all-time classics.
In Charlie Chaplin’s first feature-length feature film, Chaplin’s Little Tramp rescues an orphan from the streets and raises him as his own. Charlie and Jackie Coogan make a miraculous pair in this clever and innovative marriage of sentiment and slapstick, a story of pancakes, fistfights, and dodging social services and policemen – as the opening title card says, “a picture with a smile – and perhaps a tear.”
An instant success in 1921, The Kid remains a true masterwork of cinema. For this very special screening, the film will feature live musical accompaniment from Gemma Doherty, one half of acclaimed folk duo Saint Sister, who will be performing a specially created new soundtrack She has composed and arranged works that have been performed by Crash Ensemble, Zoe Conway, Lisa Hannigan, Kirkos Ensemble and Utopia Quartet. Gemma studied composition at Trinity College Dublin under Donnacha Dennehy and Evangelia Rigaki. (1921, subtitled)
This event was curated by Stephen McCauley (BBC)