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Chaplin at Leicester Square, London April 2006


To celebrate the contribution of Charlie Chaplin to cinema and filmmaking, some of his best-known feature length films, plus selected shorts, will be screened in Leicester Square on St George’s Day, Sunday 23 April. This fitting location, the home of British cinema, also has a statue of Chaplin created by sculptor John Doubleday.

Organised by the Mayor of London with assistance from Association Chaplin, MK2 and the British Film Institute, this free event also includes children’s activities and workshops, plus street entertainment, Chaplin style. Everyone is welcome to this unique, free film event.

Born in 1889 in Walworth, South London, Charlie Chaplin left England to tour the US as a clown with Fred Karno’s slapstick company in 1912. He made his first films in 1914 and in the years that followed went on to achieve enormous acclaim and popularity as an actor, director, composer, writer and producer, but most notably with his portrayal of ‘the Tramp’ in films that continue to have universal appeal to this day.

Programme (times are subject to confirmation):

  • 12pm : A Dog’s Life (1918)

  • 12.40pm : “The Kid”:/en/articles/3 (1921)

Charlie Chaplin’s first full-length film. Co-starring five-year-old Jackie Coogan, “The Kid”:/en/articles/3 is the story of a child abandoned in a limousine by his unwed mother. When the Little Tramp finds him, he tries unsuccessfully to find a home for the boy. Obliged to keep him, the Little Tramp teaches the youngster about life on the streets.

  • 2pm : (3 shorts) Kid Auto Races, A Film Johnnie and Mabel at the Wheel (1914)

BFI restored Keystone Film Company shorts with live piano accompaniment

  • 2.50pm : “The Gold Rush”:/en/articles/5 (1925, 1942)

Chaplin’s irrepressible Little Tramp seeks riches in the Yukon in this all time classic. Leave it to the Tramp as he turns hard times into hilarity as he savours a Thanksgiving feast of boiled shoe, slips outside a house teetering on a cliff and faces all manner of perils with pluck and fortitude. The 1942 re-release of the 1925 original with sound track and narration by Chaplin will be screened.

  • 4.30pm “Modern Times”:/en/articles/6 (1936)

One of the happiest and most light hearted of the Chaplin pictures. Man v Machine! Chaplin’s Little Tramp plays an assembly line worker fighting back against the mind numbing monotony and time clock rigidity of industrialism.

(Film notes from “The Chaplin Collection”)

CHAPLIN AT LEICESTER SQUARE
Leicester Square, London WC2
Sunday 23 April 2006, 12pm - 6.00pm
St George’s day 2006

Please see: “BFI”:www.bfi.org.uk