My first instinct when going to Nuit Blanche is not to go to the movies. (Which is weird, because it’s more or less my first instinct for everything else.) But should you find yourself in the vicinity of the AGO over the course of the night, check out The Art Of Silent Comedy at Jackman Hall.
Cinematheque Ontario has prepared two programs of comedies from the early 1920s – most of which, I’d wager, you’ve never had the opportunity to see with a crowd. The first starts at 7 pm the second follows at around 8:45 pm. The two repeat consecutively until sunrise.
Program One pairs the Harold Lloyd farces Never Weaken (about a suicidal young swain) and Get Out And Get Under (automotive errata) with the more measured Buster Keaton efforts Neighbors (star-crossed lovers) and The Goat (mistaken identity).
Program Two presents Keaton’s inventive home-construction comedy One Week and René Clair’s frantic chase Entr’acte with the rarely seen (and entirely new to me) short feature Seven Years Bad Luck, starring and directed by the French comic Max Linder.
Live musical accompaniment is provided throughout by rotating pianists William O’Meara, Robert Hal and Andrei Streliaev.
If you’re closer to Queen than Dundas, the National Film Board’s Mediatheque offers its own film-based event. Make A Scene gives visitors the chance to be green-screened into random animated and/or live-action footage, while VJ Theo Buchinskas tries to makes sense of it all.
It should get really interesting around 3 am, when the club kids start spilling in.
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