SILENCE is golden, as the French silent film, The Artist proved by sweeping the board this year at all the awards ceremonies. But there was a time in cinema when the only sounds to be heard were from the piano accompanist and the audience.

Now there is a chance to experience and enjoy a film from the silent heyday of cinema when the Best of Bristol’s Slapstick festival present Buster Keaton’s masterpiece, The General (U) (1926), together with a silent Laurel & Hardy short.

The film is at the Regent, Christchurch on Friday, March 24 at 7.30pm. There will also be an accompanist on keyboard, accordion and flute. The General is a full length feature film, set in the American Civil War, Buster Keaton plays Jonnie Gray, who is unable to enlist in the Confederate army because he is needed as a railway engineer. However, his sweetheart thinks he is a coward and won’t talk to him until he is in uniform.

The General is the massive railway engine that Buster Keaton has to drive through the Civil War battlefields, which will prove to his sweetheart that he is amongst the bravest of them all.