Programmed February 2025

Directed by Buster Keaton

Featuring The Great Buster: A Celebration, a documentary by Peter Bogdanovich Arguably the greatest comic genius of the silent era, Buster Keaton turned the adage “less is more” into slapstick gold, using his perpetually passive, poker-faced visage to wring laughs from the most absurd situations. A child of vaudeville, he transferred the knockabout style of physical comedy he honed on the stage to the nascent medium of cinema, distinguishing himself both in front of and behind the camera with his audacious, often genuinely dangerous set pieces and innate understanding of the possibilities of filmmaking. With innovative features like Sherlock Jr. , The General , and Steamboat Bill, Jr. , Keaton took silent comedy to new heights of astonishing ambition—all the while remaining, thanks to that immovable countenance, touchingly human.

No longer streaming