20th International Festival of Silent Film and Live Music

The Vagabond and the Child

Director: Charlie Chaplin, USA 1921, 53 minutes

Musical accompaniment: Kamran Bustan Santur

Charlie, a vagabond, finds a newborn baby right next to garbage cans and trash in a back alley. At first he tries to get rid of the baby, but then he takes heart and lovingly cares for the little one. He gives the boy the name John and raises him. Together they become an unbeatable team.

In the end, they are happily reunited with their mother, a story that director and leading man Charlie Chaplin, who spent his childhood in the poorhouses of London, also longed for so much in his own life.

Graceful and engaging, Chaplin combines tragedy and social criticism with great emotion and poetry.

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Easy Street

Director: Charlie Chaplin, USA 1917, 19 minutes, short film
Musical accompaniment: Kamran Bustan Santur

On Easy Street, in the middle of a run-down working-class neighborhood, violence reigns. Savage brawls are the order of the day, the police have lost control. And the hulking hooligan Eric terrorizes the street.

In this gloom, a missionary gives homeless Charlie’s life a new direction. He takes a job as a policeman, is sent to Easy Street and finally confronts Eric.