IU Cinema features Slapsticon silent film series

Today’s motion pictures attempt to heighten the senses, using 3-D technology and surround sound.

But even a genre as simple as silent film is still relevant today — a notion supported by a new series coming to IU Cinema.

Slapsticon, a four-day silent comedy film festival, will come June. 27-30 to its new home at the IU Cinema after being based in Washington D.C. since 2003.

Jon Vickers, director of IU Cinema, said while famed names like Charlie Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy will be featured, the festival will make a point to show other artists and titles that are a little more obscure.

“This festival digs much deeper and prides itself with presenting dozens of figures that many people have never heard of,” Vickers said.

Faded from the big screens toward the end of the 1920s, Vickers said silent film still holds relevance that needs to be realized and appreciated.

“Film history provides the base that all other films are built upon,” Vickers said. “Films from this era, whether slapstick or another genre, continue to influence other films and filmmakers.”

The characters and concepts shown at Slapsticon may be decades old, but if you pay attention, you can find the films’ leverage in Hollywood titles today, Vickers said.

“Of course, you still find elements of slapstick in almost any Steve Martin, Jim Carrey or Adam Sandler film,” Vickers said. “There’s even a lot of slapstick used by Johnny Depp in the ‘Pirates’ movies.”

“Slapstick” refers to a type of comedy built around boisterous, clumsy characters, embarrassment and farce.

Under their veil of silliness, slapstick films can present a kind of hidden, meaningful message.

Charlie Chaplin’s “Modern Times,” a silent comedy from 1936, is considered by many film fans one of the most hilarious silent films to date, but is also a famed commentary on American industrialization.

The Library of Congress called it “culturally significant.” Cannes Film Festival has screened it as a film that’s “out of competition.”

Viewers can see how silent films can get people talking.

“It is really a great opportunity for discovery that I am personally looking forward to,” Vickers said.

Registration for the Slapsticon event is available at cinema.indiana.edu.

One-day passes cost $30 and four-day passes are $99.