THE EXTRAORDINARY WORLD OF CHARLEY BOWERS NOW STREAMING AS PART OF FILM FORUM'S VIRTUAL CINEMA: REPERTORY PROGRAM

“Bowers is a cross between Buster Keaton and Rube Goldberg… one need only watch a single Bowers short from the 1920s to become a follower, if not a proselytizer.”

– Leonard Maltin

A delightful introduction and surprise for most audiences, this collection, distributed on Blu-ray to the educational market by GME. features newly-restored short comedies by Iowa-born Charley Bowers (1889-1946), a wildly inventive director, comedian, cartoonist, and animator... some might even call him an American surrealist. Mixing live-action with animated puppets and objects, Bowers helmed a score of little-known mini-masterpieces, many starring himself.

This exhaustive introduction to Bowers’s oeuvre, over 2 hours of material, includes the shorts EGGED ON (1926), HE DONE HIS BEST (1926), FATAL FOOTSTEPS (1926), NOW YOU TELL ONE (1926), MANY A SLIP (1927), THERE IT IS (1928), and IT'S A BIRD (1930). With an introduction by filmmaker, distributor and archivist Serge Bromberg, founder and chairman of Lobster Films. Approx. 151 min.

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