STREAMING DECEMBER 4 - JANUARY 4

In this film from 1926, Buster Keaton plays the southern railroad engineer of a locomotive called “The General.” Based on a true incident, this is the story told many years later in “The Great Locomotive Chase.” The train is stolen by Union soldiers, and in this version, Keaton single-handedly rescues both the train and his girlfriend who had been mistakenly kidnapped. It is a perfect comedy, in which Keaton uses both the northern and southern army as straight men for his many amazing gags.

About the Musical Accompaniment:

Pianist Hank Troy began playing for silent movies in 1971 at the Denver (Colorado) Folklore Center. Since then he has accompanied over 1000 films. For four years in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Hank was the resident accompanist at the Denver Center Cinema. In 1985, he became pianist for the Silent Film Series at the Colorado Chautauqua in Boulder, CO. The series continues as a summer-long event, drawing nightly audiences of 300-500 people of all ages. Hank has performed for festivals in Denver, Breckenridge, Santa Fe, Telluride and Aspen. Other regional venues include the Rialto Theater in Loveland, The Kress Theater in Greeley, The Denver Art Museum and the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center. Since 2011, he has performed for the annual Denver Silent Film Festival. He was pianist for two seasons of “Golden Silents”, a film-to-video project produced by KBDI Channel 12 and distributed to PBS stations nationally. His accompaniments have also been used in several television commercials. Hank plays an improvisational style, drawing on the 19th century Romantic tradition of classical music and from popular American tunes from the early 20th Century. Audiences enjoy a unique concert performance when they view a film accompanied by Hank Troy.