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14-18 NOW / Fuel / Sound&Fury: 'Charlie Ward' at The Cinema Museum

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Time 15:00
Date 23/07/14
Price £5

23 Jul - 3 Aug. Sound&Fury's immersive sound installation conjures up the extraordinary experience of being a patient on Charlie Ward: a makeshift hospital, behind the front line.

23 July - 3 August, 3 - 9pm.

When the first trench lines were drawn, soldiers held up cardboard cutouts of Charlie Chaplin’s tramp in the hope that the enemy would die laughing. But as the carnage of war set in, Chaplin’s image was put to a different use…

C Ward. 1914. In a makeshift hospital, behind the front line, the war’s first casualties are treated. To boost morale, medical staff arrange for a Chaplin film to be shown for the bedridden, with the ward’s ceiling serving as the silver screen.

For one soldier, the flickering images, whirring projector and Chaplin’s perfect comic timing trigger complex emotions and memories. Cast from the trenches to childhood, from trauma to dreams, the hospital film show sets him on a journey into a personal no man’s land.

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