Buster Keaton The General
CINEMA

Silent Film with live music by Haiku Salut.

Regarded by many as Buster Keaton’s greatest achievement, and reportedly his own personal favourite, The General is equal parts comedy and action-adventure.

Buster Keaton stars as Johnnie Gray, a locomotive driver in the American South during the civil war. When his favourite engine, ‘The General’, is stolen by Yankee spies with his on-again-off-again girlfriend Annabelle aboard, Keaton gives chase in another engine, ‘The Texas’.

Shot using real engines on real locations, the choreography – of the chase scenes especially – is nothing less than jaw-dropping. The slapstick too, is some of the best of Keaton’s career, and the pacing as breathless as that of today’s thrillers. 

Watch it here with an experimental, but melodic, electronic score composed and performed by Haiku Salut.

US 1926 Dir Buster Keaton, Clyde Bruckman 75 min Silent Digital presentation

Presented in partnership with MimeLondon

About Haiku Salut

Multi-instrumentalists Gemma Barkerwood, Sophie Barkerwood, and Louise Croft describe themselves as “instrumental dream-pop-post-folk-neo-everything”. Influenced by the evocative film soundtracks of Yann Tiersen and Benoît Charest, the genre-melting electronica of early Múm, and the impressionistic writing of Haruki Murakami, their music blends folk traditions, with otherworldly found sounds and future-forward “loopery and laptopery”.

Haiku Salut have released five critically-acclaimed albums; their score to The General was released as a double LP in 2019.

Having recently signed to label Lo Recordings (Aphex Twin/Grimes) their forthcoming album The Lost Score forays into the realms of classical jazz, a record six years in the making in collaboration with Melbourne-born London-based pianist Meg Morley.

http://haikusalut.com/about