Beth Webb - Events EditorWhen the Christmas stretch has finally ended and the broke, despairing cinema-goer is faced with a bleak array of big buck offerings until the summer blockbusters, there’s not much to look forward to in life.
Now that the Christmas stretch has finally ended and the broke, despairing cinema-goer is faced with a bleak array of big buck offerings until the summer blockbusters, there’s not much to look forward to in life. Enter the London Comedy Film Festival, a week long celebration of all things funny to blast away the holiday blues and make the people laugh.
Held across one of the most depressing weeks of the year (26-29 January) LoCo is making its debut with an enviable programme guaranteed to get the holiday weight rolls jiggling at the BFI Southbank. Not only a means of relief for the masses, LoCo is also a celebration of comedy, praising an unsung genre and some of the best actors and actresses in the industry. “Only four comedy films have ever been in the category of best film at the Oscars” explains festival founder Denise Hicks at the programme launch.
The line up will include a variety of giggly offerings, making a song and dance on its opening night with a sneaky screening The Muppets, due for release in this country in early Febuary. As well as classics from Buster Keaton’s Sherlock Jnr to Chaplin’s Champion, Loco will also include slapstic school, workshops and a live performance straight from the once lost script of Tony Hancock’s The Day Off.
As well as boasting American chuckle maker David Zucker as festival patron, the event will also have a “Loco hero” involved as an annual feature, and who better to employ the services of than hairy British director and writer Edgar Wright. Bringing a double bill of his own Shaun of the Dead and Mike Leigh’s Life Is Sweet, the gent will also be holding a party on the closing night of the festival.
LoCo’s programme was announced in mid November, and if the comedy pub quiz, movie musical statues and glasses of gin that outsized most aquariums that accompanied that is anything to go by, January is going to be a lot more exciting, a lot more glamorous and essentially, a lot more comical than we could have hoped for.
For full details of the festival and programme, go to Loco’s website.
