Silent Londoners are an erudite group, and no doubt we’re all regularly found in halls of academe, talking loftily of theories and histories, of books and poems and one-reel Snub Pollard movies. But even though we’re such scholars, we could all do with a trip to Cambridge this month to complete our silent film education.

The Cambridge Film Festival is one of the best regular film festivals in the country for silents, and this year, the programme of early film is full of surprises, and wonderful music. Here’s what you should be looking out for.

• A programme of shorts featuring that early technical marvel, Kinemacolor, accompanied by Stephen Horne.
• Shiraz: a Romance of India (this year’s LFF Archive Gala, and more on that very soon), accompanied by John Sweeney.
• Silent comedy for kids and adults, with Neil Brand, featuring “the great Charley Chase, the even greater Laurel and Hardy, plus two very funny women: Anita Garvin and Marion Byron”.
• Casanova: Prince of Adventurers, the side-splitting comedy biopic starring Ivan Mosjoukine, accompanied by Stephen Horne.
• The Woman Men Yearn For, starring a young Marlene Dietrich, accompanied by Neil Brand.
• And … just for luck, Bill Morrison’s hypnotic documentary about a hoard of rediscovered silents and the story of how they were trapped under ice in the Yukon … Dawson City: Frozen Time.

The Cambridge Film Festival runs from 19-26 October 2017. Read more here.