How is that for an alliterative headline?

I was just finishing my last post (on Bait – go see it), when this very exciting news came in. The 2019 London Film Festival Archive Special Presentation will be the lost Betty Balfour film that was discovered in the Netherlands a few years ago: Love, Life and Laughter (George Pearson, 1923).

I wrote about this movie when it was rediscovered, and I have been looking forward to the restoration premiere ever since. If you like British silent cinema at all, the chances are that a) you love Betty Balfour and b) you are frustrated by how few of her silent films have survived and are available to watch. So this is good news for my British silent film chums. That’s all of us right?

Even more good news: the fantastically talented Meg Morley will accompany the film live at the Archive Special Presentation (what happened to the word gala?) in NFT1 on 3 October 2019. A perfect warmup for Pordenone!

• Read more about the LFF Archive Special Presentation here on the BFI site
• Two years, ago the British Silent Film Festival showed three Betty Balfour movies in one weekend. Happy times. Read more about “Britain’s Queen of Happiness” here.
• My report on the rediscovery of Love, Life and Laughter
• Silent London will always be free to all readers. If you enjoy checking in with the site, including reports from silent film festivals, features and reviews, please consider shouting me a coffee on my Ko-Fi page