As Festival Director, one of my greatest joys is discovering how timelessly comedy can speak directly to the anxieties and absurdities of our own age. The films in this strand (For Heaven’s Sake, 1926; The Pilgrim, 1923; The Bank Dick, 1940; But I’m a Cheerleader, 1999; South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, 1999) may span almost a century, yet each uses laughter to challenge moral hypocrisy and the social constraints that shape behaviour. Together, they form a lineage of satire, from silent-era slapstick to animated anarchy, that reminds us that humour is not just entertainment; it is also a form of resistance.
Chaplin, Lloyd and W.C. Fields understood that comedy could smuggle radical ideas past the gatekeepers of decency. In The Pilgrim, Chaplin’s escaped convict masquerades as a minister, performing holy duties, while barely containing comic chaos. His sermon of gestures exposes the gap between piety and compassion. Lloyd’s For Heaven’s Sake turns a millionaire’s accidental fall into charity into a well-natured critique of class and privilege. And The Bank Dick, with Fields at his most subversive and brilliant, dismantles America’s moral pretensions through a character who drinks, lies and still somehow triumphs.
All three films from this period of early cinema find comedy in the tension between appearance and truth. This is a theme that still resonates in a world obsessed with signalling virtue and curating perfection. They remind us that laughter is often the most honest and vicariously cathartic response to hypocrisy.
Half a century later, Jamie Babbit’s But I’m a Cheerleader brought that same irreverent spirit into the culture wars of the late twentieth century. Its candy-coloured world of “conversion therapy” and moral correction may look exaggerated, but the cruelty it mocks remains painfully real. By embracing camp and satire, Babbit reclaims the language of shame and turns it into self-acceptance and joy. It’s a film that makes you laugh even while you wince, proving that humour can relieve and heal as well as provoke.
Then there’s South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, a loud, fearless, gleefully obscene film. Beneath the chaos and profanity lies a sharp critique of censorship, nationalism and moral panic. Its outrage is deliberate: an animated mirror held up to the hypocrisy of a society that claims to protect innocence while suppressing dissent.
In its own way, South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut continues the same argument Chaplin began a century earlier, demonstrating that laughter, when used boldly in art, can be a moral and transgressive act.
In curating this programme, my aim has been to remind us why comedy, and laughter, matter. At a time when public discourse can feel increasingly brittle and polarised, satire allows us to explore difficult questions without retreating into anger or fear. Laughter disarms. It connects us. It opens a space for empathy and self-reflection where accusation and defensiveness might otherwise reign.
These films, old and new, celebrate the “holy fool”, the one who dares to trip over conventional norms and make us see ourselves afresh. In watching them together, we are revisiting the history of comedy while also reclaiming its most radical promise. That laughter, freely shared, can still be one of the most human and humane responses to the increasing absurdities of our times.