Noah Teichner charts an unlikely shared history between early cinema and political persecution in the US through the steely figure of The Buford, a large ship used both as a shooting set for Buster Keaton’s 1924 film The Navigator, and as a vessel employed some years earlier to banish two hundred and forty-nine persons deemed radically agitative by the government for their alleged anarchist allegiances.

Teichner meticulously melds Keaton’s images with the archival traces of ship-logs and militant writings of the passengers, which included Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman in their number, who were exiled at sea with no clear direction other than into their own disappearance. The resulting movement reshores these ideas to the present.


This UK Premiere will be followed by an online Q&A with Noah Teichner, hosted by Elizabeth Dexter.