About the Logo Page 2 of 2 (back)
The other reference that Richard Childs drew on in creating our logo image was the 1926 Buster Keaton classic, "The General". Keaton's brand of silent comedy has been written about at length and there are many web sites devoted to celebrating his talents. It has been claimed, for instance, that his humour arises from a Modernist sensibility, because of his fascination with machinery. "The General" is a feature film built around sight gags with a train. You can view the original image and find out more about the film by visiting the Classic Films website. And in "Sherlock Jnr" (1924) Keaton plays a cinema projectionist who enters the screen in a dream - though his body falls between the 'cracks' of the edit points - a figure caught in the aparatus of the cinematic machine.
For our purposes though we should note that this publicity image from Keaton's 'official' masterpiece epitomises his comic persona - a Great Stone Face grappling with the mechanisms of the world, be they physical or social. While he often overcame them , his expression of bewilderment is a perfect substitute for the more sentimental innocence of Chaplin, his great rival in the 1920's.
In our logo, then, we have a symbol of an unmercenary, disinterested medium bursting through, with unpremeditated, organic exuberance, into a staid and controlled symbol of sterile impersonality: film invading Art.