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A FORGOTTEN short film featuring footage of comic legend Charlie Chaplin is expected to fetch more than BD60,000 when it goes under the hammer next month, auctioneers Bonhams believe.
Charlie Chaplin in Zepped, believed to be a propaganda film made in Britain during The First World War, was discovered inside a battered old film reel tin which collector Morace Park bought for a couple of dinars on the online auction site eBay.
According to the auctioneer, the seven-minute film which shows Chaplin taking on a German Zeppelin aircraft, features some of the earliest animation in cinema history.
Chaplin probably never knew of the movie’s existence, said film critic and Chaplin biographer David Robinson. He said the anonymous maker had put it together using out-takes from three earlier Chaplin pictures - His New Profession (1914), A Jitney Elopement (1915) and The Tramp (1915) - and included sequences of stop-motion animation and other effects.
Bonhams said it was the earliest film known to combine real action sequences with animation, and it is expected to fetch a ‘significant sum’ at a memorabilia auction.
