Breakfast with Bristol24/7 – Chris Daniels

Chris Daniels is the director of Slapstick Festival, Bristol’s annual festival celebrating silent, visual and classic on screen comedy. Cat Marshall meets him for breakfast prior to the festival which returns for its 13th annual outing this month from January 18-22. 

Illustration by Anna Higgie

Coming in from the rain with a scarf wrapped tightly around his neck, Chris Daniels apologises for being a few minutes late to our breakfast in the Spike Island Cafe. 

As he takes a seat, he blames his lateness on the school run before breaking into a smile and admitting that he’s suffering the effects of a work Christmas party last night. 

Ordering a cappuccino and a cinnamon bun, he begins to tell me about his history with silent film. He is so passionate about the subject that he holds his coffee in mid-air, having not found an opportunity for it to reach his lips during the start of an animated conversation. 

Discovering his love for silent film in the late 90s after watching The Iron Mask was almost a religious experience, he tells me. “It was a bit of a paradigm shift. It’s a bit evangelical in the way that some people of faith might say that they’re passionate about their religion and they want everyone else to know about it. 

“With silent film, I’d subliminally picked up the idea that it was really rubbish, antiquated, scratchy old stuff. But when I did film studies, I discovered some of the best films in the world are silent. I felt the injustice of it, that these films should be better placed in the canon and that people should have access to them.”

After spending most of his youth in Buckinghamshire, it was on a lovely autumn day in Bristol, picking up pine cones next to the suspension bridge, that he decided to move here. 

“I’d had chronic fatigue syndrome and I was coming out of a chronic illness. I wasn’t sure what to do to come out through that or what my work was going to look like” he explains.

“I’d trained as a reflexologist and with social services, but I was completely starting fresh. So I moved to Bristol, got a flat on Upper Maudlin Street and immersed myself in the Bristol culture: the Watershed, seeing loads of arthouse movies, discovering European film, doing an A-level in film studies and a film course at City of Bristol made me fall in love with silent film.”

Although his career path led him to work as a counsellor, Chris still pursued his passion for film and in 2000 he founded the Bristol Silents group with his friend Norman Taylor to promote silent film in the city.

They began by putting on small screenings at the Watershed, which have now turned into big events with well-known guests. Along the way, they have met film icons such as Richard Attenborough, Kenneth Branagh, Eric Sykes and cinematographer Jack Cardiff who worked as a hand cranking boy on silent films.

Chris smiles fondly at the memories: “We had a great adventure with wonderful people. Sadly a lot of them will have now passed on because Jack must have been 90 when he came to us.”

Determined to keep silent film alive, he gave up counselling last year and now solely works on the Slapstick Festival. 

He currently works alongside patrons and sponsors of the festival Aardman Animations, so his office in their Gas Ferry Road headquarters is only a few hundred yards from our breakfast destination. 

“It’s awesome to be working at Aardman. To be part of the greatest business in the South West feels like a real privilege. But people wonder what I do for the rest of the year” he jokes. 

“The answer is it takes a whole year to plan the festival. My son was born 11 years ago and my daughter was born just two years ago, so with managing awesome kids and running a festival there’s no space for anything else.”

Even his children have adopted his passion. His son Josh picks the kids films for the festival, and he tells me that little Una asked her mum if she could watch Charlie Chaplin the other day.

But as well as being passionate about film, Chris cares about the political message that goes with it. This year, he has made sure that there is a strong female presence, as well as a European strand in the festival.

“Announcing this post-Brexit is our way of showing support for our European partners. We need some comedy after everything that’s happened this year.”

Deciding that this is a subject too heavy for the breakfast table, we sip the remains of our coffee and say our goodbyes, Chris walking the short distance to his office in Aardman to keep the silent dream alive. 

Chris and Cat had breakfast at Spike Island Cafe, 133 Cumberland Road, BS1 6UX 

Read more: Slapstick Festival 2017 programme unveiled