The echo of silent movies

Meets in what was workhouse Charlie Chaplin slaved in asa child.

The black-and-white silent movie flickered into life as the pianist started up with a dramatic flourish. Cue the latest exploits of daring master criminal "Three-Fingered Kate".

The head of a gang behind a string of audacious robberies, Kate - who is missing the last two digits of her right hand - always manages to outwit her rival, Sheerluck Finch, aka fictional detective Sherlock Holmes.

Nearly a century after the first "talkies" displaced silent movies for good, a society of London cinephiles still gather regularly to celebrate these largely forgotten works from the dawn of cinema.

The Kennington Bioscope searches out rare films from the era - many not seen for many decades - and screens them with live improvised accompaniment on the piano, just as they would have been a century ago.

In a curious twist, the cavernous venue where the Bioscope meets - now home to London's Cinema Museum - was formerly the chapel of the 19th-century south London workhouse to which a young Charlie Chaplin was sent.

"It's an amazing synchronicity," silent film devotee Alex Kirstukas, 32, said.