The Boot Cake

Streaming video - 2009

The Charlie Circle of Adipur, a small provincial town in western India, embraces businessmen, shopkeepers, teachers, engineers, students, and a 3-year-old pre-schooler - all engaged in an annual celebration of Chaplin’s birthday by dressing in imitation of his “Tramp” character. Even the local doctor prescribes Chaplin movies for health and well-being. When award-winning Australian film-maker Kathryn Millard stumbled across the beguiling Charlie Circle, she was immediately invited to join their 116th birthday celebrations, which included a parade of Charlie Chaplin look-alikes through the town along with dancing girls, floats, strolling musicians and a camel. Would she do them the honour of bringing the grand centrepiece: the birthday... cake? Preferably it should be one in the shape of a boot, as homage to the famous scene in The Gold Rush, where the starving Tramp boils and eats his own boot. The film captures the spiritual resonance felt by so many people for the battler with his toothbrush moustache and baggy pants, and explores how one community, reeling from the tragedy of the Gujarat earthquake that killed 200,000 people, found hope and inspiration in Chaplin’s “Tramp”. more