Hypnotising the Hypnotist

As a bonus to this year’s screening of The Boatswain’s Mate, festival attendees can also enjoy “Vitagraph Girl” Florence Turner in this short comedy produced in 1911, when Turner was at the height of her fame that, as Jennifer Bean puts it, “mocks cultural anxieties associated with hypnosis, with the idea that one person can control the will, spirit or behaviour of another”.