Trailer - Gypsy Boy

Music by Louise Kilbride

About the Director…

Filmmaker Surjit Simplay has been a Charlie Chaplin fan since she was a kid, and when evidence emerged that Chaplin was born not in the East End but in a caravan in Handsworth's Black Patch Park, cogs began to turn.

The result was Gypsy Boy, a short film she made in 2017 on Black Patch Park itself with Chaplin's son Michael in the lead role. As well as sharing her film at The Flat Pack Festival (2019), Surjit explored the historic importance of Black Patch Park for the traveller community with their special guests Ron Collins (chair, Friends of Black Patch Park) and John Loveridge, a descendant of Queen Henty who owned the caravan in question. 

The Flat Pack event closed with a screening of Chaplin's 1921 breakthrough classic The Kid, his first full-length film as a director which co-stared Jackie Coogan as the eponymous scallywag. - THE FLAT PACK FESTIVAL