The Flatpack festival properly launches this evening (Wednesday) with a Curzonora extravaganza at the Town Hall. I’ll let the programme explain:
“Birmingham, 1901. Electric trams are making their debut on the Bristol Road, councillors are plotting to bring water all the way from Wales, and at the Curzon Hall in Suffolk Street a showman named Waller Jeffs has just begun his first season of animated pictures in the city. Two shows a day, with as many as 3,000 punters per show marvelling at scenes of comedy and romance, the exotic and the mundane, accompanied by live music, sound-effects and performing animals. Within ten years he will be a Birmingham institution, but the audiences who have discovered film at ‘Curzonora’ will desert him as full-time cinemas arrive on the scene.”
