Saturday 21 April 2012

100th Birthday of Clevedon Curzon

Treat of the day, we just visited Clevedon Curzon cinema, our local cinema which is celebrating its 100th anniversary with an open weekend. It is magnificent.



Unbeknownst to us until now it has a museum of cinema arefacts containing dozens of movie projectors of all shapes and sizes, and has an exhibition on the history of the cinema and of film itself housed in the former balcony. On today's open day we were able to visit the current projection booth, which runs a state of the art digital projector alongside the 35mm projector that still shows 20% of their output, plus we able to see the old projection booth which used to run up until 1973 and which has immortalised on its wall the chalkboard bearing details of the final film projected from there - Cabaret, ending with a showing of God Save The Queen which was still the tradition.



If you can get to Clevedon at one of the weekends when it's open, please please do, it is worth it. It is probably the best cinema museum housed in an actual working cinema in a small British seaside town anywhere in the world. The first films it showed, this week in 1912, included a newsreel of the sinking of the Titanic and raised money for the memorial fund. And I go past it every day! I cannot praise Clevedon Curzon enough.

Clevedon Curzon wikipedia page
Curzon websiteCurzon iPhone App




Nailsea people article on the death of the Clevedon Mercury with contact details
Bristol's Venue magazine saved from closure
Captain Clevedon radio promo & press cutting

2 comments:

Mark Farbrother said...

Ah Clevedon,I've not been to Clevedon for about 20 years, lovely place.
What happened to BS1? I remember you plugging BS1, at a small local comic mart I used to do in Brislington, in Bristol in the early 90's. I believe you were guest of honour that day in the Scouts hut that served as our venue.

Helen Rogerson said...

I love the Curzon; we have just got back from there this evening. We watched "a night to remember" and listened to the organ play as they showed a newsreel about the Titanic. A magical place.

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