Birmingham is the home of the UK’s oldest existing cinema, The Electric Cinema dating from 1909
Birmingham was almost single-handedly responsible for the world-wide film industry as we know it.
After all Hollywood IS in Birmingham!
The first plastic was invented in Birmingham in 1859 by Alexander Parkes who then went on to develop celluloid film which was then used to record moving pictures or movies.
This led directly to movie making by people like the Lumiere brothers and the development of the film and cinema industry, none of which would have happened without Alexander Parkes’ pioneering work on celluloid in Birmingham in the 1860’s.
Birmingham’s own ‘Film Triumvirate’ is made up of Sir Michael Balcon, Brummie Grammar Schoolboy and Britain’s first ‘Film Mogul’ who at one point worked for Louis B. Mayer at MGM, Victor Savile, who bankrolled Balcon and Oscar Deutsche who founded the ODEON Cinema Chain in Birmingham in the 1930’s were Brum’s three film ‘movers and shakers’ All three could at one…
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