It’s been a beef of mine for a while that sometimes Birmingham misses out on getting good indie or foreign films into its cinemas until well after they’ve been released across the UK. Whatever the reasons it was clear that it was going to happen again when the award-winning documentary ‘We Live in Public‘, about the internet entrepreneur Josh Harris, was released in the UK in November. In fact the schedule of upcoming screenings didn’t include Birmingham at all, whilst Northampton and Norwich, amongst others, were all lined up to get a viewing.

As part of the MA Media suite (PDF link) of courses that the MA Social Media forms a part of, the students have the chance to organise some activities under the banner of ‘Personal Development Planning’. In fact there’s even a bit of cash to spend on the activities. So in mentioning to my students that an exciting, important film about the late 90s dotcom boom was bypassing the city, quick as a flash they reacted. As I went off grumbling about the situation Paul Hadley quietly got on with the job of organising a one-off, special screening of the film. Within 24 hours the cinema was booked and the film hired from the distributor.

The eventbrite page went up and on December 9th a cinema full of people took their seats to learn how downright weird things were the last time we all got excited about the potential of the internet. The film focused more on the personal life of Harris which was inevitable since he put his personal life on display when he and his partner chose to wire up their house to the internet.

The film told an intriguing story although I could have done without knowing how Harris enjoyed dressing as a clown and probably a bit less of the ‘it’s all his Mom’s fault’ rhetoric. I haven’t seen ‘Startup.com‘ for many a year which covers similar ground but with a less frenzied stylistic approach.

Many thanks to the (so wonderful we should list it) Electric Cinema in Birmingham, Dogwoof, the film’s distributor and Paul Hadley for pulling this together and for introducing the film with a glass of Absinthe in his hand.

Christian Payne also attended the screening and recorded an audioboo. He also seemed fond of the Absinthe.