Bruce Loeb onPiano Tonight PFA becomes a nickelodeon theatre,presenting the kind of movies that were shown in America's firstpermanent movie houses. Nickelodeons lasted for less than a decade(their heyday extended roughly from 1906 to the First World War). Butmixing short movies with live acts, sing-alongs, and illustratedlectures, they attracted the motion pictures' most durable audience. Forten or fifteen cents (nickelodeons were never a nickel), audiences saw abroad range of one- and two-reel films. American melodramas (like LandBeyond the Sunset) and Italian comedies (like Amor Pedestre) jostledcheek-by-jowl with Bible stories and French trick films. Some of themovies were hand-colored (we get two beautiful examples: Edison's TheGreat Train Robbery and a late Méliès spectacular, LePalais de Mille et Une Nuits). Others were accompanied by livenarration. They range from the demented (The Acrobatic Fly) to theinspired (Lois Weber's Suspense). We're cheating a little by includingthe famous Lumières-they came somewhat before the nickelodeoncraze, exhibited when movies were still attached to vaudeville houses.But travelogs produced by the Lumières' successors were regardedas the spice of the nickelodeon bill. --Russell Merritt