Plant Museum looks back at Tampa's first decades of film

Driving the news: The exhibition, "Cigar City Cinema: Tampa Goes to the Movies," traces the period from 1897 to 1936, when short films wedged between vaudeville acts grew into a beloved local pastime.

• Among the artifacts featured in the exhibition are chairs on loan from the Tampa Theatre, lobby cards, souvenir programs and rare ephemera from the Museum of the Moving Image.
• The display also shows how early films were used as propaganda to portray slavery as benevolent and how filmmakers borrowed from minstrel-show traditions, including blackface.

What they're saying: "Opera houses and vaudeville theaters deserve primary credit for the spread of theatrical film presentations in Tampa and across the nation," said museum director Charles McGraw Groh.

• "Short films took the place of individual songs or skits in variety shows at the turn of the century," he added.
• They typically ran between 26 seconds and a minute, "pretty much what you would find now on TikTok."

If you go: The "Cigar City Cinema" exhibition is included with admission to the Plant Museum, which is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10am to 5pm, and on Sunday from noon to 5 pm.