Take a journey through the Jazz Age to explore the art, music, film and literature that were born out of the Roaring Twenties, the Depression-bitten ‘30s and the booming years of World War II.
This 3-week festival includes a line-up of talks, performances and film-screenings held with festival partners Blackwell’s, Curzon and Oxford Playhouse.
Headlining the event is a late night LiveFriday, American Cool, on 25 May. Meet Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, learn the Charleston with The Gatsby Girls, and much more.
A special display at Blackwell’s Bookshop in Broad Street will pair works of art with contemporary literature, and will host panel discussions about art and literature in the ‘20s and ‘30s and the state of the American nation today Professor Sarah Churchwell and award-winning playwright and critic Bonnie Greer OBE.
The Curzon Cinema will show a miracle of film history, Dawson City – Frozen Time, a 2016 documentary telling the story of the frontier town and early American filmmakers.
At Oxford Playhouse actor and soprano Sarah Gabriel will take us on a musical tour of the brilliant mind and lacerating wit of Dorothy Parker with readings from her letters, poems and essays, and songs by George Gershwin, Rodgers & Hart and Hoagy Carmichael. And musician, writer and broadcaster Neil Brand will celebrate the great works of Silent Film and the accompanists who breathed life into early movies.
