Flatpack Festival 23-27 March 2011 Birmingham, UK
Film, and then some.
5 Featuring: a psychotic tyre, a man playing cello with an angle-grinder, vintage mobile movie-house, 16mm rarities, bunker installations, live scores, archive cut-ups, headphone cinema, turntable zoetropes, shadow shows and shedloads of good films.
www.atpackfestival.org.uk
do flatpack in style with nitenite cityhotels ...
Based smack bang in Birmingham city centre, this funky ‘micro-boutique’ hotel is the perfect stylish little base for the festival and all that this vibrant city has to offer!
Call 08458 90 90 99 and quote ‘flatpack’ to receive the fantastic rate of just £44.95!
free WiFi, free movies, large plasma TVs, contemporary interiors, ideal location, fab prices!
www.nitenite.com
contents Animation Archival films Artists film, installations Kids films Documentaries Live events Movies Shorts
Endorsements
“Suggesting Londoners go to Brum for a weekend doesn’t come naturally. But the Flatpack Festival might make us break the habit of a lifetime.”
“It’s their determination to look outside the usual cinematic setting that makes Flatpack such an attractive proposition.”
– Time Out
– Virgin Hotline
“An idiosyncratic event that brings the area to life, embracing everything from art in pigeon lofts to devoutly independent film art and music events in shops and warehouses.” - The Guardian
Funded by
Media Partners
Festival Partners
3
Drinks Sponsor
welcome Well, here we are again. Generally we do this bit of the brochure right at the very end, along with the thanks and the index and at about the point where we can barely write our own names any more. After a brisk walk round the block and another flick through the programme, though, we have to say that it looks like a fun five days. To help you get started on it, here are a couple of things that stand out. For a start, there’s a lot of archive this year. Also known as old films. Not because we couldn’t find any new films (there are plenty of those too), but because amongst artists and filmmakers there seems to be a real appetite for digging into, and messing around with, the past. And because our patron saint this year is Iris Barry (p.9), a woman born in Birmingham who consistently defied expectations of what women could achieve and went on
to help kick-start the film archive movement. We’ve tried to avoid reverence or nostalgia; the point is that these films are still very much alive whenever they are let out of their box to play with an audience. You only need to visit the Vintage Mobile Cinema (p.7) for proof of this. Not surprisingly, a recurring theme is tough times. Whether it’s Chinese kids on the make (Piercing I, p.25), the survival games played by German gangsters (In the Shadows, p.19) or a Uruguayan cinema confronting its own mortality (A Useful Life, p.18), there are plenty of coats being buttoned against chill winds. As ever with Flatpack though, the flipside is people using limited means to do amazing things; building their own barns (p.11), or orchestras (p.24), or model villages (p.25), or just generally rubbing together two sticks and a bit of Final Cut Pro to make something entirely unexpected.
It’s a cop-out to argue that poverty will be creatively invigorating, but we’d be disappointed if anyone left this festival gloomy about the future of filmmaking. As for Flatpack’s future… This is festival no.5 and in some ways we feel as if we’re just hitting our stride, but it’s also a time of change. One half of our founding team is off to do something completely different instead (good luck Pip!). One of our core venues, Ikon Eastside, closes its doors for good in April; as good a time as any to thank all at Ikon for their support. We’ll be back next year, but it may well be in a different form. If you want to have some say in what form this might be, then come and talk to us, or scribble your thoughts on a comment card or a tweet. It’s corny, but you are what makes this whole thing worth doing. Our true intent, as Mr Butlin liked to say, is all for your delight.
Recommended certificates for all screenings and events are available on the website. www.flatpackfestival.org.uk Follow @flatpack on twitter for useful updates and occasional nonsense.
05
4
The Dirty End What is the Dirty End? A place where Flatpack, Fierce and VIVID meet. A place to pick up a brochure, and find out festival news. A place to buy drinks, both familiar and exotic (see below). A place to see free films and talks. A place to get lovely hot food, or a slice of Brazilian Bolo cake. A place to wind down after a long day of live art and crazy films. A place where everybody knows your name, and you’re always glad you came. A place where the mail train stops, and there ain’t no cops and the folks are tender-hearted. Where is the Dirty End? At the home of VIVID, on the corner of Fazeley Street and Heath Mill Lane in Digbeth. Why is it called The Dirty End? Some say that was the origin of Deritend, the traditional name for this part of Birmingham. Others say it was from ‘Deer Gate End’, but what do they know? Juneau Projects Juneau Projects have been working on art and music projects since 2001, and are represented by Ceri Hand Gallery. They will create a series of interactive video projections, alongside sculptural and staging elements, to create a performance and screening environment that will change and adapt to the Flatpack and Fierce programme throughout the festival. It will be a bit like being inside a massive screensaver that goes nuts from time to time. Juneau Projects will also use the projections for a performance on the Dirty End’s opening night, on Tuesday 22 March. Big Jugs Happy Hour As well as curating a sumptuous brunch on Sunday (p.23), Companis will present two very special cocktail hours, from 5-7pm on Friday 25 and Sunday 27 March.
5
Fierce A celebration of performance, liveness, the underground and the off-kilter - Fierce Festival is back in Birmingham after a two-year hiatus, and this time it neatly coincides with Flatpack. The festival programme is compacted into an intense week of experiences in galleries, theatres and warehouses. Live art will ambush you around Birmingham and the festival will show you some of the city’s most unusual spaces animated with one-off events. Programme highlights include the magnificent spectacle of The Irrepressibles ‘Mirror Mirror’ in Town Hall Birmingham - a choreographed orchestral ensemble performing on a lavish mirrored stage set (THSH: Tuesday 22 March, 8pm); in ‘Frontman’ daring young performance makers Action Hero dissect the relationship between an icon, an audience, and the wall of sound between them (The Rainbow: Thursday 24 March, 8pm) and in ‘Departure’ Dominic Johnson’s body is tattooed live (TROVE: Friday 25 March, 8pm) before ‘Human Salvage’ - a night of club performance featuring the next generation of UK live artists (AE Harris: Friday 25 March, from 8.30pm). Throughout the festival join us at ‘The Dirty End’ festival hub (co-curated with VIVID and Flatpack Festival). Fierce highlights at the space include A History of Sound Art (Wednesday 23 March, 5.30pm), a century-spanning sound collage arranged by J Milo Taylor and mixed by Joel Cahen. There’s also a programme of films by artists Manu Luksch and Mukul Patel (Thursday 24 March, 9pm) and a discussion of family and creativity called ‘The Pram in the Hallway’ (Saturday 26 March, 1pm). For full programme details and to book tickets, visit: www.wearefierce.org Image of Dominic Johnson by Manuel Vason.
Shadow Shows devised by Pram and Film Ficciones Wednesday 23rd March, 19:30 Patrick Centre, £8 (£6)
If you’ve seen Pram play live, you’ll know that their collaboration with Film Ficciones can make for a heady concoction. Both parties spent last summer holed up at the Schlachthof arts centre in southern Germany working on a new project, and we’re delighted to kick off Flatpack with the fruits of their labours. Shadow Shows is built around a triple-screen film projection, incorporating early cinema techniques and shadow effects. The original score is performed live by Pram as hidden conspirators behind a giant creen, occasionally also glimpsed as silhouetted figures in its fractured scheme of images. The musicians employ an eclectic mixture of electronic and acoustic instruments, while the sound effects are created using hand-crafted devices from the theatre of a bygone age.
The dreamlike forest landscape of the film itself was inspired by two artists local to the Schwebian region where it was developed: pioneering cut-out animator Lotte Reiniger, best known for her 1926 feature film The Adventures of Prince Achmed, and school-teacher Johannes Seipp, who created exquisite silhouette images on glass slides to illustrate traditional folk tales. Please note that Shadow Shows incorporates low lighting, some smoke effects and strobing imagery. It may also be unsuitable for very young children. ...And while you’re recovering from that, you may wish to wander round the corner to the Victoria, where a free after-party will feature a taste of coming attractions, DJs and a live turn from banjolele dynamo Abie Budgen.
Mordant Music : The Nesst 2 Opening Thursday 24th March, 17:30-19:00 Then open Friday-Sunday, 12:00-18:00 Zellig, Custard Factory, Free A World War II type-22 pillbox bunker sits within the space. Instead of gunfire, light pours out of a gun emplacement slit. MisinforMation by Mordant Music is projected onto a screen and audio seeps out from within. The bunker is made from industrial materials such as sand and cement as well as domestic materials such as bed sheets and pillowcases. It is a military space, but also represents the citizens’ bunker, which could be a psychological space to feel safe in. It is a place of protection yet also an enemy target.
MisinforMation is a series of Central Office of Information (COI) films re-scored by Mordant Music and recently released by the British Film Institute. COI films are meant to inform and educate the general public yet Mordant Music wryly question and subvert some of the original films, skewing their meanings in the process. New Towns In Britain presents a picture of dystopia through unnerving music, with the bunker symbolising the unease and paranoia of city living. The Sea In Their Blood is a documentary made by Peter Greenaway about the British coastline. There are many bunkers dotted along the coast looking out to sea, their original purpose to protect the coastline from attack. In this instance the bunker projects the sea. www.mordantmusic.com
Mothwasp Thursday 24th March, 18:30-20:00 The Studio @ Fairbridge, Free Mothwasp take the firmly established holy trinity of a bass / drums / guitar outfit and combine it with vintage slideprojection equipment in an attempt to conjure up the sensation of being sucked into a black hole. Live Sci-fi ambience meets video nasty. The group consists of Matt Watkins (Beat13, Gorillaz), Stephen Taylor and Richard Williams (Calvados Beam Trio) and this is their first public performance. www.mothwasp.com
6
Vintage Mobile Cinema
1967.
The ‘white heat’ of Harold Wilson’s scientific revolution was at its hottest, and his Minister of Technology Tony Benn commissioned seven mobile cinemas to tour British factories promoting modern production methods. After a few years service this fleet of custom built Bedfords was sold off, and by 2003 the only known survivor was rusting in a field in Essex. After an excitable pub conversation Devon arts graduate Ollie Halls and his partner Emma Giffard took on the project of reviving the vehicle, and spent the next four years returning it as closely as possible to its original 1960s condition. The Vintage Mobile Cinema has been back on the road since spring last year, and before it gets hijacked by Melvyn Bragg for a BBC series we’re delighted to welcome it to Birmingham for the duration of Flatpack. There have been a few changes; rather than 16mm the cinema now employs digital projection and Dolby 7.1 surround sound. We also guarantee that it won’t just be screeing industrial training films! Every day the mobile cinema unit will stop at a different destination around Birmingham, with a programme of films tailored to each stop.
All screenings are free. Not surprisingly capacity is limited, but you can book yourself in for a screening by signing up on the day. No advance bookings. Following Flatpack the Vintage Mobile Cinema will continue to Herefordshire for the Borderlines Film Festival.
7
THURSDAY 24TH MARCH, 12-5PM Handsworth Library, Soho Road, Birmingham B21 9DP
SATURDAY 26TH MARCH, 10AM-4PM Birmingham Markets, next to St Martins Church, Bull Ring, B5 5BB
SUNDAY 27TH MARCH, 11AM-4PM Cannon Hill Park, Edgbaston Road, Birmingham B5 7QU
Make It Handsworth - a day of watching and making in partnership with Craftspace. Various crafty activities will be on offer, and a film programme ranging from childrens shorts and knitted animations to Handsworth homemovies. Plus at 2pm Breathing Space, a 60s film about the redevelopment of Birmingham’s parks introduced by writer Catherine O’Flynn.
After spending Friday in various locations around east Birmingham, on Saturday the tour hits town. Weary shoppers can enjoy a rolling programme of films old and new, including footage of the markets and Bull Ring in their previous incarnations.
A leafy finale to this little tour. While all manner of screenings and activities are going on in the mac, you can also wander outside, feed the ducks and catch some free films.
For more background on the VMC visit www.vintagemobilecinema.co.uk
FULL CIRCLE Included in the tour will be a selection of home-movies and amateur cine footage unearthed by the Media Archive for Central England as part of Full Circle. This is an ambitious two-year initiative to gather and digitise your reels and tapes from across the Midlands. You can find more details on the MACE website: www.macearchive.org
Meeks Cutoff
Le Quattro Volte
Thursday 24th March, 18:00 Electric Cinema, £6.50 (£4.50)
Dir: Kelly Reichardt USA 2010, 105 mins Featuring: Michelle Williams, Paul Dano, Bruce Greenwood
Thursday 24th March, 18.00 mac, £6.50 (£4.50)
Dir: Michelangelo Frammartino Italy 2010, 88 mins Featuring: Giuseppe Fuda, Bruno Timpano, Nazareno Timpano
The third feature from Kelly Reichardt -(Old Joy, Wendy and Lucy) is named after a trail across the Oregon desert first blazed by guide Stephen Meek as he led wagons full of settlers towards the west coast. Working from diaries written by women on one fated 1845 expedition, Jon Raymond’s script puts us in a parched, austere landscape full of life-or-death choices. At the heart is a battle of wills between grizzled,
loquacious Meek (‘not lost, just finding our way’) and the quiet pragmatism of settler Emily Tetherow (Michelle Williams, brilliant as ever). A period movie might look like a departure for Reichardt and Raymond, best known for roaming the margins of northwest America today, but their focus remains on how individuals in tough circumstances survive and locate their own moral compass.
Located in a remote corner of southern Italy, Le Quattro Volte begins and ends with charcoal. In between it takes us from an elderly goatherd to a newborn goat to a tree, pursuing in leisurely fashion a Pythagorean idea; that within our one life we all have four lives, and so must meet each other four times. Watching this film requires a definite change of gear but that is part of the pleasure it offers, along with a vivid, earthy sense of place and a
surprising amount of humour. In particular there’s a Tati-like sequence involving a truck, a dog and some runaway goats which seems completely unorchestrated but must have involved detailed planning.
Strange Powers
The main feature begins at 6.30pm, and at 6pm we have Coming Attractions (dir: Peter Tscherkassky), a remarkable 25-minute film which plunders adverts, early cinema and the avant-garde.
Shorts on Too Much Walls Information
Stephin Merrit and the Magnetic Fields Thursday 24th March, 18:00 Ikon Eastside, £6.50 (£4.50) Dir: Kerthy Fix & Gail O’Hara USA 2010, 85 mins Featuring: Stephin Merritt, Claudia Gonson
Thursday 24th March, 18:30 The Dirty End, Free Dir. Various 70 mins
Thursday 24th March, 21:00 Electric Cinema, £6.50 (£4.50) Dir. Various 90 mins
The man described as a contemporary Cole Porter doesn’t write his songs at a piano with a cigarette holder, but “sitting in dark gay bars listening to thumping disco music that I don’t particularly like”, and the majority of his obscure but hugely influential body of work was recorded in a chaotic New York apartment piled high with instruments. Filmed over the course of ten years, this is a fascinating glimpse into the world of Stephin Merrit and his merry band, and a chance to discover matchless LPs like 69 Love Songs. Strange Powers will be preceded by a short film about legendary Birmingham label Static Caravan, made by singer Hannah Peel on her phone.
Shorts on Walls is back once more for some cracking shorts homebrewed in the West Midlands’ animation community. Alongside open submissions from across the region, there’ll also be two new animated DigiShorts hot off the presses: All Consuming Love (Man in a Cat) (dir: Louis Hudson), a comedy about a man inside a cat which features the vocal stylings of Josie Long and Kevin Eldon, and a sneaky peek at Best (dir: Steven Spencer), a portrait of George Best which combines animation and live action. Both directors will be around to discuss their films after the screening.
Always one of the most popular programmes at Flatpack, this year’s roundup of new animation will offer useful evidence to future generations of our networked, over-stimulated age. In the Air (dir: Martinus Klemet) is a chilling Estonian short with a great synopsis: “The telecommunication between the wolf and humans leads to a situation where the law of gravity changes to the unknown.” The External World is the latest from 2008 Flatpack guest David O’Reilly, an insane 3D tapestry, and BAFTA-winner The Eagleman Stag rattles through the life of one frustrated taxonomist. Welcome minimalism is provided by Tord and Tord (dir: Niki Landroth Baer), a dry comedy about a fox and a rabbit.
www.animationforumwm.co.uk
8
Digging For Gold An evening of silent film and live music
Thursday 24th March, 19:30 Town Hall Birmingham, £15 (£12 students) Dir: Various 110 mins
Iris Barry 1895-1969
One of Iris Barry’s first literary efforts was a biography of Lady Mary Montagu, a woman whose famous last words could have served just as well as an epitaph for Barry herself: “It has all been very interesting.” She was born Iris Sylvia Crump on a dairy farm east of Birmingham in Washwood Heath, shortly before the Lumières presented their first cinematograph screenings in France. She picked up the film bug as a child at the picture-shows presented by Waller Jeffs (a Flatpack patron saint in 2009), an addiction which she never shook off. Missing out on university because of the First World War, while working in a Birmingham post office she began to correspond with Ezra Pound. He published a couple of her poems and soon encouraged her down to London, where she joined a Bohemian crowd and had two children with painter and author Wyndham Lewis.
9
Countless films were destroyed or lost forever during the early years of cinema. In the 1930s film archives began to spring up with the aim of preserving the surviving prints for the future, headed up by the pioneering efforts of Iris Barry at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Barry first fell in love with cinema as a child in turn-ofthe-century Birmingham, and this special event is a tribute to her and a chance to revisit some of the films which she helped to pass on.
The programme will also feature two miniature city symphonies: the beautiful Dutch short Rain (dir: Joris Ivens, 1929) and Manhatta (dir: Sheeler & Strand, 1921) a portrait of the city which would eventually lure Barry across the Atlantic. Improvised accompaniment will be provided by musician and broadcaster Nigel Ogden (The Organist Entertains) and jazz pianist Alcyona Mick, who opened Flatpack last year with her wonderful score to Sunrise.
Our feature attraction is the brilliant comedy Sherlock Junior, with Buster Keaton at the height of his powers in 1924 as a day-dreaming projectionist. As well as being one of the funniest films ever made, it’s also famous for the scene in which Buster falls from a water-tower. (He didn’t notice his neck was broken until years later.)
The relationship didn’t end well, but with remarkable self-sufficiency and drive Barry built herself a London writing career. In 1924 she began to write film reviews for The Spectator, four years before women got the vote and at a time when writing about the cinema was still rare. This led on to work at Vogue and the Daily Mail, while in the meantime she helped to set up the London Film Society and present some of the first UK screenings of ground-breaking new work coming out of continental Europe. When the Mail let her go in 1930 Barry decided to try her luck in New York. After a couple of tough years she became curator of the Museum of Modern Art’s new film library, the first national moving image archive, and immediately set about acquiring prints for their collection. This was a time when people realised that unless urgent action was taken there would be no silent movies left for future generations to enjoy, and Barry was at the forefront of the preservation drive; buttering up Hollywood moguls in order to rescue early classics from the incinerator, and touring Europe on the eve of war to gather up important titles while also arranging passage to America for numerous filmmakers including Luis Buñuel. Barry went on to direct the MOMA film department until 1951, playing an important role in shaping the ‘canon’ of cinema’s greats, and was awarded the Légion d’Honneur for her work during the war. Failing health eventually slowed her down, and she spent the last part of her life running an antique shop in the south of France. As well as Digging For Gold (above), Barry-related events at this year’s festival include a discussion on the changing face of film criticism (p.13), talks on her legacy (p.23) and a free screening of the outrageous Mae West comedy She Done Him Wrong (p.25).
The world does not begin and end with Flatpack (although occasionally it may feel that way). Other things to look out for in the neighbourhood this week include:
See also... MANU LUKSCH & MUKUL PATEL From 21st March at Grand Union, Digbeth The Kayak Libre water taxi provides a temporary experimental infrastructure for the Grand Union Canal Network area in the form of a kayak taxi service along the waterways. Films made during the taxi rides will be screened in Grand Union. www.grand-union.org.uk FISH STORY + CONFESSIONS Tuesday 22nd March, 6pm at Birmingham Library Theatre Birmingham International Film Society present a double-bill of recent Japanese cinema: the first exploring how a 1975 punk tune saved the world from certain destruction; the second an award-winning revenge thriller. www.birmingham-film.org
SEEFEEL + DEAD FADER + EPIC45 Tuesday 22nd March at the Hare & Hounds, Kings Heath Reformed and reshaped ambient rockers on Warp. www.capsule.org.uk DEPARTURE LOUNGE: EDGE Thursday 31st March at mac, Edgbaston Carol Morley (The Alcohol Years) will be discussing her new film, a sharp drama featuring Maxine Peake. www.macarts.co.uk DAN GRAHAM: MODELS AND VIDEOS Until 16th April at Eastside Projects, Digbeth Exhibition of recent work by the multi-faceted American artist best known for Rock My Religion. “My work is basically about suburban shopping malls and fun”. www.eastsideprojects.org
Kim Noble: I am live Turn on, tune in and something else. Kim Noble, art-comic provocateur, brings his own TV channel to Birmingham and the rest of the planet.* Streaming live from a studio throughout the festival. Watch stuff that might be absolutely incredible.** * (excluding parts of China and Rotherham) ** (it might not be incredible) www.mrkimnoble.com Flatpack and Fierce have joined forces to house Mr Noble in a unit of Zellig at the Custard Factory for the weekend. From Friday 25th-Sunday 27th March he will be webcasting live each night at 9pm to The Dirty End and anyone who cares to find him online. Check his site or ours for further details.
We don’t care about music anyway “Memories travel through our minds and bodies. When you hear a sound of any nature, I think that you remember it more than you hear it. When you recall more than one thing at a time, something new is created.” - Hiromichi Sakamoto
Thursday 24th March, 20:00-22:30 Ikon Eastside, £8 (£6) Dir: Cédric Dupire & Gaspard Kuentz Japan/France 2009, 80 mins Featuring: Otomo Yoshihide, Hiromichi Sakamoto, Fuyuki Yamakawa, Numb
In recent years Tokyo has been recognised as a mother lode for improvised and experimental music. This French documentary gets under the skin of the scene by steering well clear of the usual talking heads, instead concentrating on imaginatively-staged performances by some of the key players. Famous for his brutal deconstructions of the turntable, we see Otomo Yoshihide tinkering in a junkyard, while Umi No Yeah’s electro-rock cabaret is played out
on a rubbish-strewn beach and performance artist Fuyuki Yamakawa does amazing things in the dark with lightbulbs and a stethoscope. Interspersed are scenes of hi-tech urban bustle, and some discussion where the musicians muse on Japan’s culture of ‘happiness in a box’. One of the stars of the film is Hiromichi Sakamoto, seen marauding around a warehouse at the start. He’s a unique and lyrical performer who embellishes the cello with vocal effects and assorted saws and grinders, and will be joining us after the screening for an improvised set. Supported by The Japan Foundation through the Performing Arts JAPAN programme, in partnership with All Nippon Airways
10
Los Angeles Plays Itself
Memory Leak
Funny for Nothing
Friday 25th March, 15:00 Ikon Eastside, £6.50 (£4.50) Dir: Thom Andersen, USA 2003, 169 mins Featuring: Encke King
Friday 25th March, 18:30 Ikon Eastside, £6.50 (£4.50) Dir: Various 90 mins
Friday 25th March, 18:30 The Dirty End, Free Dir: Various 80 mins
“This is the city. Los Angeles, California. They make movies here. I live here. Sometimes I think that gives me the right to criticise the way movies depict my city.”
Cap doffed to our patron saint Iris Barry, this year’s selection of video essays and filmed experiments is mainly concerned with the process of forgetting and what we hang onto. Oops (dir: Chris Beckman) is an assemblage of dropped-camera moments from youtube which through nifty editing grows into something greater than the sum of its parts. There are formal games with home-made camera obscura and a quadruple super 8 setup, and Versions is a brilliant piece from Swiss artist Oliver Laric about the relationship between copy and original. Finally Thom Andersen returns to the margins of Los Angeles with Get Out of the Car, a defiantly pedestrian view of his beloved city.
Birmingham-based moving image exhibitors KINO 10 will be bringing the good times to The Dirty End with a selection of shorts to make you smile, ranging across animation, documentary and drama.
Why do bad guys live in modernist houses? Why did Chinatown get it wrong? Why is everyone white? Watching Thom Andersen’s fascinating video essay is like taking a walking tour of the world’s most photographed city, with a knowledgeable, witty and slightly cantankerous guide. Named after a forgotten porno film, compiled over many years and featuring hundreds of clips - from Double Indemnity via Predator 2 to the work of Charles Burnett - this is a rare treat.
Prostitute When Tony Garnett set out to direct his fi rst feature film, he already had twenty years experience under his belt as an actor and then as a producer on films including Cathy Come Home and Kes. Garnett retained from his work with Ken Loach an emphasis on location shooting, non-actors and a candid approach to thorny issues; in this case prostitution in his hometown of Birmingham. At the heart of the story is Sandra (Forsythe), an ambitious working girl tired of police harassment who decides to give London a try. Inevitably the world which Prostitute depicts is not pretty and it was hugely controversial on release, but there is plenty of humour and humanity here too.
Highlights include Alex Naylor’s offbeat story of a pair of Albanian women who perform an exorcism on a tortoise, and Bertie Telezynski’s portrait of David Morgan – holder of the Guinness World Record for the largest traffic cone collection. And gastropod-lovers will want to make a date for Dean Fleischer-Camp’s glorious Marcel the Shell with Shoes on.
Gravity was everywhere back then
Friday 25th March, 18:00 mac, £6.50 (£4.50) Dir: Tony Garnett UK 1980, 97 mins Featuring: Kate Crutchley, Kim Lockett, Nancy Samuels, Riccardo Mangano
11
KINO 10
With the passing of time the film has also become a vivid document of Balsall Heath, an area which changed radically in the 1990s when local community action shut down the red light district (a campaign often cited by David Cameron as the Big Society in embryo). Filmmaker George Fleming grew up locally, and has made a short film charting some of these changes which will show before the main feature. We’re also delighted that Tony Garnett will be back in Birmingham tonight to discuss the unique process which created his film. In April Prostitute is released on DVD and Bluray by the BFI.
Friday 25th March, 20:30 Electric Cinema, £6.50 (£4.50) Dir: Brent Green, USA 2010, 70 mins Featuring: Donna Kozloskie, Michael McGinley Brent Green makes short films using puppet animation and chalkboard intertitles scored with crackly folk and his own quavering, urgent narration. These elements have all been retained for his debut feature, but this time the puppets are live actors, animated frame by frame in a process that must have been insanely laborious. It’s the story, based on fact, of a couple called Leonard and Mary Wood who met in a car crash. (The moment the film really catches light; Leonard flying out of his windshield and in through Mary’s.) After she is diagnosed with cancer he throws his energies into building a barn for her as a conduit for God, a Fitzcarraldo-type endeavour which Green equates with his own filmmaking mission. In a tender and genuine way, Gravity probes at our need to believe.
Pixel Visions
Mind Bombs
Friday 25th March, 20:30 Ikon Eastside, £6.50 (£4.50)
Dir: Various 60 mins (films) + 30 mins (Scree)
Friday 25th March, 22:30 Electric Cinema, £6.50 (£4.50)
Dir: Various 70 mins
Computer animation did not begin with Tron. This is a rare chance to see work from four pioneers in the field.
space. Lillian Schwartz’s work can be more chaotic, notably the mixed-media meltdown of Pixillation (1971), while Larry Cuba achieved ethereal effects by synchronising dots of light with a Japanese flute in 3/78 (1978). We end with the rapturous Allures (1961) by Jordan Belson, sometimes called the first VJ.
Morphing, pulsating psychedelia seems to be back in a big way. Young animators have picked up the gauntlet from Bruce Bickford (see Flatpack 4) and Pink Floyd visuals, and carefully melted that gauntlet with various 21st century tools. Highlights of tonight’s lysergic feast include the award-winning Love and Theft (dir: Andreas Hykade), Anthony Francisco Schepperd’s amazing Blockhead promo and Umbra, a sci-fi parable from the
prolific Malcolm Sutherland. One of the finest music videos of last year was for Let Go by Japanese Popstars (pictured), so we’re delighted that director David Wilson is here to explain how the hell he made it in 3 weeks. And nestling within Mind Bombs is a mini-retrospective for Mirai Mizue, whose dazzlingly detailed frame-filling ‘cell animation’ needs to be seen on the big screen. Includes a world premiere for his new short TATAMP.
John Whitney’s early films were made using a modified analogue computer, originally used to control anti-aircraft guns in the war, then at IBM he worked by directly filming his computer console. Swirling, spirographic results like Catalog (1961) leave you floating in
Followed by a performance of controlled audio-visual feedback by Scree.
Ra! Ra! Ra!
Friday 25th March, from 20:00 The Edge, £3
Sun Ra (formerly Sonny Blount) was born and died in Birmingham, Alabama. As far as we know he never played in Birmingham, UK, but for one night only his mothership will be hovering over Digbeth as we pay informal tribute to one of the twentieth century’s most prolific and influential musicians and composers. This was a man who took the bare minimum of sleep in order to fit in as much music as possible, so our DJs have their work cut out doing justice to his oeuvre in one night. The idea is to start out with the early doowop and swing recordings, on through the formation of the Arkestra and the shift to cosmic jazz, then into free improv wigouts until we settle into the toe-tapping big band period of the 70s. Expect sofas, silver foil constructions and multi-screen visuals, along with a few highlights from Sun Ra’s bountiful celluloid CV. Ra! Ra! Ra! is brought to you by Grandmaster Gareth and Outer Sight.
12
Invisible Cinema
Busy Being Born Saturday 26th March, 11:00 Electric Cinema, £6.50 (£4.50) Dir: Various 90 mins
Invisible Cinema is Ben Waddington’s exploration of the secret picture houses of Birmingham. The number of cinemas rose and fell with the 20th Centur y; most cities at one time boasting hundreds of screens.
Saturday 26th March, 12:00 & 14:00 Sunday 27th March, 12:00 & 14:00 Beginning at the Electric Cinema, £4 Featuring: Ben Waddington 94 mins (or thereabouts) Bring suitable footwear, and perhaps a brolly.
With the advent of the multiplex, their architecture was absorbed back into the fabric of the city. However, if you know what to look for, their presence can still be seen flickering in the shadows. Join Ben on a 94-minute feature searching for the city’s cinema screens that over time have been lost, forgotten, hidden or simply mislaid.
Inspired by Emma Lazenby’s animated midwife’s tale Mother of Many, as well as the imminent departure of one of our co-directors for a career in delivering babies, we thought we’d show some films on the theme of pregnancy and birth. This selection covers pre-natal nerves (Signe Baumane’s Birth), the joy of twins (Samantha Moore’s Doubled Up), the immaculate conception (Steve Smith’s Eating for Two) and the main event, captured eliptically by Stan Brakhage in his 1959 film Window Water Baby Moving. We’ll also have a snapshot of feline parenthood with live improvised accompaniment, and archive footage from Moseley’s Sorrento Maternity Hospital.
A Martian, The Cinema Christine A Corpse and a Fox Exists to Please & Lift with no Tail Women A discussion of film criticism today
13
Saturday 26th March, 12:30 Electric Cinema, £6.50 (£4.50) Talk by Chris Bowden 90 mins
Saturday 26th March, 14:00 Eastside Projects, Free 90 mins
Saturday 26th March, 13:00 Ikon Eastside, £6.50 (£4.50) Dir: Alan Clarke, UK 1987, 52 mins (+ 23 mins) Featuring: Vicky Murdock, Kelly George, Mark Harvey
A few years ago obituaries were being written for puppet animation as the digital wave swept through film production, but still it looks to be going strong thanks to the enthusiasm of filmmakers like Tim Burton and Wes Anderson. One of the standard-bearers for the form is Cheshire-based puppet-makers Mackinnon and Saunders, and the miniature worlds of The Corpse Bride and Fantastic Mr Fox could not have been created without their expertise and nimble fingers. Chris Bowden is an executive producer at the company, and today will give an insight into their work and the kind of skills they look for. Presented in association with Animation Forum WM.
In honour of patron saint Iris Barry, the UK’s original female film critic, Flatpack presents an energetic event celebrating some of the sharpest writers on contemporary cinema. With Barr y’s ma xim that “ the cinema exists to please women” as inspiration, we’ll be taking the pulse of current criticism through presentations from female film critics and open audience discussion. Chaired by writer and film festivalist Kate Taylor.
We’re delighted to be screening Gillian Wearing’s first feature Self Made (see p.24). She spent her formative years in Birmingham, and we asked her to choose a couple of films which have helped to shape her own work.
Also at Eastside Projects on Saturday: 12:00: Talk by Christoph Warrack (Open Cinema) 16:00: Full Frame - new work made using DSLRs.
Christine is a 1987 TV drama directed by Alan Clarke (Scum, Penda’s Fen), a stripped-down portrait of teenage heroin addiction in suburban Hounslow which refuses to offer the viewer anything in the way of judgement or meaning. It’s accompanied here by Lift (dir: Marc Isaacs, 23 mins), a documentary filmed in the lift of a council block over several weeks.
Fantastic Mr Fox
Colour Box 1
Saturday 26th March, 11:00 mac, £4 Dir: Wes Anderson
Saturday 26th March, 13:30 mac, £4
USA 2009, 88 mins Featuring: George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Bill Murray
Another chance to see this brilliant 2009 animation, adapted by Wes Anderson from Roald Dahl’s tale of three nasty farmers and one gentleman thief. Today we’ll be paying extra attention to the look of the film with the help of Chris Bowden.
Short films for a big planet Dir: Various 75 mins
Like the Bugs and Beasts programme we showed at Flatpack no.3, there are all kinds of creatures to be found in this lucky dip of animated shorts.
Chris works at MacKinnon and Saunders, a company which builds puppets for all kinds of films and television programmes. They were responsible for every single character you see in Fantastic Mr Fox, and over the course of the film they made over 500 puppets. Chris will talk about the journey from sketch to clay model to finished character, and the secret formula for realistic fox-fur. See also: A Martian, A Corpse and a Fox with no Tail, p.13.
The Whale Bird (dir: Sophie Roze) is a strange beast with wings which snoozes at the bottom of the ocean, and Whistleless (dir: Siri Melchior, pictured) follows a little orange bird across town as it tries to find its voice. Fluffy McCloud (dir: Conor Finnegan) shows the mischievous side of mother nature, and Electric Car (dir: Tiny Inventions) is a song by They Might Be Giants about, um, electric cars. There’s also a chance to find out what happens When A Hen Eats A Bee (dir: Tim Frost).
Colour Box 2
Unravel
Saturday 26th March, 15:30 mac, £4 Dir: Various
Digital adventures 80 mins
More shorts from all over the place, this time for slightly older viewers and with a particular focus on computer animation. There isn’t room to talk about them all here, but let’s pick a couple... Pigeon Impossible (dir: Lucas Martell) is a rip-roaring cartoon in the style of Hollywood action movies, featuring a secret agent whose careful planning is messed up when a pigeon gets inside his hi-tech briefcase. The Lost Thing (dir: Ruhemann & Tan, pictured) is an Oscarnominated film based on Shaun Tan’s book, about a boy who discovers a Lost Thing on the beach and tries to deliver it to the Federal Department of Odds and Ends.
Saturday 26th March, 12-17:00 & Sunday 27th March, 12-15:00
Since autumn 2010 the Unravel caravan of film has been trundling up and down the country, setting up free film-painting workshops in all kinds of venues. When the tour finishes later this year the result will be the longest hand-painted film ever made, a sixteen-hour epic made by a crew of thousands. Now it’s your chance to contribute! Unravel will be taking over the Arena bar at mac throughout the Colour Box weekend, and you can drop in at any time to do a bit of painting, stencilling or scratching. www.unravelfilm.blogspot.com
14
Eleanor’s Secret
DigiPlayground
Sunday 27th March, 11:00 mac, £4 Dir: Dominique Monféry
As part of the 2011 Say Hello initiative, mac and Flatpack have come together to deliver a range of digital arts activities including workshops, demos and screenings which will be touring across Birmingham in March 2011.
France 2009, 75 mins English language version
When their dotty Aunt Eleanor dies, Angelica gets a porcelain doll and her younger brother Nat is given the key to a secret room packed with books. Nat can’t read, but when he’s alone in the room the characters within the pages – including Alice, Captain Hook and Pinocchio – come to life. If they leave the library they’ll disappear, and Nat is given the task of saving them. After the success of last year’s Secret of Kells, we’re very happy to have another beautifully animated film about the power of books. Please note that Eleanor’s Secret contains some strobe effects.
Coming Soon... If Colour Box gives you a taste for this sort of thing, Flatpack producers 7 Inch Cinema will also be presenting a jamboree of family film as part of the Book Bash at Aston Hall on 29th and 30th May. Alongside all sorts of free activities and workshops you can find us in a tent showing short films old and new throughout the weekend. This is the climax of the annual Young Readers Festival, featuring the best children’s authors, illustrators, storytellers and poets at libraries and other venues around the city. www.birmingham.gov.uk/youngreaders
Family deal! Individual tickets for Colour Box screenings are £4, or family groups can buy four tickets for the price of £12. This offer is available to one adult + three children, or two adults + two children, and only applies to single screenings. You can buy the family ticket through mac box-office - call 0121 446 3232 or visit www.macarts.co.uk. (See p.29 for other booking details)
15
Say Hello In the lead up to Flatpack, mac will be taking a menu of activities to locations all over the city. So.....if you are aged 8-18 and interested in animation, games design or digital music, come along to any of the venues below and get a chance to enjoy a preview of the festival, take part in taster workshops and create material which will be showcased over the weekend. 12th March: Handsworth Library 17th March: South Yardley Library 19th March: The Pump, Kitts Green 19/20th March: We Are Birmingham Shop DigiPlayground @ mac Saturday 26th and Sunday 27th March, 11am-4pm As part of this year’s Flatpack Festival, mac will be hosting a range of free activities and events to complement the Colour Box family programme. From colourful, eye-catching animation to wacky interactive gaming technology, we’ve put together a playground of Digital works for you to come along and experience. Featuring.... Interactive installations from multimedia artist Chris Plant (Colour Burst - www.colour-burst.co.uk) Animation and interactions devised by Johnny O’Hanlon (Hamfisted!) + Free screenings in the Arena Gallery and exciting new work from young people across Birmingham.
DigiPlayground is supported by
Calendar Tuesday 22nd March
Dirty End launch
The Dirty End
17:30-20:00
Free
5
Wednesday 23rd March
Shadow Shows
The Patrick Centre
19:30-20:30
£8/£6
6
Shadow Shows after-party
The Victoria
20:30-23:00
Free
6
Vintage Mobile Cinema
Handsworth Library
12:00-17:00
Free
7
Nesst 2 opening
Zellig
17:30-19:00
Free
6
Meek’s Cutoff
Electric Cinema
18:00-19:50
£6.50/£4.50
8
Le Quattro Volte
mac
18:00-20:10
£6.50/£4.50
8
Strange Powers
Ikon Eastside
18:00-19:45
£6.50/£4.50
8
Mothwasp
Studio @ Fairbridge
18:30-20:00
Free
6
Shorts on Walls
The Dirty End
18:30-20:30
Free
8
Digging for Gold
Town Hall Birmingham
19:30-21:30
£15/£12
9
We Don’t Care About Music Anyway
Ikon Eastside
20:00-22:30
£8/£6
10
Too Much Information
Electric Cinema
21:00-22:30
£6.50/£4.50
8
Los Angeles Plays Itself
Ikon Eastside
15:00-18:00
£6.50/£4.50
11
Prostitute + Tony Garnett
mac
18:00-20:30
£6.50/£4.50
11
Kino 10
The Dirty End
18:30-20:00
Free
11
Memory Leak
Ikon Eastside
18:30-20:00
£6.50/£4.50
11
Gravity Was Everywhere Back Then
Electric
20:30-22:00
£6.50/£4.50
11
Pixel Visions + Scree live
Ikon Eastside
20:30-22:10
£6.50/£4.50
12
Ra! Ra! Ra!
The Edge
20:30-02:00
£3
12
Mind Bombs
Electric
22:30-0:00
£6.50/£4.50
12
Thursday 24th March
Friday 25th March
FESTIVAL UPDATES Check out the full programme and sign up for emails: www.flatpackfestival.org.uk You can also find us at: www.facebook.com/flatpackfestival www.twitter.com/flatpack
Nesst 2 After opening on Thursday evening this haunting bunker installation will be open from 12:00 to 18:00, Friday 25th to Sunday 27th March. More details are on p.6. I Am Live Kim Noble’s residency at Zellig will produce a live webcast each night at 21:00, from Friday to Sunday. You can see it at The Dirty End, or online. More details are on p.10.
KEY Animation Archival films Artists film, installations Kids films Documentaries Live events Movies Shorts Talks / Q&As
Big Jugs Happy Hour Companis present a selection of filthy beverages, from 17:00-19:00 on Friday and Sunday at The Dirty End. There will also be all sorts of extra stuff going on at the venue throughout the week; just drop in for updates.
Summertime is here Can’t you tell from the glorious weather? Unfortunately this means that the clocks go forward at 01:00 on Sunday 27th March. Don’t lie in too long and miss your screening! Running times Bear in mind that there are no trailers or adverts before Flatpack films, so wherever possible the screening will begin at the advertised start time. The finish times specified here are estimates which take into account accompanying shorts or discussions.
16
Don’t miss your screening! Remember that the clocks go forward on Sunday 27th March.”
Saturday 26th March
Sunday 27th March
17
Vintage Mobile Cinema
St Martin’s Church
10:00-16:00
Free
7
Busy Being Born
Ikon Eastside
11:00-12:30
£6.50/£4.50
13
Fantastic Mr Fox + Chris Bowden
mac
11:00-12:45
£4
14
Invisible Cinema walking tour
Electric Cinema
12:00-13:40
£4
13
Unravel + DigiPlayground activities
mac
11:00-17:00
Free
14/15
A Martian, A Corpse and a Fox with no Tail
Electric Cinema
12:30-14:00
£6.50/£4.50
13
Christine + Lift
Ikon Eastside
13:00-14:30
£6.50/£4.50
13
Colour Box 1: Short films for a big planet
mac
13:30-14:45
£4
14
Invisible Cinema walking tour
Electric Cinema
14:00-15:40
£4
13
The Cinema Exists to Please Women
Eastside Projects
14:00-15:30
Free
13
A Useful Life
Electric Cinema
14:30-15:50
£6.50/£4.50
18
Make It New John + Duncan Campbell
Electric Cinema
15:00-16:50
£6.50/£4.50
18
Lichter Films
The Dirty End
15:00-16:15
Free
18
Colour Box 2: Digital adventures
mac
15:30-17:00
£4
14
Redline
Electric Cinema
16:30-18:30
£6.50/£4.50
18
Daisies
Ikon Eastside
17:30-19:00
£6.50/£4.50
18
Rubber
Electric Cinema
19:00-20:40
£6.50/£4.50
19
In Bed With Chris Needham
Ikon Eastside
20:30-23:00
£6.50/£4.50
21
In The Shadows + Thomas Arslan
mac
20:30-22:30
£6.50/£4.50
19
Paper Party
The Dirty End
20:30-02:00
£6
19
And Soon the Darkness
Electric Cinema
23:00-00:45
£6.50/£4.50
21
Mutant Girls Squad
Electric Cinema
23:30-01:00
£6.50/£4.50
21
A Secret History of Birmingham
Ikon Eastside
11:00-12:30
£4
23
Eleanor’s Secret
mac
11:00-12:20
£4
15
Spit or Swallow?
The Dirty End
11:00-14:00
£5
23
every minute, always
Electric Cinema
11:00-14:00
£6 for two
22
Vintage Mobile Cinema
Cannon Hill Park
11:00-16:00
Free
7
Invisible Cinema walking tour
Electric Cinema
12:00-13:40
£4
13
The Time Machine in alphabetical order
Eastside Projects
12:00-17:00
Free
22
Welcome to the Jungle
mac Hexagon
12:30-16:00
Free
23
Celestial Navigations
Ikon Eastside
13:30-15:00
£6.50/£4.50
23
Iris Barry: Both Sides Now
mac
13:30-15:00
£4
23
Invisible Cinema walking tour
Electric Cinema
14:00-15:40
£4
13
Brief Encounter + Richard Dyer talk
Electric Cinema
15:00-17::30
£6.50/£4.50
22
The Forgotten Irish
Ikon Eastside
15:30-17:15
£4
23
Kinshasa Symphony
mac
15:30-17:30
£4
24
She Done Him Wrong + Closing
The Dirty End
16:30-22:00
Free
25
Piercing I
Ikon Eastside
18:00-19:30
£6.50/£4.50
25
Self Made + Sam Rumbelow
mac
18:00-20:00
£6.50/£4.50
24
The Keystone Cut Ups
Electric Cinema
19:30-20:30
£6
24
I am a Good and Giving Heart
The Edge
20:00-22:30
£6
25
Marwencol
Ikon Eastside
20:30-22:10
£6.50/£4.50
25
Lichter Films
A Useful Life
Redline
Saturday 26th March, 15:00 The Dirty End, Free Dir: Various 75 mins
Saturday 26th March, 14:30 Electric, £6.50 (£4.50) Dir: Federico Veiroj, Uruguay 2010, 67 mins Featuring: Jorge Jellinek, Manuel Martinez Carril, Paola Venditto
Saturday 26th March, 16:30 Electric Cinema, £6.50 (£4.50) Dir: Takeshi Koike, Japan 2009, 105 mins Featuring: Takuya Kimura, Yu Aoi, Tadanobu Asano
In the run-up to this year’s festival we got an email from Lichter Filmtage, a festival in Frankfurt covering very similar territory to Flatpack (all sorts of films in venues across the city, and a lively hub where they serve good food and beverages). Not only that, but Lichter happens on exactly the same weekend as us, and Frankfurt and Birmingham are twinned. Reason enough to do some shared programming, but we were also really excited by the new work coming out of the city. This little selection includes animation by Eva Becker, Olga Petrova and Björn Ullrich (pictured), forest films by Jörn Staeger and Andre Kirchner, and a calming documentary about how barrels are made.
This is the tale of a cinema, and the thankless struggle to keep arthouse film alive in Uruguay. Made in a real Montevideo cinematheque with the staff playing their own roles, it’s not a documentary but the first half could quite easily be. Our focus is on hang-dog programmer Jorge (Jellinek), who goes about his daily business typing up programme notes, testing out the seats, and hosting Q&As. Midway through the film changes gear in a wonderfully unexpected way, and becomes a hymn to the world beyond the movie-house. Shot in luminous black and white, A Useful Life has pleasures aplenty for cinephiles but its vision of a man suddenly cut loose from his life’s work also has a much wider resonance.
Sweet JP is a champion driver who has been reduced to throwing races for money. The biggest car race in the universe, Redline, is about to take place on Roboworld. Could this be his last shot at redemption? The story is flimsy indeed, but it’s a great excuse for some of the most demented, full-pelt animation you’re likely to see for a while. Delivering on the promise of his earlier work (including sequences in The Animatrix and Kill Bill) Takeshi Koike’s debut feature has been getting anime fans revved up for some time. Thanks to the nice folks at We Love Anime, there will be various free goodies available at this screening. www.we-loveanime.com
Make It New John Saturday 26th March, 15:00 Ikon Eastside, £6.50 (£4.50) Dir: Duncan Campbell, UK 2009, 55 mins Featuring: John Delorean Best known for its starring role in Back to the Future, the DeLorean DMC-12 is an enduring symbol of brash 80s optimism. Its designer John Delorean had risen through the ranks at General Motors, and when he left to set up his own company he persuaded the British government to help bankroll a new factory on the outskirts of Belfast with a promise to bring prosperity and unity to the area. It all turned out very differently. In a story which rings plenty of contemporary bells, Make It New John stirs together 50s surf tunes, 80s news reports and scripted reconstructions to explore the mechanics of selling a dream.
& Duncan Campbell in conversation Born in Belfast and based in Glasgow, Duncan Campbell is an artist preoccupied with the way in which myths can solidify into fact through the media. He often works with found material, delving through archives for outtakes and offcuts which will help to illuminate the edges of a story. His 2008 film Bernadette uses contemporary news footage to create a fascinating but deliberately fragmented picture of Republican activist-turned-minister Bernadette Devlin, and more recently he has explored the Northern Irish adventures of General Motors. Today he’ll be talking to curator Anna Douglas about how his work comes together. This event is presented in association with Animate Projects. www.animateprojects.org
Daisies
Saturday 26th March, 17:30 Ikon Eastside, £6.50 (£4.50) Dir: Vera Chytilová, Czech 1966, 74 mins Featuring: Ivana Karbanová, Jitka Cerhová “If everything’s spoiled… we’ll be spoiled too,” declare the insatiable heroines of Daisies, as they embark on a dadaist rampage across Czech society. Made in 1966 in a spirit of try-everything-and-see-what-works, Vera Chytilová’s landmark film skilfully avoids making any obvious kind of sense, but there’s an edge to its portrayal of apathetic youth and imminent apocalypse. Visually, its crazy colour palette and cut-up style still astonish. Earlier this year, Trish Keenan of Birmingham group Broadcast died aged 42. Daisies was one of Trish’s favourite films, and this screening is dedicated to her. All proceeds go to Nordoff Robbins Music Therapy.
18
In the Shadows
Rubber
Saturday 26th March, 20:30 mac, £6.50 (£4.50) Dir: Thomas Arslan, Germany 2010, 85 mins Featuring: Misel Maticevic, Karoline Eichhorn, Uwe Bohm, Rainer Bock
Saturday 26th March, 19:00 Electric Cinema, £6.50 (£4.50) Dir: Quentin Dupieux, France 2010, 85 mins Featuring: Thomas F Duffy, Pete Diecco, Hayley Holmes, Remy Thorne
A professional thief fresh out of prison plots one last job, with corrupt police and murderous gangsters on his tail. The set-up is a familiar one, but In The Shadows grips from the start. Shot in the hotels, cafés and car parks of an anonymous Berlin that could be any European city, it’s a film noir from the old school; cool, bleak and free from flab or frills. ‘I’m not one for talking’ says one
A tyre called Robert, abandoned in the California desert, discovers psychokinetic powers and starts killing people. If the premise for In The Shadows sounds familiar, then you probably wouldn’t say the same for Rubber. The third feature from Quentin Dupieux is a cult in the making which riffs gleefully on the likes of Duel, Carrie and The Hitcher while stroking its chin about the nature of storytelling
unfor tunate just before he expires, and the same could be said for all the players in a game where cutting to the chase is paramount. Ever y now and then we get a glimpse of humanit y, a pipe -dream of rearing sheep or a house in Spain, and then it’s back down to business. Thomas A r sl a n will be joining us for this screening.
Paper Party
and the irrational. There’s a filthy soundtrack, produced by Dupieux’s alter ego Mr Oizo and Gaspard Auge from Justice, and B-movie stalwarts like Wings Hauser spectating on the carnage, but the real star of the show is Robert. Who knew that a tyre could be so scary? We don’t tend to quote reviews here, but Karina Longworth’s summary (“batshit wonderful”) just about covers it for us.
Saturday 26th March, 20:30 The Dirty End, £6 And so to Saturday night, and another climactic knees-up. People rose to the challenge of last year’s Plasticine Party in all sorts of creative (and occasionally disgusting) ways, and now it’s time to hone those cutting and folding skills. Entertainment will come in the form of: SCULPTURE (Dekorder) are an audio-visual duo who combine tape-loops and electronica with turntable zoetropes (pictured). www.tapebox.co.uk ORIGAMIBIRO use double-bass, strings and ukelele along with less conventional instruments – paper, bubble-wrap, typewriters – to create their sound. Visuals by The Joy of Box. DAVID WILSON is an illustrator and animator (see Mind Bombs, p.12, for one of his latest). Tonight he’s presenting Beyond Golden, a brand new VJ set in tandem with DJ Sam Potter (Late of the Pier).
19
Film Visual Arts Theatre Music Comedy Dance Courses Shams: Reykjavik
A slice of
life
This season at mac our programme is full to the brim with fantastic events. We can’t squeeze in all the brilliant stuff we have going on, so here are a few highlights, a small slice of mac life... Doug Jones: Alieni Iuris
Shlomo: Mouthtronica
Shams: Reykjavik
Sat 26 Mar – Sun 15 May First Floor Gallery, admission free
Thu 31 Mar, 7.30pm Theatre, tickets £15 (£12)
Tue 17 – Sat 21 May, 7 & 9pm Foyle Studio, tickets £7 (£9)
Artist Doug Jones invites you to enter our first floor gallery and discover a world of mysterious, saintly figures, vandalised cross stitch, and bizarre crockery...
Acclaimed British beatboxer Shlomo takes us on a mad, one man musical mashup using nothing but his mouth, a microphone and a loop sampler.
This show was a roaring success at Edinburgh 2010 and we are delighted that it has made the journey South to mac. Immersive, multi-sensory, unmissable.
Sales & Information 0121 446 3232 www.macarts.co.uk
Cannon Hill Park | Birmingham | B12 9QH
In bed with Chris Needham Saturday 26th March, 20:30 Ikon Eastside, £6.50 (£4.50) Dir: Chris Needham UK, 1992, 50 mins
“The plot: Chris Needham, a 17 year-old Thrash Metal fan from Loughbrough who has been absolutely lacerated by the puberty stick, is about to play his first gig with his band, Manslaughter. The problem is, they’re complete rammel. Between their first painful attempts to stand musically upright and their debut gig, Chris takes the time to defend Metal and Youth, unleashes torrents of adolescent venom upon the Green movement, ‘old bastards’, vegetarians, ‘Chart Music’, organised religion, teachers, and Neighbours, conducts a relationship with his girlfriend in excruciating silence, gets hassled by Mr Taggart and His Amazing Shirt, and goes fishing.” - Al Needham, Leftlion. During the twenty years since it was made for the BBC’s Video Diaries strand, In Bed With Chris Needham has
This event is presented in association with The Quietus and Capsule as a taster for Home of Metal, taking over the West Midlands this summer with a celebration of our heavy heritage. www.homeofmetal.com
Mutant Girls Squad
And Soon The Darkness
Saturday 26th March, 21:30 Electric Cinema, £6.50 (£4.50)
Dir: Noboru Iguchi, Yoshihiro Nishimura & Tak Sakaguchi Japan 2010, 85 mins Featuring: Yumi Sugimoto, Yuko Takayama, Suzuka Morita
Saturday 26th March, 23:00 Electric Cinema, £6.50 (£4.50)
Dir: Paul Fuest UK 1970, 99 mins Featuring: Pamela Franklin, Michele Dotrice, Sandor Elès
On her sixteenth birthday, angelic and bullied schoolgirl Rin finds that her hand is twitching uncontrollably. Before the day is out her father has revealed to her his true nature, she has seen him decapitated by a gang of anti-mutant police firing ‘nose-bullets’, and the twitching hand has become a lethal metal claw.
resources with considerable style and a complete lack of taste. There’s a spirit of disgusting fun here which recalls the early days of Peter Jackson before he discovered CGI and huge budgets, but allied to a very distinct Japanese sensibility. Rin joins a gang of fellow mutants with special powers ranging from breast-swords to tentacle-arms – most impressively a girl who can summon a chainsaw from her bottom at will – and together they do battle against the forces of normalcy.
Two English nurses go cycling in rural France, and get separated after an argument. As you can guess from the midnight movie slot, sunshine and laughter are in short supply. This superlative thriller was a cult obscurity for many years, but recently came out of the shadows after a mediocre remake. It’s a reminder that, amongst the oceans of dreck and soft porn, 70s British cinema produced some real gems.
The production was an Avengers reunion, reteaming writer Brian Clemens, director Robert Fuest and composer Laurie Johnson in a location which would seem to offer limited potential for chills. The film is very clever at generating tension from the wide-open landscape, as well as the language barrier between the cagey locals and our hot-panted heroines (played by Pamela Franklin and Michele Dotrice).
So begins the first release from the new Sushi Typhoon stable, an orgy of gory set-pieces and gushing blood which employs its limited
21
become a cult artefact; not just for its wealth of quotable lines, but because it plugs you straight into the sensation of being a teenager at battle with the world. It’s also a window on life before social media, a reminder that TV producers once handed out cameras to people without treating them as performing monkeys, and a testament to the power of metal. Unscreened for two decades – excepting youtube bootlegs – tonight we’re honoured to have not only the full original programme, but also Chris himself in person and in conversation with Al Needham (no relation).
Sunday 27th March Electric Cinema, £6 for two people Performances at 11:00, 11:45, 12:30 and 13:15
every minute, always by Melanie Wilson and Abigail Conway every minute, always is a unique headphones performance for two people, that takes place in a cinema. Seated amongst other couples, this highly crafted experience unfolds for each participant through headphones and in concert with what they see on screen. From the intimate, low-lit vantage of the cinema seat, the participant is guided by the voice of the narrator into a rich and sonically transporting world.
The Time Machine
Underscoring this journey for each participant however, is an electrifying awareness of their relationship to each other and to the other couples, as the worlds of cinema and theatre collide. every minute, always is an experience well suited to friends, family and colleagues. It can be also be undertaken by adventurous strangers.
Brief Encounter
in alphabetical order Sunday 27th March, 12:00-17:00 Eastside Projects, Free Dir: Jon Thomson & Alison Craighead, UK 2010 Featuring: Rod Taylor, Alan Young, Yvette Mimieux, Sebastian Cabot
Sunday 27th March, 15:00 Electric Cinema, £6.50 (£4.50) Dir: David Lean, UK 2010, 85 mins Featuring: Celia Johnson, Trevor Howard, Stanley Holloway, Joyce Carey
This new installation piece does very much what it says on the tin. London-based duo Jon Thomson and Alison Craighead have revisited the 1960 movie* of H.G.Wells’ novella, and attempted their own form of time travel by chopping up the film into one-word chunks and rearranging them from A to Z. This ‘constrained editing technique’ was inspired by the Oulipo literary movement, and the results are somewhat mind-mangling. Curated by Morgan Quaintance.
“There’ll come a time in the future when I shan’t mind about this any more, when I can look back and say quite peacefully and cheerfully how silly I was. But no, no, I don’t want that time to come ever. I want to remember every minute, always, always to the end of my days.”
* Directed by George Pal, whose pioneering Puppetoons screened at last year’s festival.
The staying power of Brief Encounter is a strange and marvellous thing. How is it that a film which did middling box-office on its release after the war, and which at first glance now might look impossibly dated and class-bound, can still be capturing imaginations so consistently?
Work like every minute, always (see above) and Kneehigh’s swoonsome stage adaptation enable us to look at it afresh, but the urge to reinterpret Brief Encounter is not a new one. Back in the 70s film academic Richard Dyer and his friend Malcolm had plans to reenact the entire film in the café at Birmingham New Street. We’ve invited Richard back, not to recite Celia Johnson’s lines but to talk about the role the film has played in his life and teaching and to explore why this vision of English restraint remains so seductive.
22
Spit or Swallow? Sunday 27th March, 11:00-14:00 The Dirty End, £5
From the duo who brought you Bone Dinner, Companis – purveyors of bad taste and rule bending – present an eating experience to remember at the Dirty End. Spit or Swallow? is a rolling, durational brunch fit for a queen, in the form of a large-scale Flemish still life. While you help us to demolish this banquet, you can celebrate the imminent demise of this year’s Fierce and Flatpack and chew over the best and worst bits of the week in typically interactive Companis fashion. www.companis.co.uk
A Secret History
Welcome to the Jungle
of Birmingham
Sunday 27th March mac Hexagon, Free
Sunday 27th March, 11:00 Ikon Eastside, £4 Dir: Various 90 mins
Finding the appropriate footage for your project and then clearing it can be an epic mission in itself. This afternoon you can get a taste of three projects, and find out how they navigated this tangled undergrowth.
Our film heritage is not only to be found in large archives and institutions. Time and again work which was presumed lost has surfaced somewhere unexpected; from a box of Betamax tapes in the corner of an attic, or a potting shed full of dusty film cans. This special 16mm matinee show is a chance to peek into the vaults of two keen collectors whose hoarding instincts have created a legacy of rare and eye-opening material. The programme will include Miracles Take A Little Longer, a film about Birmingham’s reconstruction which includes brilliant colour footage from the postwar period and narration by Frank Bough, plus some marvellous cine footage of Bournville in the 1950s.
12:30: Made in Birmingham This recent documentary on the city’s punk, reggae and bhangra heritage includes a wealth of old footage. Director Deborah Aston and producers Jez Collins and Roger Shannon, will discuss how it came together. Followed by a screening of the full film. 14:30: NG83 NG83 is a documentary on Nottingham’s B-boy scene seeking additional investment in order to clear the necessary music rights. Luke Scott from Futurist Films will present a 15-minute taste of the film. 15:30: Home of Metal In summer 2011 heavy metal will be taking over the Midlands. Co-director of Capsule Lisa Meyer will talk about the project’s genesis and what’s in store.
Iris Barry: Celestial The Navigations Forgotten Irish Both Sides Now
The short films of Al Jarnow Sunday 27th March, 13:30 mac, £4 Talk by Laura Marcus and Elaine Burrows 90 mins
Sunday 27th March, 13:30 Ikon Eastside, £6.50 (£4.50) Dir: Al Jarnow 85 mins
Sunday 27th March, 15:30 Ikon Eastside, £4 Dir: Maurice Sweeney, Ireland 2009 50 mins
There’s a Chagall sketch of Iris Barry which has her split in two, both homely and head-scarved and sharpsuited. It reflects some male ambivalence about women in the world of work, but also captures the subject’s multi-faceted nature. This event will use film clips and discussion to piece together a remarkable life’s work.
Beginning with a Sesame Street commission about a yak, Al Jarnow established a cottage industry in his Long Island attic creating curious, brain-tickling little films. Jarnow’s handmade riffs on time and space - including Cosmic Clock, pictured - became a staple of public TV and embedded themselves in the consciousness of countless 70s children. They were also the launchpad for personal projects like Celestial Navigations, which relates the sunlight on his wall to the shadows cast by Stonehenge. This collection explores both strands and also includes Asymmetric Cycles, a half-hour documentary built around an engaging interview with the man himself.
Along with car yards, arches and art spaces Digbeth is not short of pubs, and most of them have regular customers who can still remember when the area was a hive of industry. Many came to Birmingham from Ireland in the 50s and 60s, drawn by the building boom, but in exchange for work they often sacrificed a sense of belonging. This Irish documentary interviews a number of migrants who never returned home. It is heart-breaking stuff, but it also does an excellent job of illuminating the issue and breaking down well-worn stereotypes. The screening will be followed by a discussion including James Moran, writer of Irish Birmingham, and hosted by Nicky Getgood (digbeth.org).
Laura Marcus, Goldsmith Professor of English at New College Oxford, will focus on Barry’s film journalism and her role in the London Film Society. Elaine Burrows was a curator at the National Film and Television Archive for many years, and will put in context the pioneering preservation work Barry did at MOMA in New York.
23
Kinshasa Symphony
Self Made
Sunday 27th March, 15:30 mac, £4
Dir: Claus Wischmann & Martin Baer DR Congo/Germany 2010, 95 mins Featuring: Joseph Masunda Lutete, Albert Nlanzu Matubanza, Nathalie Angwanguilo Bahati
Sunday 27th March, 18:00 mac, £6.50 (£4.50)
Dir: Gillian Wearing UK 2010, 85 mins Featuring: Asheq Akhtar, Lesley Robinson, Dave Austin, James Baron, Lian Stewart, Simon Manley
A recurring theme at Flatpack is people using limited resources to create something beautiful, and this is one of the most memorable examples. Central Africa’s only symphony orchestra, the Orchestre Symphonique Kimbanguiste is made up of 200 amateur musicians living in the Congolese capital of Kinshasa. Many of them fit in rehearsals around two or three day-jobs, like the hairdressing electrician Joseph Masunda Lutete who frequently has
to put down his viola and carry out running repairs when the power cuts out. Mastering Beethoven’s Ninth is tricky enough without having to deal with black-outs, traffic noise and home-made instruments, but the filmmakers avoid any sense of patting their subjects on the head. The tense build-up to a climactic performance is recorded with humour and an eye for detail, while in the background they sketch out a picture of a country continually beset by war.
Self Made began with an advert in local papers. “Would you like to be in a film? You can play yourself or a fictional character. Call Gillian.” From hundreds of respondents seven were chosen, and before making their film went through a method acting course which required role-play, primal grunting and some painful delving into the past.
you might expect from an artist’s debut feature. But as we progress the film asks increasingly discomforting questions about the desire to reveal ourselves and how we shape narrative out of our lives. Thanks to a surprising degree of trust and openness with their cast, Wearing and acting coach Sam Rumbelow create a hybrid of fact and fiction which is difficult to categorise, and difficult to forget. Sam Rumbelow will be present to discuss the film.
People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz
Featuring
The Keystone Cut Ups
This is at first glance a simple document of a process, more straightforward than
Sunday 27th March, 19:30 Electric Cinema, £6.50 (£4.50) 45 mins
There are strong affinities between slapstick comedy and surrealist film, and we’ve already combined the two in one programme (see Digging for Gold, p.9). Tonight they’ll be waltzing and pirhouetting across the screen together, choregraphed by two noted collage connoisseurs. People Like Us and Ergo Phizmiz have been regular collaborators for
some time, and when commissioned by Berwick Media Arts Festival last year the result was The Keystone Cut Ups; a kaleidoscopic split-screen voyage through silent cinema which combines celluloid moments both familiar and uncanny with an original score performed live in the auditorium. Striding purposefully into its second century, the Electric Cinema should provide the perfect setting.
24
She Done Him Wrong
Piercing I
Sunday 27th March, 16:30 The Dirty End, Free
Dir: Lowell Sherman USA 1933, 66 mins Featuring: Mae West, Cary Grant
Sunday 27th March, 18:00 Ikon Eastside, £6.50 (£4.50)
Dir: Liu Jian China 2009, 75 mins
One of Iris Barry’s more controversial choices during her time at the Museum of Modern Art was acquiring a print of She Done Him Wrong; a sex comedy, admitted into the hallowed portals of the MOMA collection! It would be many years before the film was accepted in polite society, and even today some of Mae West’s single entendres can make the eyebrows twitch. Made in the heady days before the Hays Code, the film
stars West in the testing role of bawdy nightclub singer Lady Lou. Next door to her bar is a temperance mission run by the upstanding Captain Cummings (a fresh-faced Cary Grant), who provokes West’s most misquoted line: “Why don’t you come up sometime and see me?” Afterwards we’ll segue into the Flatpack/ Fierce closing, with the help of DJs from Sugarfoot Stomp, Big Jugs cocktails and Juneau Projects.
Liu Jian sold off his flat and devoted three years of his life to making China’s first independent animated feature, and happily the finished work lives up to its heroic back-story. The setting is Beijing in 2008. Two boyhood friends from the same village are bobbing in the wake of the downturn. Zhang Xiaojun, the quieter of the two, has lost his job in a shoe factory and is contemplating a return to the countryside.
His more street-wise mate Dahong mocks him – “I don’t want to die of a stroke for a few pieces of pork fat” – while cooking up schemes to make money. Jian’s background in illustration is written across every frame. Piercing I is beautifully composed, the stillness punctuated by moments of sudden violence with a quiet anger at corrupted authority bubbling underneath.
Marwencol
Ce piá Xií Catu ( I am a Good and Giving heart )
25
Saturday 27th March, 20:30 Ikon Eastside, £6.50 (£4.50) Dir: Jeff Malmberg USA 2010, 85 mins
Featuring: Mark Hogancamp
Sunday 27th March, 20:00 The Edge, £6
Featuring: Gilberto Mauro & Ricardo Garcia, Fizzle
In April 2000 Mark Hogancamp was beaten into a coma by five men outside a bar. When health insurance stopped covering his therapy costs, he was forced to seek a cheaper form of rehabilitation and over the next couple of years his back-yard became home to a 1:6 scale rendering of a Belgian town called Marwencol, circa 1944. Employing an army of male and female dolls and a rigorous attention
to detail, Hogancamp was able to weave his own traumatic experiences into an epic narrative of SS torturers and vampish witches, with his battlescarred, cross-dressing alter ego at centre-stage. This perfectly pitched documentary immerses you in one man’s world, “a society outside society”, and then explores what happened when Hogancamp’s images of Marwencol were lauded as outsider art.
Humberto Mauro was one of Brazilian cinema’s true pioneers, a self-taught director who emerged from the provinces in the late 20s and helped to reinvent the way his country was seen on film. Gilberto Mauro is his great-nephew, an accomplished musician who combines jazz and folk influences in work for stage and screen. Tonight we play host to a memorable encounter between two generations and two artforms. Gilberto
(keyboards) and his regular collaborator Ricardo Garcia (percussion, electronics) will be accompanying a selection of sequences from Humberto’s early work, named the Cataguases cycle after the town where he lived and worked. This one-off event is a taster for a new initiative called Espirito Brum, a cultural exchange between Birmingham and Brazil which will culminate in a festival this September.
BOX OFFICE
0121 780 3333
www.thsh.co.uk
HIGHLIGHTS Tuesday 22 March, 8pm Town Hall
Wednesday 6 April, 7.30pm Town Hall
THE UNTHANKS
THE IRREPRESSIBLES: MIRROR MIRROR
Plus support Trembling Bells
Presented in association with Fierce Festival
£17.50* 20% discount for full and part-time students.
£15*
Friday 1 April, 7.30pm Town Hall
Friday 8 April, 8pm Town Hall
£15*
£15*
No support. 20% discount for full and part-time students.
No support.
THE DHOL FOUNDATION
DAN CLARK: LIVE
Thursday 21 April, 6.30pm & 8.30pm, Symphony Hall
STRAVINSKY’S RITE OF SPRING, 3D PERFORMANCE Put on your 3D glasses and experience the fascinating visual effects as computer generated projections interact with dancer Julia Mach’s live performance. Visit www.riteofspring3d.thsh.co.uk to explore and interact. £5 - £22.50*
Tuesday 10 May, 8pm Town Hall
MARIZA: FADO TRADICIONAL £25*
Saturday 14 May, 8pm Town Hall
STAFF BENDA BILILI £15* 20% discount for full and part-time students.
No support.
Friday 13 May, 7.30pm Town Hall
PATTI AUSTIN AND BBC BIG BAND: AVANT GERSHWIN
Saturday 28 May, 7.30pm Town Hall
ONE MAN STAR WARS TRILOGY TM
£19.50*
£12.50 - £25* Concert to be recorded for BBC Radio 2’s Big Band Special.
Supported by
Town Hall renovation also funded by
search ‘Town Hall Symphony Hall’ @THSHBirmingham
*£2 fee per transaction will be charged on all bookings except purchases made in person at Town Hall or Symphony Hall Box Office.
A power house of dance
Second Run DVD
PERFORMANCES Coming up at DanceXchange this season...
Tilted Productions Masquerade // FRI 11 MAR
Also available
Avant Garde Dance Illegal Dance // SAT 26 MAR Company Chameleon Kith/Kin // THU 21 APR
FOR MORE INFORMATION AND TO BOOK VISIT www.dancexchange.org.uk OR CALL 0844 DanceXchange, Birmingham Hippodrome, Hurst Street, Birmingham B5 4TB dx registered charity no.1045364
338 5000
Image: Company Chameleon by Brian Slater
Mobius Dance Theatre Such is Life // THU 5 MAY
www.secondrundvd.com
Team Thanks Flatpack Directors: Ian Francis and Pip Mcknight / 7 Inch Cinema Festival Co-ordinator: Selina Hewlett Assistant Programmer: Sam Groves Marketing Assistant: Annabel Clarke Festival Assistant: Tegid Cartwright Venue Co-ordinators: Jill Arbuckle, Sipiwe Charles, Jess Duffy, Christine Haecker, Matt Moore, Michael Palmer, Vicky Roden, Pete Stevens, Chris Swann Design/Art Direction: Dave Gaskarth / cyrk.org.uk Web Developer: Jacob Masters / gabba.net Technical Co-ordination: Phil Slocombe / Lumen Technical services: Adam Kirtland-Leach / Aquila TV Press and PR: Emma Petit and John Dunning / Margaret PR Fuelled by: WFMU / wfmu.org Board of Directors: Jonathan Watkins (Chair) (Ikon Gallery); Bob Ghosh (K4 Architects); Jake Grimley (MADE Media); Jenny Moore (Capsule); Kate Taylor (Northern Film and Media)
Laura, Harun and all at Fierce Festival, Jonathan, Sarah, Matt, Rebecca and Morgan at Ikon Gallery; Tom Lawes, Sam Bishop and all the staff at Electric Cinema; Yasmeen, Laura and Marian at VIVID; Amanda, Dan, Katie, Sophie, Craig and the projection team at mac; Paul Burns, Paul Keogh and all at Patrick Centre/Birmingham Hippodrome; Sandra and Lee at The Edge; Gavin, Ruth, Samuel and Liz at Eastside Projects; Paul, Simon, Lyle and Jess at THSH; Dave and Chris at the Custard Factory; Anthony Hughes and Sara Clowes at Screen WM; Peta Murphy-Burke at Arts Council England WM; Peter Buckingham and all at UK Film Council; Neil, Richard, Ellie and Amanda at Marketing Birmingham; Sophia Tarr and Annette Wright at Birmingham City Council; Julia and Nat Higginbottom at Aquila; Mo Jones at Ticketsellers; Tracey Allen at Nite Nite; Kaye and Sian at Companis; Helen Jack at Shooting People; Adam and Danny at Little White Lies; Luke, John and David at The Quietus; David Luke Allen at Animation Forum WM; Abigail Addison at Animate Projects; Anne Ward at The Newspaper Club; Candy and Adam at Optimum; Emma and Ollie from Vintage Mobile Cinema; George Fleming at Reel Access; Joan Henderson at Handsworth Library; Anne and Deirdre at Craftspace; Carol Byrne; Claire Trow and Steve Grogan at Birmingham Markets; Tom Thompson at St Martins in the Bull Ring; Lucy Whitehead at Film Club; Christophe at Lightcone; Lisa Balderson, Sam Dunn and Andrew Youdell at British Fillm Institute; Gillian Wearing; Elizabeth Gault at Park Circus; Lisa Marie Russo at Fly Film; Jerome at Studio Shaiprod; Kerthy Fix; Robert at New Wave Films; Lisa Iacobellis at Ohio State University; Lynne at Le-Joy; Erik at Holland Animation Film Festival; Alex at Film Sales International; Jon at Mathew Clarke; Kirsty at Purity Brewing Co; Sara at Squisito; Baron Mordant; Brent Green; Mirai Mizue; Kaia at Arthur Cox Films; David Sin at Independent Cinema
Office; Neil Young and Tony Earnshaw at Bradford Film Festival; Anke and Dirk at Deutsche Kinemathek; Caroline Beiersdorf at Sounding Images; Joe Nunes at 20th Century Fox; Janet Brisland at Birmingham Libraries; Abigail Conway and Melanie Wilson; Ronan at Animo TV; Michael Hack at Lichter Filmtage; Andreas Fock at Swedish Film Institute; Sandro Fiorin at Figa Films; Marcus at Littlebig; Matt Watkins; Ben Waddington; Vicki Bennett; Shane at The Wire; David Wilson; Marc at Sushi Typhoon; Jim Jupp at Ghost Box Records; Tessa Burwood; Chris and Mehelli at Second Run; Chris Daniels and all at Unravel; Antony Harding; Al Needham; Paul Edmunds; Nicky Getgood; Tony Garnett; Roger Shannon; Michael Slaboch at Numero Group; Sophie at Soda Pictures; Chris Plant; Lucie, James and Phil at MACE; The Big Bulls Head; Gil and Mike at Lux; Anna Douglas; Grandmaster Gareth; Geoff Dolman; Lee Corner; Graeme Hogg; James Cargill; all the filmmakers, artists and production companies; Lucy Reid (laser-guided proofing); Richard Hawley; Lisa, Jenny and all at Capsule; Chris Keenan; The Prams; Scott Johnston; our families and friends for all their fantastic support; Finn Finndersson and the Seth Monster.
This year’s festival is dedicated to: Trish Keenan, musician 1968 – 2011 Olivier Ruellet, artist 1981 – 2011 Tessa Sidey, curator 1955 – 2011
Flatpack recommends THE DIRTY END – Where the worlds of Flatpack and Fierce Festival collide. Serving up fine drinks, lovely cakes and hot Italian food alongside free talks, screenings and events. Look out for Big Jugs Happy Hour on Friday and Sunday nights. VIVID, 140 Heathmill Lane, Digbeth B9 4AR URBAN COFFEE – The best coffee in Birmingham, located just behind Snow Hill Station. You can pre-order through their website. Urban Coffee, Church Street, B3 2NB www.urbancoffee.co.uk CYBER CANDY – Who can make the world taste good? Cyber Candy stock the best sweets from around the world, everything from Lucky Charms to Chocolate Crickets. Cyber Candy, 80 Bull Street, B4 6AB www.cybercandy.co.uk Urban Pie – Hearty pies, sweet and savoury, with all the obligatory extras. After 5pm pies are half price! The Bullring Shopping Centre, B5 4BE www.urbanpie.co.uk
WAREHOUSE CAFE - Located above the Friends Of The Earth offices, a friendly café which serves a range of scrumptious vegetarian and vegan food that’ll leave you with a wholesome feeling. 54-57 Allison Street, Digbeth B5 5TH www.thewarehousecafe.com YUMM - Serving sandwiches, hot food and coffee all day. The Custard Factory, Gibb St, Digbeth B9 4AA www.yummdeli.co.uk CAFE SOYA – Chinese and Vietnamese food with a good vegetarian selection. We recommend the steamed pancake rolls, papaya Salad Vermicelli and fresh pineapple fried rice. Unit 2 Upper Dean Street, Birmingham B5 4SL www.cafesoya.co.uk For a drink in Digbeth, try: THE ANCHOR - Loads of real ales, and a pool table. 308 Bradford St (next to the coach station), B5 6ET THE SPOTTED DOG - Traditional music, cheap baps. 104 Warwick St, Birmingham B12 0NH
Nite Nite - Affordable hotel with stylish cabin rooms. Quote ‘Flatpack’ when you book and get a room for the special price of £39.95 per night! 18 Holliday Street, Birmingham B1 1TB www.nitenite.com Birmingham Backpackers – Former pub made homely hostel with brightly painted walls. They have a cinema room and some bedrooms are equipped with pods. Eastside Tavern, 58 Coventry Street, Birmingham B5 5NH www.birminghamcentralbackpackers.com Paragon Hotel – Beautiful gothic building and reasonable rates. Gets mixed reviews on Tripadvisor, but it is a convenient location for Flatpackers. 145 Alcester Street, Birmingham, B12 0PJ www.theparagonhotel.co.uk For more options you can search the accommodation directory at www.visitbirmingham.com
28
Mo
or
St
Venues
1
N ew
Broad St
St
5
New St Rail
1 Town Hall Birmingham Victoria Square B3 3DQ 0121 780 3333 thsh.co.uk 2 Electric Cinema 47 Station St B5 4DY 0121 643 7879 theelectric.co.uk 3 The Victoria 48 John Bright St B1 1BN 0121 633 9439 4 Patrick Centre Hurst St B5 4TB 0870 730 1234 5 Ikon Eastside 183 Fazeley Street Digbeth B5 5SE ikon-gallery.co.uk
7 Eastside Projects 86 Heath Mill Lane B9 4AR eastsideprojects.org
Birmingham Mailbox
3
2
A450
6 Selfridges
7 8
4 8 Zellig The Custard Factory B9 4AA 0121 224 7783 zellig.co.uk 9 Studio @ Fairbridge 79 Warwick Street Digbeth B12 0NH
9 10 Digbeth High St
Bristol St
A450
Pershore Road
10 Friction Arts The Edge 79-81 Cheapside, Deritend B12 0QH frictionarts.com 11 mac Cannon Hill Park B12 9QH 0121 446 3232 macarts.co.uk
6 VIVID (aka The Dirty End) 140 Heath Mill Lane Digbeth B9 4AR vivid.org.uk
Cannon Hill Park
Cannon Hill Park
MANCHESTER /NW
1
A41
11
EAST MIDLANDS
6
A38 A45
A456
6 3
LONDON
A34 A38
BRISTOL /SW
4
4 1
OXFORD
Booking ADVANCE TICKETS Tickets can be purchased through our ticketing partner, The TicketSellers in three ways: 1.
2.
3.
Online at www.flatpackfestival.org.uk by clicking ‘Buy Tickets’ for each event. The TicketSellers 24 hour booking phone line: 0844 870 0000. In person at The TicketSellers Shop, 594 Bristol Road, Birmingham, B29 6BQ. Open MondayFriday, 9am-7pm and Saturdays, 11am-5.30pm.
Tickets are subject to a transaction fee of 50p per order for tickets up to £7, and £1 per order for tickets over £7. The transaction fee is payable once per order, so it’s best to buy all of your tickets at the same time to keep charges down. The only exception to the above is Digging for Gold, available via Town Hall box office (0121 780 3333 / www.thsh.co.uk).
29
Please be aware that advance sales for all events close at midnight, the night before the event takes place. Tickets for all mac screenings and events are also available in advance from mac box office (see page 15 for info on the Colour Box family ticket deal). ON THE DOOR Tickets are available to buy on the door at individual venues. Please be aware that apart from Town Hall, Electric and mac all venues accept cash sales only. Door sales will open 30 minutes before each event. Please bear in mind that capacity is quite limited at many venues. A certain allocation of tickets will be held back for door sales but for guaranteed entry we recommend booking in advance. £21 SPECIAL SCREENING PACKAGE Maximise your Flatpack experience by seeing any four screenings for only £21 (full price tickets only). Simply
click ‘Buy Tickets’ for the four screenings you would like to see and the package will automatically appear during the checkout process. The screening package can only be used to purchase one full price adult ticket for four separate screenings. Events are not included in the package. This offer is only available online or by calling The TicketSellers. GENERAL INFORMATION We regret that latecomers will not be admitted once the event has begun. All tickets are non-refundable and non-exchangeable. Free events cannot be booked in advance. Concessionary rate tickets are available for students with a valid NUS or student card, registered unemployed with a valid DSS form, under 16s and over 60s with proof of age. Advance tickets and walk up purchases must be validated on the door with the correct ID. Concessions at Town Hall are only available to students.
Index
All Consuming (Man in a Cat) 8 Allures 12 And Soon The Darkness 21 Arslan, Thomas 19 Asymmetric Cycles 23 Barry, Iris 9, 13, 23 Best 8 Birth 13 Booking 29 Bowden, Chris 13, 14 Brief Encounter 22 Budgen, Abie 6 Burrows, Elaine 23 Busy Being Born 13 Calendar 16, 17 Campbell, Duncan 18 Catalog 12 Celestial Navigations 23 Christine 13 Cinema Exists to Please Women, The 13 Colour Box 1 14 Colour Box 2 14 Coming Attractions 8 Companis 5, 23 Cosmic Clock 23 Daisies 18 Digging for Gold 9 DigiPlayground 15 Doubled Up 13 Dyer, Richard 22 Eagleman Stag, The 8 Eating for Two 13 Eleanor’s Secret 15 every minute, always 22 External World, The 8 Fantastic Mr Fox 14 Film Ficciones 6 Fluffy McCloud 14 Forgotten Irish, The 23 Full Circle 7 Full Frame 13 Garcia, Ricardo 25 Garnett, Tony 11 Get Out of the Car 11 Grandmaster Gareth 12 Gravity Was Everywhere Back Then 11 Home of Metal 21, 23 I am a Good and Giving Heart 25 I Am Live 10 In bed with Chris Needham 21 In The Air 8 In the Shadows 19 Index 31 Invisible Cinema 13 Jarnow, Al 23 Joy of Box, The 19 Juneau Projects 5, 25 Keystone Cut Ups, The 24 KINO 10 11 Kinshasa Symphony 24 Let Go 12 Lichter Films 18 Lift 13 Los Angeles Plays Itself 11 Lost Thing, The 14 Love and Theft 12 Made in Birmingham 23 Make It New John 18 Manhatta 9 Marcel the Shell with Shoes on 11 Marcus, Laura 23 Martian, a Corpse and a Fox with no Tail, A 13
Marwencol Mauro, Gilberto Meek’s Cutoff Memory Leak Mick, Alcyona Miracles Take A Little Longer Misinformation Mizue, Mirai Moran, James Mordant Music Mothwasp Mutant Girls Squad Nesst NG83 Noble, Kim O’Flynn, Catherine Ogden, Nigel Oops Open Cinema Origamibiro Outer Sight Paper Party People Like Us Phizmiz, Ergo Piercing I Pigeon Impossible Pixel Visions Pixillation Potter, Sam Pram Prostitute Quattro Volte, Le Ra! Ra! Ra! Rain Redline Rubber Rumbelow, Sam Sakamoto, Hiromichi Scree Sculpture Secret History of Birmingham, A Self Made Shadow Shows She Done Him Wrong Sherlock Junior Shorts on Walls Spit or Swallow? Static Caravan Strange Powers Sugarfoot Stomp TATAMP Time Machine in alphabetical order, The Too Much Information Tord and Tord Umbra Unravel Useful Life, A Venues Versions Vintage Mobile Cinema Waddington, Ben Warrack, Christoph We Don’t Care About Music Anyway Wearing, Gillian Whale Bird, The When a Hen eats a Bee Whistleless Wilson, David Window Water Baby Moving
25 25 8 11 9 23 6 12 23 6 6 21 26 23 10 7 9 11 13 19 12 19 24 24 25 14 12 12 19 6 11 8 12 9 18 19 24 10 12 19 23 24 6 25 9 8 22 8 8 25 12 22 8 8 12 14 18 29 11 7 13 13 10 13, 24 14 14 14 12, 19 13
30