Last week artist Beatrice Gibson spoke at Eastside Projects about her film, A Necessary Music. It’s been showing at the gallery alongside Simon & Tom Bloor’s exhibition and was also part of the programme for Planning for Play. Beatrice’s talk framed her work with clips from Robert Ashley, Peter Watkins (director of Flatpack feature, Privilege) and a short from doctor of deconstruction, John Smith.
Girl Chewing Gum is the third Smith film that I’ve seen in the space of two weeks and is a fixed-cam street scene of 1970s east London. Smith narrates the piece, calling directions and approval to passers-by as if they are playing out roles on a studio set.
Other Smith sightings included Channel 2’s series of shorts, where a hotel room video diary, that begins as a monologue about his room’s flapping ceiling tiles, pulls back to reveal his location on the Israeli/Palestinian border. Planning for Play also included John Smith’s wordgame-as-film, Associations, and the humour, economy and subtlety found throughout his films has made him a father figure of Flatpack 3. If you can’t wait for Flatpack 4 and the possibility of future J. Smith screenings there’s a DVD available from the LUX shop. Girl Chewing Gum can be YouTubed, here.
As web editor for Flatpack I’ve become more than a little familiar with this here site. I’m totally hooked. I think it’s perfect. I’ve started carrying some faded 3D glasses at all times in case I’m caught short and need an analogue fix of the salmon n’ cyan colour scheme. A slightly less damaging outcome from working with the site is that the programme is burned into my brain. Back-to-front. I thought I’d put my overexposure to good use and help pick out a few of the events in store that have really got me itching (in no particular order):
1. The Archive (dir. Sean Dunne), it sounds like a more triumphant cousin to Alan Zweig’s Vinyl, a doc. that explored the alienation and obsessions of a dozen North American record collectors. (The Archive is showing with Vashti Bunyan: From Here to Before)
2. Channel 2 (dir. various). A collection of poetic shorts on space and place, ranging from the Middle East to the West Midlands.
3. David O’Reilly’s Secret Cinema/Unpacked. Web hoax central, David O’Reilly’s visit is a see it to believe it affair.
4. The Juche Idea (dir. Jim Finn). Like a lot in the programme I know nothing more about this than what-the-blurb-says. But I think what-the-blurb-says sounds amazing.
5. Close Down. It’s not wrong to look forward to the end of the festival when the end of the festival promises to be as ram-jammin’ as this. There’ll be music, requests, shorts, Colour and a farewell to the mindbendingly wonderful Floodgate Kino.
Keep on clicking. Curtains up in just a few hours…
Led by umbrella-wielding tour guides (pointing devices rather than rainsavers) last night saw the launch of the Flatpack Installation Trail. Dedicated trailmakers began at Urban Outfitters for Chris + Keir’s ‘tribute to the 19th century Canadian Vaudevillian Rob Ring’.
David Osbaldestin and John Wigley of BIAD were both on brolly duty and led the ramble (and discussion) across all five installation hotspots (map). A gothic love story, cross-looping noir narratives and Hitchcock sms intertitling took us through to Digbeth’s favourite bright yellow building, COW Vintage where Phil Barber’s untitled, multi-monitored, screensaver death piece concluded the tour.
Pete Ashton was on hand with his Flip and comprehensive footage is on his Vimeo page. I relived the tour this afternoon in the cold light of day, hoping to take some more photos. (Note: monitors in windows in daylight makes for difficult subject matter.) All will be uploaded to the Flickr shortly. In the meantime you’d be advised to do the rounds and see with your own eyes. The installation trail runs until March 15.
© Flatpack Festival 2010