As you may have noticed there’s a bundle of 2012 highlights up on our homepage now – tickets for these events will be available from Monday 6th Feb. This is just the beginning, but gives you some idea of the range of things on offer at Flatpack this year. Some other joys in store…
BIKERMANIA – A programme devoted to British biking culture, including George Formby at the TT Races, Black Country Hells Angels and an evening of two-wheeled entertainment from BFI Flipside.
FILM BUG – An invasion of Birmingham’s city centre featuring countless free screenings, walking tours and live scores around Colmore Row.
MISSPENT YOUTH – Formative movies selected by a range of people including sculptor Cornelia Parker, comedian Adil Ray and Joe Dunthorne, author of Submarine.
OUTER SIGHT – A series of far out psynema specials including ‘weird world’ speakeasy, celluloid sleepover and a trip into the uncanny world of Robert Morgan.
BRING YOUR OWN BEAMER – One room + many artists, each with their own projector = visual overload. More info coming soon.
Plus your basic screenings of amazing films from all over the world including new work from Aki Kaurismaki, Ben Rivers, Jafar Panahi, Park Chan-Wook and Werner Herzog, the return of Puppetology, music docs galore and archive gold. The full programme will be up here on 20 Feb, with plenty more updates on here and twitter in the meantime. Exciting!
Flatpack tends to involve a jumble of artforms, so this year’s collaboration with storytelling wizards YARN makes total sense. With your help we’re aiming to recreate the entire plot of Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, through the medium of song, performance, film, illustration and literature (and probably a few others). Each participant will be allocated a slice of the Charles Foster Kane saga (around 6.5% of it), and will then have to work out an interesting way of telling it. This is how it works…
- The doors are now open to your expressions of interest – just fill in the short form on Yarn’s site and let us know why you’d like to be involved;
- On 1 March submissions will close, and we’ll select fifteen teams (three for each artform) to tell the story;
- Shortly before the festival each team will receive their story-chunk, with a week or so to prepare for…
- The grand finale. On 18 March – the last day of the festival – the entire film will be recreated at the Custard Factory from start to finish in a dazzling, multi-media, cast-of-thousands performance known as Five Stories High.
That’s about the size of it. If you’re interested in taking part, keep these dates in mind and think about what sort of team you’d want to put together – solo submissions are also very welcome. There will be very little in the way of budget for participants, but technical and emotional support in abundance and some free Flatpack tickets.
Each year Flatpack pays homage to a patron saint, someone from Birmingham who has played a role in film history. In some ways our honoree this year was a bit-part player – a man whose CV includes roles like ‘Front End of Horse’ and ‘Man Hit by Tomato’ – but Charlie Hall (1899-1959) was also an integral part of the team behind cinema’s best-loved double-act. Apart from the boys themselves, he appeared in more Laurel and Hardy films than anyone else, as well as writing gags, building sets and working with the likes of Abbot and Costello, Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. He grew up in Ward End, Birmingham (down the road from the birthplace of Iris Barry, last year’s patron saint) and this year we’ll be doffing a cap to him.
In the meantime, here’s a festive selection of L&H. Charlie is the chap who kicks out the dog (Laughing Gravy) 30 seconds in…
Flatpack 6 is approaching fast, and the team just keeps on growing. We’re now looking for two interns to join us between January and early April – one Festival Assistant and one Marketing Assistant. If you think you’d benefit from the experience have a look at the information below, and then get in touch with your CV and a brief idea of why you’d like to be involved in this year’s festival. Please state clearly in the email which role interests you.
There may be another couple of months until Flatpack proper, but there are various ways of filling the gaps inbetween – including a series of special Colour Box screenings at mac. On the first Saturday of every month we’ll be putting on a series of amazing international films for all ages, kicking off on Saturday 7th January with Studio Ghibli’s marvellous 1988 fable My Neighbour Totoro. More details can be found over at the 7inch website, and you can book tickets via mac.
© Flatpack Festival 2010