Just a heads-up to let you know that Beautiful Losers is coming out on DVD in the UK next week. A portrait of the group of artists who emerged from one New York shopfront gallery – including Mike Mills, Margaret Kilgallen, Shepard Fairey, Harmony Korine and Barry McGee – Aaron Rose’s film was a popular draw at the last Flatpack. Judging from the uk website they’re pushing the skate angle pretty heavily, and it’s also showing at the ICA until Monday.
A couple of other updates from FP3:
> Let The Right One In is also out on DVD;
> David O’Reilly has gone and made a U2 video;
> and the Moon Dreams programme will be making a slight return at the Green Man festival this weekend, alongside British Sea Power, Outer Sight and the unruly Sugarfoot ladies.
Ps:: A couple of additional updates
> David O’Reilly has posted a version of his Flatpack talk online;
> Both Helen and Shifty are now out on DVD;
> and turntable whiz Jim Le Fevre has a new website. And a new baby. Congratulations Jim!
Sifting through all the images and data and audience reaction from the festival is a mammoth job in itself, and it can be hard to translate into anything digestible. Thanks to the joys of Wordle I’ve just fed all the comments from the 200 or so feedback cards we collected, and this is what came out the other end:
Feel the love! If you scrutinise carefully you can find the more critical stuff, particularly in relation to the coldness of the warehouse on the first night before we fixed the heating, but on the whole it’s all embarassingly positive.
Perhaps the biggest complaint (ie, about ten cards) was lack of local advertising/publicity. Talking to other festival folk this seems to be a familiar issue. In fact we got some really good local press/TV coverage, scattered the brochures everywhere and the installation trail was great for raising awareness, but making a real visual impact on a limited marketing budget in a big sprawling place like Birmingham is hard work. Anyway, this will be a priority for next year.
By the way, belated congratulations to the five winners of our comment-card competition… Peter and Julie Stainton (Southwater, West Sussex), Charlotte Eastop (London), Jasmine Hayward (Perry Barr), Sarah Coulston (Gainsborough) and Michael Fitzgerald (Earlsdon) have all won themselves an annual subscription to Electric Sheep.
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.
Photograph by Hilmi Ramlan
As it involved quite a lot of things going on at the same time, there was only so much of the festival we could get to ourselves. Thankfully the joys of self-googling mean that we can relive the whole shebang through other people’s blogs…
Both Winnie and Kate Spragg wandered around Birmingham on the installation trail;
Owen Lee painted walls and took photos at Floodgate Kino;
Russl got annoyed with the calendar, but enjoyed Curzonora;
Nixon Leung was knocked out by David O’Reilly;
Samantha Moore took her offspring to Paper CInema;
James Yarker took his down to Floodgate St, and loved Rod McLachlan’s Paintcan;
Alec Chalmers had a jampacked Friday and Saturday, then decided to knock off on Sunday before his brains and eyes became runny;
Hilmi Ramlan had a mixed Saturday afternoon;
and Meme Cortex got lost in Digbeth after watching Sleep Furiously.
>> Extras
Olivier Ruellet’s flatpacked weekend;
Post mortem (arf);
Mubarak Elmubarak on In a Dream, Unpacked and the festival in general;
A feast of post-match analysis on the Little White Lies blog – 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 ;
David O’Reilly on his Birmingham jaunt;
Friction Arts look back on their weekend at the Edge;
and a review of Curzonora at Birmingham Live.
So we are left with an empty warehouse, a bad head and lots of memories. Many thanks to Eleanor McKeown for diligently feeding the blog while we were elsewhere. And thank you to the legions of people who have helped out in so many ways over the past few days/weeks/months. Still can’t believe we actually did it. Pictures, post mortem shortly. All feedback and constructive criticism much appreciated.
© Flatpack Festival 2010
