With so much brilliant stuff packed in to this year’s programme, it’s a tricky task to select just a few highlights. Here’s some of the events that I am curious to see:
First up, Too Much Information on Thursday 24 March, a chance to check out what this bunch of ingenious youngsters have recently been up to. If you’ve not yet seen the animated delights of David O’Reilly or Mikey Please, this is a must-see screening.
Then there’s the Memory Leak screening on Friday 25 March, a selection of mind blowing found footage films and reflective video essays by experimental makers Jenna Collins, Oliver Laric and Thom Anderson.
As an ardent horror fan, I am rather excited about Rubber by Quentin Dupiex, aka Mr Oizo. I’ve been anticipating its release since catching a teaser of the killer tyre on Mr Oizo’s Vimeo channel almost a year ago: http://vimeo.com/user1346942/videos Marvel at this cinematic oddity on Saturday.
Also on Saturday 26 March, don’t miss the screening of Duncan Campbell’s timely tale, Make It New John. The ever eloquent artist Duncan Campbell will also be conversing about his interest in all things political and archival.
And if none of the above should inspire, I’d recommend People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz’s remarkable Keystone Cut-Ups AV spectacle, Thomson & Craighead’s installation piece The Time Machine in Alphabetical Order and the unmissable touching debut feature, Self Made by Gillian Wearing.
Along with being at the festival for the Friday evening, I’ll also be around all day on the Saturday. There’s so many events I want to cram into the one day I’m there, but the things I really want to get to on Saturday include:
Unravel… I saw this on Vimeo a few months back. I’m slightly obsessive with old animation techniques, so adding to the longest hand-painted film ever made is something I’m definitely down for!
Rubber… I can’t stress how excited I am to see this third feature from Quentin Dupieux. I’m equally, if not more excited about the soundtrack, produced by Mr Oizo (Dupieux’s alter-ego) and Gaspard Augé from Justice. If it’s even a touch on the Mr Oizo and Sebastien Tellier’s soundtrack for Steak, I don’t think I could be closer to heaven if I died in the cinema.
The Paper Party… I’m looking forward to seeing Sculpture and Origamibiro’s set, but also being able to celebrate the end of a month-long collaboration between myself and Sam Potter (Late of the Pier), creating our show for the evening and then (despite gaining a sure-to-be hungover head from the night before) I want to stick around on Sunday to experience the every minute, always piece for two people and then I’m off again on the train! I can’t wait for Friday, and hope to see you there!
I’m Tegid, Festival Assistant. Over the last five months I have been doing everything from sourcing bed sheets to cover in concrete, finding places to park a Vintage Mobile Cinema to cycling round Brum distributing flyers! Here are a few things I’m most looking forward to:
Brent Green’s blend of stop-motion animation and live action is poetic, a little bit creepy and continually mesmerising. Based on the true story of Lag Wood, a man who builds a house in his back garden which he believes is a healing machine that can save the life of his girlfriend. Gravity Was Everywhere Back Then relies upon dream-logic to lull you through a complex story of loss and reconstruction.
Halfway between an animation and a film, a drama and a documentary Gravity Was Everywhere Back Then could come across as an exercise in filmic experimentation but at its heart is an attempt to understand a persons journey through grief, ‘I don’t understand how he saw how a lot of this stuff was gonna work. I think I do now, but when I was down there I couldn’t work out what the 23ft tower for a laundry room could possible do for someone’s life until you realise he was building up towards God.’ Dir. Brent Green.
It also features a beautiful soundtrack inspired by Lag Wood’s own recordings of ’crazy-people church music‘ and the Mid-West.
Celebrating the imminent departure of Pip, festival Co-Director for a career in midwifery, Busy Being Born is an array of films which look at how we come screaming, meowing and spinning into the world.
It’s also in this shorts segment that I’ll be taking an hour out of my assisting Flatpack to perform with MUTE - a jazz/folk/pop quartet who’ll be improvising to a silent 1940s documentary Private Life of a Cat. We improvise to silent films and add an extra element of risk by not watching the films we’re going to improvise to beforehand – expect strange harmonies and peculiar musical representations of cats. Not to be missed!
Well, a week has passed since I was dashing between the Custard Factory and Floodgate Kino and, like a gap year student returning from six months in Thailand, I’ve been boring anyone who will listen about my Midlands adventures. Read more
Made it to the Floodgate Kino just in time to catch Knitflicks, a programme of films originally put together to accompany Compton Verney’s ‘Fabric of Myth’ exhibition. The shorts – a combination of live action and animation – all focused on wool and thread. The charming programme was given an extra special touch when the audience was encouraged to knit as they watched (wool and needles kindly donated by Stitches and Hos!). I particularly enjoyed Knitting Pretty – a psychedelic Yugoslavian cartoon about Professor Balthasar and his merry band knitting eight-sleeved jumpers for a bunch of octopuses. Read more
I’ve just left my very first screening of ‘The Travelling Picture Show’ – a weekend of family matinees at the Electric. The cinema was packed with a sea of children (and a fair few adults!), squeezing into seats for illustrator Nic Rawling’s magnificent Paper Cinema. I, for one, had been waiting to see his show for some time now and, settling down in the auditorium to the strains of A-Ha with a box of chocolates, I wasn’t disappointed! Accompanied by live violin and guitar music, Paper Cinema provided an awe-inspiringly beautiful spectacle. Read more
After Unpacked, I caught up with Kieran Evans, the filmmaker behind Vashti Bunyan: From Here to Before, before heading down to the Electric Cinema to host a screening of the film and Q&A session together. The cinema was full of Vashti fans and had a really nice, friendly atmosphere. Kieran’s film presented an intimate portrait of the folk singer, Vashti Bunyan, who had a brief dalliance with fame in the 60s. Despite being billed as the new Marianne Faithfull, she never gained the success she hoped for and retreated from society, taking to the road in a horse and cart with her boyfriend, Robert Lewis, and artist friend, John James. Kieran and Vashti re-traced her original steps up to Scotland, just as she was re-emerging into the limelight, championed by musicians such as Devendra Banhart and Adem after a 30 years’ break.
In our Q&A after the film, Kieran explored ideas of myth and memory surrounding the legendary journey and explained how he approached Vashti to make the film (apparently it took lots of tea and cake and a whole two years of cajoling!). Read more
After recovering from the mania of Klaus Kinski (was slightly worried about him turning up in my dreams for a final bout of preaching), I woke up bright and early and headed down to the Fazeley Studios in Digbeth – grand converted factories. The studios were host to a day-long set of panels aiming to ‘unpack’ various Flatpack filmmakers. The event was brilliantly organised and really well attended with a mixture of artists, students and cinema-goers hoping to find out more about the creative process behind making films. Read more
© Flatpack Festival 2010