The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was
Spawning snow and pink roses against it
Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:
World is suddener than we fancy it.
World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion
A tangerine and spit the pips and feel
The drunkenness of things being various.
And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world
Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes -
On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of one’s hands -
There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.
Written by Louis MacNeice while sat in a house in Birmingham in 1935.
Mike Johnston made a pilgrimage there last week.
It’s very easy to get tunnel-vision when you’re planning a festival. I find myself muttering lists of things to do as I trudge the slushy pavements of Birmingham, narrowly missing lamp-posts while mental spread-sheets blur my vision. Perhaps it’s a good thing then, that we’re off out of here for a couple of days next week. We’re taking part in a really tasty-looking event called Kino Climates in Rotterdam, a gathering of film venues and programmers from all over Europe. We get to sleep on a boat, and Paper Cinema are coming along with us to do their magic cut-out thing. On the way we’re doing a night at the Nova Cinema in Brussels, a place I’ve always wanted to visit. All very exciting, and if possible I will try and leave the mental spread-sheets at home.
PS: If you’re wondering what the heck is going on at Flatpack this year, fear not! Further details will follow very soon.
Ok, this is where it starts getting interesting. Tired of knocking a shuttlecock back and forth across a largeish office and conscious that there’s actually quite a lot to do between now and March, we have upsized the Flatpack team from two-person band to ten-legged groove machine. So look out for…
[Left to right] Jigisha Patel – our new coordinator. We kidnapped her from Ikon Gallery, but hopefully they’ve forgiven us. She’s great anyway, and is getting her teeth into all sorts including sponsorship, marketing, vintage buses and making sure our tea-towels get washed. Matt Moore – by day, a purveyor of bath-bombs, by night an undercover Art-Detector. Somewhere in between he’s helping to spread the good word on Flatpack. Ben Lynch – animator, facilitator and for the next few months tasked with logging hundreds of your film submissions and rounding up tapes and prints for screenings.
Then you’ve got Pip McKnight – sorting out the venues, cranking up the PR machine, hustling for money and occasionally looking souful at her laptop; and myself, Ian Francis, looking slightly grumpy because he’s still got quite a few films to find. There’s also Gas who does all the design, but good luck trying to take a picture of him.
Applications for the Coordinator post closed yesterday; many thanks for all the interest. And last Wednesday it was exactly six months until the festival begins, which is reassuring or scary depending on the weather.
If you’re in the London vicinity and at a loose end on Monday 19th October, we’re doing a Flatpack warmup gig at the Roxy Bar and Screen in tandem with Electric Sheep and special guests Bela Emerson and Bibio. All the details are on the 7inch site. The same day we’ll also be pontificating about festivals in the digital age (crikey) at an event called Virtually a Reality.
© Flatpack Festival 2010