Thanks to the very helpful people at The Ticketsellers, booking for Flatpack is a breeze. As you probably know many of our venues are pretty intimate, so if you want to be sure of seeing something – or take advantage of the 4 screenings for £20 deal – then sort your tickets in advance. Things which are selling particularly well include…
– If you’re planning to see the latter, you might like to know that there will be a pre-screening black metal warm-up session at Scruffy Murphy’s in Dale End beforehand. (Details for facebookites here.)
– The Odeon bus tour got a mention on radio 4 this afternoon when the Film Programme took a tour of the Electric; should be on iPlayer soon.
– As noted by Created in Birmingham, colourful stripes are appearing all over various festival shops and venues. David Hurley is also in the CiB shop over the weekend installing his strange family of mannequins.
– Finally, we end this disjointed and maybe slightly frazzled blog post with a doffed cap to our hero of the week – Adam at Aquila TV, who has been holed up in their edit suite all week compiling the shorts programmes.
Have a lovely weekend, and we’ll see you next week….
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.
(You may be sick of the sight of this by the end of the weekend.)
In other news…
-> there were a few issues with the booking system this week, so we’ve extended the closing date for booking Flatpack passes to the end of today. You can also pick them up from Floodgate Kino until Friday.
–> we’ve also noticed a few errors on the calendar page of the brochure. Many of the event/screening durations listed for Sunday 15th are a bit screwy (eg, Touki Bouki is not three hours long) so keep this in mind when you’re planning your day. We’ll post the right durations here shortly.
—> local people who can’t make it to Curzonora tonight can see some of the Birmingham Mitchell and Kenyon films on Midlands Today tonight. And don’t forget Vanessa Toulmin’s talk tomorrow…
As if putting on a film festival weren’t enough hassle, we thought we’d try converting a warehouse into the bargain… This weekend was non-stop action on Floodgate St. On Friday and Saturday tireless BCU set design students doing 12-hours days on the decor, pausing only for pizza. Then on Sunday the Destroyers were upstairs rattling through their new material for Curzonora. You can see the fruits of the band’s labours at Town Hall on Wednesday, and the marvels of Floodgate Kino will be open to the public from Thursday.
© Flatpack Festival 2010