Today (Thursday 20th March) sees the return of Flatpack Film Festival, back for its eighth edition. The acclaimed Birmingham festival returns for 11 days of film, walking tours, installations, parties, workshops, pop-up screenings and more.
The Created in Birmingham team have compiled a list of ‘top picks’ which we are tweeting in the run up to the festival. As usual there is a massively broad range of events on offer at this year’s Flatpack . We’ve only highlighted 7 of about 150… and we’ve covered an anime film, documentaries, a 1920s classic with a live score, plastic animation, and sonic exploration.
Take a look through the programme to see what else is on offer including several films with food, Korean cinema, city walks, rare VHS screenings, parties, premieres and much, much more.
Here’s what the CiB team recommend, beginning with a top pick from Kate Wilkins, who selected Night on the Galactic Railroad at The Electric. Here’s what Flatpack say about it:
After many years of animating for others, Gisaburo Sugii finally had the opportunity to spread his wings on his own feature, adapting a classic Japanese novel about a boy and his friend voyaging across the Milky Way. It’s properly cosmic stuff, full of musings on God(s) and the universe, but it’s also a brilliantly visualised adventure with the two boys rendered as kittens and a suitably spacy score by Haruomi Hosono of Yellow Magic Orchestra. With thanks to Offscreen Festival in Brussels, we’re delighted to have the chance to screen Night on the Galactic Railroad from a 35mm print.
14:00-16:00, Sun 30th March at The Electric. £7.50/£5.50. Book Tickets.
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Jess Davies chose Murnau’s 1922 vampire film, Nosferatu, with a live score at Birmingham Cathedral. From Flatpack:
Endlessly parodied and plagiarised, the first ever vampire film remains one of the best, and ninety years on it retains the power to chill you to the bone. Summoned to the remote castle of Count Orlok, estate agent Hutter finds a shadowy, nocturnal creature who gets extremely animated at the sight of blood. Before long, Orlok is steaming towards Hutter’s home-town in a boat-load of coffins, with Hutter’s own wife Ellen firmly in his sights…
An expressionist fever-dream with moments of surprising tenderness, Murnau’s Nosferatu could so easily have been lost forever. After facing its own (fully justified) charges of plagiarism from the Bram Stoker estate all copies were ordered to be destroyed, but happily one stray print turned up in the USA many years later. The version screening here is from a recent restoration that has done the film full justice at last. Although we’ll grant you it isn’t a silent movie that has suffered from under-exposure, you will see it in a different light tonight thanks to a terrific live score from a Birmingham ensemble made up of Matt Eaton (Pram, Micronormous), Grandmaster Gareth and other members of Misty’s Big Adventure.
20:30-22:00 Sun 23rd March at Birmingham Cathedral. Book Tickets. Part of Film Bug.
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Amongst Kassie Fleet‘s list of ‘must-sees’ is More Canals Than Venice, showing at the Flatpack Palais. Here’s more about it:
If you’re unaware that Birmingham has more miles of canal than Venice, then you’ve not spent nearly enough time with a proud Brummie. If, however, you’ve heard that fact a million times and believe it to be the only (semi-)impressive fact about the second city, you’re in for a bit of a surprise. Steve Rainbow’s labour of love covers 100 facts about Brum; some you might know, others you won’t. Here’s one to whet your appetite: in 1875, three quarters of the world were writing using pen nibs made in Birmingham. Not bad hey? 98 to go…
Preceded by Digbeth Delights (dir: Andy Howlett), a filmmaker’s search for the elusive River Rea.
18:00-19:15 Sun 15th March at the Flatpack Palais. Free.
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R J Baddeley will be heading to The Great Flood at mac Birmingham. Here’s the blurb from Flatpack:
As Darren Aronofsky’s Noah steams towards multiplexes, this new film from Bill Morrison needs no digital trickery to show the damage that water can do. It’s built up from hours of archive footage filmed in 1927, when the Mississippi’s banks broke in 145 different places and forced thousands of people from their homes. There are some familiar sights – families fished from their front doorsteps into dinghies, a couple stranded on a car-roof – and like Hurricane Katrina, it’s a natural disaster that throws man-made inequality into sharp relief. Threaded through the whole film is a beautiful score by jazz legend Bill Frisell, who hints at the way this mass migration northwards helped to change music forever.
Filmmaker Bill Morrison will be present to introduce this UK premiere, and elsewhere in the festival we’ll be screening his previous works including Decasia and The Miners’ Hymns.
18:00-20:15 Sat 29th March at mac Birmingham. Book Tickets.
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Ed Bentsi-Enchill highlights animation Mary and Max:
Plasticine animator Adam Elliot made the leap into features with this beautiful, melancholic tale of an unlikely penpal correspondence between two misfits; an eight year-old girl in the Melbourne suburbs (Toni Collette), and an obese New Yorker with Asperger Syndrome (Philip Seymour Hoffmann). As with Elliot’s shorts, flawed human beings are rendered with warmth, wit and zero sentimentality, and the depiction of autism puts most Hollywood treatments to shame.
18:00-19:30 Sat 22nd March at the Birmingham Midland Institute. Tickets for this event are free. Part of Film Bug.
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Rob Green chose Saul Bass: Quest + Why Man Creates: “If, like me, you’ve got a real passion for the visual arts then you won’t want to miss this…
“Late, great designer and Academy Award-winning filmmaker Saul Bass is being celebrated at this year’s Flatpack Film Festival on Sunday 30th March, at The Custard Factory from 6.30pm – 8pm. As well as his outstanding corporate work designing logos, Saul Bass is best-known for his iconic film poster designs and title sequences for which he was commissioned by the likes of Martin Scorsese and Stanley Kubrick.
During an accomplished career spanning 40 years, Bass also got behind the camera himself. Of the handful of films he directed, his Oscar-winning animated documentary about the power of the creative process, ‘Why Man Creates’ (1968), and another of his efforts ‘Quest’ (1983) are being shown at The Custard Factory Theatre. With tickets from just £5.50, this is a unique opportunity to see some of Saul Bass’ fantastic behind-the-camera work. This showing is sure to sell-out quickly, so don’t miss your chance.”
18:00-20:00 Sun 30th March at the Custard Factory Theatre. Tickets £7.50/£5.50. Book Tickets.
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I’ve gone for If Wet. I’ve been meaning to head over to Worcestershire for their regular event, but never have quite managed to yet:
If Wet is a monthly event of sonic exploration in a village hall in rural Worcestershire; part show-and-tell, part test-bed, part salon. For their first urban venture hosts MortonUnderwood have assembled a lineup to suit Flatpack’s aquatic leanings, including a demonstration of their own One Water Instrument (pictured). Other guests include: interdisciplinary artist Sebastiane Hegarty, who will be talking about rain choir, a sound installation he created for the crypt at Winchester Cathedral; and Trevor Cox, Professor of Acoustic Engineering at the University of Salford and author of Sonic Wonderland: A Scientific Odyssey of Sound. To round things off you are invited to bring a sonic oddity (of any kind) to share as part of ‘Run What Ya Brung’.
If you do wish to contribute please drop a line to: hello@ifwet.org.uk.
The event runs between 15:00-18:00 Sat 29th March at the Flatpack Palais. Tickets are £5 and this covers your entry to If Wet & Solipsism Cinema. Book Tickets.
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Take a look through the programme yourself to see what else is in store!