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Some good news relating to film funding, just for a change. The BFI have a Transition Fund for “projects facing budget cuts in funding as a result of the changes in the national and regional film funding landscape”. There were two successful local applicants:

Birmingham International Film Festival
Award: £4,950
The Birmingham Black Film Festival promotes the work of local black film makers and is the only event of its kind in the West Midlands.

Flatpack Festival
Award: £14,400
Flatpack Festival aims to make audience engagement with film a creative process by delivering unique social experiences through the use of innovative screening venues in and around Birmingham.

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In the past couple of days the two festivals have posted retrospectives.

Flatpack have posted a slideshow of photos (with more on their Flickr account)

.

While Fierce have rounded up their 2011 festival with a nice, photo-heavy blog post and some links to things others have written about them. They sign off the post saying:

On June 18th we’ll announce the Fierce Festival Caravan of Artists 2011 – 2012 who will form the core of next year’s program at our Start Party. It will be free and welcome to all so come along.

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Flatpack and Fierce 2011

It’s festivals a gogo with the Fierce and Flatpack festivals kicking off today with a whole load of interesting stuff coming to Birmingham between now and Sunday.

You’ll no doubt have done the decent thing and booked up a load of tickets for both of these already but, if not, there should still be time. I’ve had a nosey through the programmes and reckon that I’ll be going to the following:

Tuesday:

Wednesday:

Thursday:

Friday

Installations and ongoing things that I’ll try to catch when I can:

All subject to having to work to do and so on. Plus I’m not around this weekend, which is a shame because there’s some ace stuff happening.

What are you going to be going to?

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Flatpack 5

28th
Feb
2011

The new site and programme is up for this year’s Flatpack Festival (23-27 March). Hoorah!

Flatpack Festival

I’ve had a brief skim through and, as with previous years, would recommend ignoring the titles (which tend to leave me going ‘Eh? Never heard of it’) and read through the descriptions (which tend to leave me going ‘nice, I reckon I’ll go to that too’).

Of the things I’d already heard of, I’m looking forward to:

And this lot looks good too:

There’s also a Paper Party (as a kind of progression from last year’s Plasticine Party), a vintage mobile cinema and all sorts of other goodness. It’ll be great buy tickets and don’t forget to see the free stuff too.

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Summer brought with it degree show time of year and also the first Birmingham European Theatre Festival (which I’m pleased to see will be back again this year). Listings started coming out for the HMV Institute too.

The days were getting longer, which was probably just as well for Rhubarb Rhubarb, who seemed to doing loads. Birmingham presented its final bid for the City of Culture and we crossed our fingers. Temper filled the streets with fashion icons. We looked at the trailer for Soulboy and discovered the blog for Reuben Colley Fine Arts.

The Arts Council announced a 0.5% cut in funding to RFO’s. Boo. We found some familiar faces in Synth Eastwood’s video tomfoolery from the Flatpack Festival. Treasured at the MAC looked good.

Bright Space started looking for people to get involved in Platform and I asked ‘Does Birmingham Future interest you?‘ and got a fairly resounding ‘Um, who?’. Theatre folk came together and spoke easy, the newly opened Zellig hosted the Bass Festival’s Fight The Power exhibition and there was talk of verbalising and visualisation.

Creative Republic launched Invisible City and Marketing Birmingham released a new promotional video for the city that featured a host of creative talent.

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Into March and while Capsule took Home of Metal to SXSW and Flatpack were readying another festival, Rhubarb Rhubarb opened the Rhubarb East Gallery

Pete took a break from the CiB Shop to give an update 2 weeks inThe Photography Collective formed and held their first meeting and We Are Eastside launched linking up Eastside’s creative organisations. Project Brutal was announced too.

The Bulls Head shared a few mixes from some of their guests and residents, Tindal Street released Alan Apperley’s Indeterminate Creatures, we had a look at As One’s work (as it seemed to be springing up all over the place) and Juice Aleem asked us to rock his hologram, with the video being filmed at Boxxed.

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flatpack

So news of next years Flatpack Festival has arrived, and it looks like there are a few treats in store. Along with their usual eclectic mix of film, animation, prize-winning documentaries, multi-media performance and interactive projections, they’re got a few novelties up their sleves.

The promise of a 22 seater vintage mobile cinema, a Friday night Drive-In, live scores and late night parties sounds like a pretty exciting prospect to me.

Personally i’m looking forward to catching this perfectly restored 1960′s Vintage Mobile Cinema which will be touring the city screening a range of shorts, home-movies and archive clips.

flatpack vintage mobile cinema

Following the success of this years Invisible Cinema tour of original 1930s art deco Odeons, 2011 will uncover more of Birmingham’s finest cinema heritage, including ex-picturehouses and forgotten celluloid landmarks. They also have an exhibition of images from disused cinemas planned.

Here’s a few other things they’ve got lined up;

Prostitute – on the eve of its re-release, Tony Garnett revisits his 1980 drama Prostitute, partly shot in Balsall Heath, a few years before community action shut down the local red light district.

Loft in Translation – screenings in partnership with MACE’s Full Circle project, which encourages people to retrieve home-movies from their attics.

Archive Revival - Artists and filmmakers who appropriate and repurpose archive material including work by Thom Andersen, Duncan Campbell and Peter Tscherkassky.

Other confirmations – 1992 video diary In Bed With Chris Needham, a vivid snapshot of an adolescent metalhead in Loughborough; the UK premiere of Shadow Shows, an experiment in surreal horror created by Pram and Film Ficciones; and Every Minute Always, an immersive sound piece using headsets in a cinema, inspired by Brief Encounter.

The full programme will be announced in February 2011, so keep an eye on their website and blog for more updates.

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Throughout the week of 22 – 27 March 2011, Birmingham will be treated to an eclectic programme of film and performance from Flatpack Festival and Fierce Festival, who’ve announced that they’ll be sharing dates next year.

Flatpack’s fifth festival will celebrate and take film to unexpected places; where new film fraternises with silent cinema and archives are re-imagined. Expect live soundtracks, workshops, installations, offbeat family screenings and a vintage mobile cinema which will roam across the city.

Fierce Festival returns after two years and the appointment of new Artistic Directors Laura McDermott and Harun Morrison.  True to tradition, spectacular projects and public interventions will collide with the kind of agenda setting performances and wild parties on which the festival’s ten-year reputation rests.

The full line up for each of the festivals is expected in February 2011, so keep an eye on their websites over the next few months, www.flatpackfestival.org / www.wearefierce.org

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That title should perhaps be capitalised, but I’m not sure whether it’s a Proper Thing or just a loose kinda ‘it’s complicated‘ thing*.

Anyway, I’ve had an invite to the launch of a publication celebrating the ‘vitality, innovation and diversity’ of this group that comprises:

[* not sure what I'm implying here]

**UPDATE**

Ah, it is a Proper Thing, I’ve found a blog post about it and a picture too:

BIFG

We’ve never had a caption competition on CiB as far as I can remember. Just a thought…

**Another UPDATE**

Ask and you shall receive – this was submitted to the CiB email address:

jj_brum
Splendid.

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