Created in Birmingham

Birmingham Conservatoire are offering ‘tricks and treats for everyone’ at their Composer’s Platform Halloween Special. If dinner and theatre’s your thing The Kitchen Garden Cafe is offering Fright Bites with Don’t Go into The Cellar Theatre Company.

On the filmic side, The Electric are showing Ghostbusters and at the MAC you can see Nosferatu with a live score by the Midlands Fretted Orchestra.

Jumping the gun by a good eight days (if they turned up at my door that early I’d tell them to do one) are KINO 10 with a Halloween Special promising short films with a ghoulish twist.

Also brought to my attention:

• FIRST FRIGHT: a half-term Halloween horror workshop at MAC from First Light
• There’s a screening of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde with live organ accompaniment at the Town Hall
• Outer Sight Hallowe’en Super Shock Show at The Edge on Sat 29 Oct

Have I missed anything good?

Halloween might not be my bag but at least it’s an excuse to put some interesting events on.

Aside from the Ikon Eastside closing party there are a fair number of Halloween-themed things going on.  These are they (all happening on Friday 31 October, except the last two):

• The National Trust are putting on events in the back to back buildings (50-54 Inge Street/55–63 Hurst Street, Birmingham).  From 11.30am – 4pm they’ve got some nice events for the kiddies, then from 7pm to 9.30pm they’re “offering visitors a unique opportunity to linger for a while in our shadow-laden rooms, and silently reflect on the atmosphere of the back houses lit by candles, fires and oil lamps”
• The Town Hall are showing Nosferatu with an organ accompaniment by Nigel Ogden
• The Light House are showing Dracula, the Hammer version with Christopher Lee
• The Local Shorts Film Club are running a Halloween special at the Library Theatre
• Vivid are showing a slowed-down version of Psycho that will last a full 24 hours.  It starts at 9pm on Friday 31st and ends at 9pm the next day.  Entry is free
• At the Old Joint Stock Theatre, “Gemini present an evening of ghostly tales around the history of the Old Joint Stock followed by readings from a Medium”.  The night’s called Ghostly Histories and perhaps the scariest part is that the blurb mentions “clairvoyants with solid reputations”
• And on 1 November the Outer Edge’s next event at The Edge features “some obscure 3D horror and live horror sound effects from DJ FreakBeat”. Email outersight@live.com or text 07887 956297 for info.
• Also on 1 November, Capsule/ATP are putting on a Halloween show.

Thanks to the West Mids Life blog for a leg up compiling this.  Is there anything good I’ve missed?

The splendid 7 Inch Cinema folk have announced the return of the Flatpack Festival which took a year off this year.  The dates for Flatpack 3 will be 11-15 March 2009.

The website for 2007′s festival is still up including this description of what it’s all about:

The festival remains fiendishly difficult to summarise, but intrepid punters can expect to find shorts, animation, music documentaries, independent features, live soundtracks, discussion events, web oddities, installations, parties and plenty more besides – with a general focus on people using limited resources in imaginative ways

Details are still a little way off with venues just being booked up now.  Stay tuned though.

This bit of info came from 7 Inch’s latest newsletter/listings for October which is well worth a look.

Oh heck, and I’ve just noticed it also mentions this:

Tuesday 11 November at Warwick Arts Centre
NOSFERATU
More Murnau, this time with the Matthew Eaton/Grandmaster Gareth score performed at Supersonic in July. (Sunrise next please!)

I saw half of this at Supersonic and can’t recommend it enough.  Nor can Cat Bray for that matter.