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?

If you’re free this afternoon then VIVID is the place to be (or one of them, at least) from 2-6pm for Afternoon Delight, another Capsule birthday bash event:

Almost since day one, 7 Inch Cinema have been crouching in a corner at Capsule gigs with a video projector gaffa-taped to a stool showing films of hairy men shouting and small dogs in space. To celebrate the grannies’ remarkable and unexpected longevity we shall be gathering up some filmic highlights from the last decade and showing them at Vivid, alongside the customary mix of light snacks and word-searches

Outer Sight will be there too, bringing “disco sci-fi and noisy puppets”.

Also, if you’re in the area then pop into The Funeral of The Site which closes today.

While we’re on the topic of films, here’s the next few listings for the Birmingham International Film Society:

• 15 Dec – Conversations With My Gardener (6pm) and Le Pere Noel Est Une Ordure (7.45pm)
• 14 Jan – Chevolution (6pm) and Herostratus (7.45pm)
• хотелско обзавеждане21 Jan – Identity of the Soul (7pm)

The latter being a five-screen installation with HD plasma screens combining film, poetry, music and dance. Which sounds pretty cool.

All films are shown in the Library Theatre.

• trying to arrange a british tumblr meetup
  Substrakt’s Tom Martin would like to organise a British tumblr meet-up. If you work for any sort of digital agency in the city/region then it’d be worth getting in touch and lending him a hand
• Screen WM Acronym Glossary (SAG)
  Might be of use to someone (this is Google’s HTML version – a PDF is available). I found this while searching for info about the AWM SIS COG, in case you were wondering
• Nu Wave Interactive
  Nu Wave Interactive is animator, illustrator and graphic designer Matthew Field
• magicmedia
  magicmedia is the blog and website for Steve Chapman, a Birmingham UK-based creative media consultant
• BASS Festival 2008 on Vimeo
  Footage from the BASS Festival 2008
• Audio: Darcy Lange Round Table
  “On Tuesday 2 December Ikon hosted a round table discussion which considered Darcy Lange’s work both in isolation and in wider socio-geographical contexts; his fractious relationship with the art world and the influence upon his life and work of the Flamenco tradition of the Andalusian gypsies”. More good multimedia stuff from the Ikon Gallery. (Ikon peeps – any chance of whacking these into iTunes as an Ikon podcast?)
• CMYKern » Fluid
  Quick profile of some of Fluid’s lovely work
• Sarah Loves…
  Sarah Allen (who works with the likes of the Fierce Festival, British Glass Biennale, Events With Sparkle and others) has started a blog covering her design, architectural and cultural loves. And shoes. There will be shoes.
• YouTube – PsychedelicPsynema’s Channel
  Speakeasy cinema people Outer Sight have a YouTube channel for collecting together event promos, trailers, previously screened shorts and other stuff. Their next event is on 6 Dec
• transitions – artist action research
  Alicja Rogalska ran the art/public transport survey a mentioned a few weeks back. She’s emailed to say “I have set up a project blog to share information, data, images, etc. collected during my research”

Via 7 Inch Cinema

The Metro’s West Midlands Life blog (fresh from giving Artsfest a rather unnecessary shoeing) have reminded me of the Outer Sight film nights at The Edge that I mentioned a while back and completely forgot to follow up on.

The next one is apparently on Saturday and:

the very vague theme is ‘French Fancies & Freaky Kids Flicks’. Expect weird film from psychedelic animator Vince Collins and even weirder music.  Entry is £2.50 with invite or £3.50 without; for more information, text OUTERSIGHT to 07887 956297, or e-mail outersight@live.com to join the mailing list

So if you’re not listening politely to another quite pleasant acoustic act at Moseley Folk Festival then perhaps pop down to this.  Speaking of the Mofo Festival (as no-one is calling it, thankfully) it kicks off today and I hear that kids’ tickets have gone.  When I bought a ticket the other day (pay in cash at Polar Bear and avoid a hefty booking fee from some other outlets) they were going quick – apparently it looks like Saturday might sell out but there should be tickets on the door if you get down in time.