After five years in the attic, last week we moved into the Custard Factory…
New address is on the contact page.
A belated heads-up; tomorrow (Sat 30th August) sees the second edition of Outer Sight exploding from every orifice of The Edge in Digbeth. Obscure fillums in a slightly obscure place, and well worth seeking out. This sophomore outing (sorry, have been reading Variety reviews) features plenty of warped family entertainment, lethal cocktails, 3D viewing booths and guest musical turns from Mr Simon and Mrs 7inch – who will turn into a proper DJ soon if we’re not careful. The fun starts at 9pm, let google be your guide…
Still recovering from our marathon drive home, with stop-off in Morecambe for Lancastrian tapas (?). Beyond the jump is a brief writeup of our Ballerina Ballroom experience…
You find us huddled on the foggy ramparts of Berwick-on-Tweed, halfway to the Ballerina Ballroom Cinema of Dreams; a new film festival in Nairn run by Tilda Swinton and Mark Cousins. We could have driven it in a day from Birmingham, but fancied a stop-off at Holy Island to see the spot where Donald Pleasance and Francoise Dorleac bickered in Cul-de-Sac. Good prep for Polanski’s next film – The Fearless Vampire Killers – which screens on Thursday at the Ballroom, amongst a programme of fillums clearly chosen on the basis of ’sod it, we like it’. What with cake, live scores, reclaimed shabby venues and Norman McLaren, the BBCD looks to be right up 7inch’s street. If we can get online at our caravan park, we might try and send you another postcard.
(…In true postcard style, this is being posted four days later from Inverness library.)
Spent an illuminating if disorientating day in Leicester yesterday, delving through Worcestershire’s past at the Media Archive for Central England. Films included some 1920s ads for local businesses produced by the Grand Cinema in Kidderminster, home-movies of floods in Worcester, news reports on asparagus-growing and carpet-making, and Chris Tarrant interviewing a man with four ferrets down his trousers. Some of this material will make its way into a tour of the county which we’re organising this autumn, and happily we’ll be able to screen archive footage of many of the venues which we’re visiting – including, pictured from the left, the amazing ‘Chinese Gothic’ of Tenbury Halls Pump Rooms, the restored Forge Mill in Redditch and the Priory in Great Malvern. More info on the project and a full itinerary can be found here.
