FILM DASH
Thursday 11 March at the Electric
The second edition of this 48 hour film challenge just wrapped up, and the results will be on show at the Electric tonight from 7pm.

WM FILMMAKERS FOR HAITI
Saturday 13 March at the Edge, Cheapside in Digbeth
Fundraiser featuring shorts, promos and DJs.

FILM RATS
Thursday 18 March at the Sunflower Lounge
Regular evening of films and performance, now transplanted from Selly Oak to a new venue in town.

Submissions are also still open for the Shorts on Walls event at Flatpack – get your animations to AFWM by 18th March.

[via @AnimateProjects]

The usual pre-Flatpack tumbleweed on this blog. Just posted a brief summary of what you can expect in the festival over here – full details online in a fortnight.

As usual at this time of year our blogging and listings have tailed off horribly. If we weren’t so distracted we’d be telling you about stuff like the Endless Supply film screening in Digbeth tomorrow, or maybe even our own gig on Sunday.

howdy –

Please excuse the tumbleweed, we’ve been busy on this.

At the last 7inch event we showed a brief clip from 1981 Indonesian horror flick Mystics in Bali, by way of a taster for a full screening at Flatpack in March. The response since has been so striking – ie, numerous people saying ‘what the hell was that?’, ‘you’ve infected my dreams’, etc – that we felt that we should spread the joy a little further. If you like the look of it, the dvd is available from Mondo Macabro. And this Thai advert for Sylvania lightbulbs is a handy primer on East Asian bogeymen:

We haven’t found a name for this expectant bird yet but you will find him adorning the rejiggled Flatpack 3 website, as well as lovely flyers which are already wending their way across the country. The site includes info on how you can submit your own work to the festival, or indeed a suggestion for the short film programme, and there’s also another one of those pesky blogs. Design by Gas and web wizardry by Jacob Masters. The festival runs from 11 to 15 March 2009.

…And while we’re on the subject of film festival blogs we should say a swift bigup to the one for Sheffield Doc/Fest (5-9 November), which manages to be consistently thoughtful about documentary and not just flogging their events.

Today the UK Film Council announced the recipients of their national Festival Fund award, and it gives us great pleasure to confirm (rustle of envelope) that Flatpack Festival is one of them. The fund was set up last year to support and enhance two UK film festivals of international significance (ie, Edinburgh, and probably London) and up to eight festivals of national (or potentially national) significance. They picked seven in the end, including Sheffield DocFest, Cinemagic in Belfast and Nottingham’s Silent Cinema Festival, and Flatpack has been awarded £70,000 over the next three years to build on the promise of the first two editions. (There’s more background on the festival in the projects section, or last year’s programme is at flatpackfestival.org)

So what does this mean for us, the producers of Flatpack? Well, the money will obviously come in handy, although there is still plenty of work to be done on the fundraising front. But it’s also a fantastic stamp of approval, a big frilly rosette from the national body responsible for film. To build something like this up on a really tight budget, to show that there’s an audience for this kind of programming, and then to secure the support which allows you to plan ahead and think a bit bigger; it’s a mighty good feeling. And without going all Oscar-night about it, it wouldn’t have been possible without all the filmmakers, volunteers, artists, promoters, technicians, funders, venues and enthusiastic punters who have chipped in to help us get this far. So thanks a lot, and here’s to Flatpack III in February 2009 and beyond…

(And congratulations to DeafFest at Wolverhampton Light House, who were also on the list)