Robert Morgan slips between animation and live action, and is well known for creepy short films like The Cat With Hands and The Separation. It’s been a while since his last ‘proper’ short, but judging from the trailer for his new 23-minute stop-frame opus his work is still pretty creepy:
It’s showing at a London International Animation Fest event on July 4th, followed by a Q&A with Morgan himself.
The other night my daughter gave me back a sliver of the edge I thought I’d lost, by stomping downstairs and demanding that I turn this down:
…From back in the day when shooting a music video meant daft dancing, graffiti and lots of crash zooms. Tonight I’m showing a little selection of early 90s videos as part of an Eastside knees-up at VIVID called Cakeology, also featuring such Birmingham luminaries as DJ Gershwin and Jock Lee. And if you’re sauntering through the rag market in search of an adapter or some sari fabric this weekend, bear in mind that twenty years ago the place looked like this.
Occasionally two parts of your world come together in a strange and unexpected way, throwing a different light on each. I’m thinking of Steven Segal playing live in Bilston, and also of Thursday 17th February, when Crispin Hellion Glover touches down in Wolverhampton as part of a brief UK tour.
We know Glover mainly for twitchy, intense roles in Back to the Future, River’s Edge and Willard (pictured), or for his performance art acid wigout on Letterman. Even in Wild at Heart it seems as though he’s wandered in from another, slightly weirder film. As it turns out, Glover has been using pay-cheques from the likes of Charlie’s Angels to bankroll a trilogy of his own, far weirder films, employing a cast with Down’s Syndrome to probe at various taboos and provide an antidote to one of his bugbears, the corporate media.
At the Light House event next week he will present his second feature It Is Fine, Everything Is Fine! and perform his Big Slide Show. Decidedly not for everyone, but a unique evening and it won’t be happening again in these parts any time soon.
Sometime this month I’m hoping to get over to Nottingham for Christian Marclay’s The Clock. Researchers spent God knows how long trawling for footage of clocks from thousands of movies, in order to build up a twenty-four hour film which covers the entire clock-face; apparently clips of 5am were particularly tricky to find. The film runs at the New Art Exchange until 5 January as part of the British Art Show. Most of the time it’s only showing during the day, but you can see the full monty at an all-night event on 10th December.
While we’re on artists film in the Midlands, Warwick Arts Centre have two forbidding structures in their gallery at the moment which contain films by last year’s Jarman Award winner Lindsay Seers. The show is called it has to be this way2 and runs at the Mead Gallery until 11 December.
Birmingham Jazz, who worked with us on the Sunrise score at Flatpack back in March, are presenting another live film treat at the mac in a couple of weeks. The Oyster Princess is a 1919 romp directed by Ernst Lubitsch, better known for his more sophisticated 30s comedies but here taking the mickey out of high society with lashings of slapstick and inventive camerawork. The music comes courtesy of 14-piece Belgian outfit The Flat Earth Society, and tickets are a snip at £7/£5.
Birmingham’s love of threatened species and the soon-to-be-demolished has manifested itself again in a flurry of Central Library activity. Last night VIVID in Digbeth unveiled a new multi-screen video installation by Karin Kihlberg and Reuben Henry, filmed in the guts of the building on empty Sunday afternoons. It’s called Inbindable Volume, and runs until 21 August.
A group have also formed around the notion Project Brutal, aiming to celebrate the library ‘before it’s too late’, and this week Lucy McLauchlan has been painting a bird mural on the side of the building.
[via BiNS]
This might also be a good time to revisit the documentary about the man who designed the thing, John Madin, back when he had the world in the palm of his hand. This film helped inspire the writing of Catherine O’Flynn’s new book The News Where You Are, featuring an architect whose legacy gets demolished. And finally, when/if they do start knocking it down perhaps someone would like to film a sequel to this:
Birmingham timelapse from 7inch cinema on Vimeo.
PS: In anticipation of the big clear-out, there are some good film-books going cheap on the fourth floor at the moment.
Trailer for a new documentary about composer Raymond Scott by his son, Stan Warnow. Sensoria Festival in Sheffield are premiering the film next Tuesday, with Warnow talking to Martyn Ware (Heaven 17) afterwards.
Thanks to having our heads in a festival-planning hole, other Birmingham film-related stuff has passed us by over the last few weeks. Here’s a brief post to help rectify that…
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.
Birmingham timelapse from 7inch cinema on Vimeo.
This is a selection of images taken by amateur photographer Derek Fairbrother from the same spot in Birmingham’s Chamberlain square between 1963 and 1986. We’ve just compiled them for a new exhibition called Birmingham Seen which opens at BM&AG this weekend; other sequences include the Post Office tower and the Rotunda. With thanks to Pete James and Gaynor Fairbrother.
You might remember Danish troupe Efterklang from a joyous set at Supersonic last year. They’re returning to Birmingham next week, to play at new venue Asylum in Hockley. It’s just over the road from where Bonds used to be (home of Moneypenny’s, Boogie Down Brum and most importantly Oscillate) in an oft-ignored corner of Birmingham (by me anyway) which seems to livening up with student influx and pubs like the Lord Clifden.
Efterklang – Cutting Ice To Snow from Rumraket on Vimeo.
(The promo for Illuminant is great too)
Also coming up in Birmingham, one of the founders of Paris film collective Light Cone will be presenting a selection of work at Vivid on Saturday. And much further away, the Full of Noise festival in Barrow-in-Furness looks worth a visit.
