A couple of images from last week’s amazing Nosferatu rescore (with many thanks to Penny McConnell who took them and then had to wade through 4,000 Supersonic photos to find them). There is a handful of silent movies that are well-travelled and often get the live score treatment, and Murnau’s horrorshow is one of them. And yet - as Catherine Bray put it in her nice writeup - it seemed like a whole new film on Sunday. Testament to the skills of (clockwise from top left) Lucy Baines, Laurence Hunt, Hannah Baines, Grandmaster Gareth and Matthew Eaton (not pictured). They’ll be presenting the film again at Warwick Arts Centre in the autumn.

One of the speakers at this weekend’s Supersonic festival is Mark Pilkington, who edits Strange Attractor - the occult periodical and font of ‘exquisite high strangeness’. We’ve not actually laid our hands on a copy yet but it looks well good. Mark is also responsible for the Pestival event and various sound-making activities including a live score to Russian satire The New Babylon at ICA last month. Below is a short piece made by Julian House for a recent Strange Attractor event.

Though it’s a bit embarassing to be promoting this (honestly), you can if you choose blow an hour of your Wednesday evening this week hearing Ian Francis of 7 Inch Cinema talk about his favourite things at the Ikon gallery. I was pathetically chuffed to be invited to do this, being an inveterate list-maker and a big Desert Island Discs fan (especially now they’ve got rid of Sue Lawley). But once confronted with the long-awaited opportunity to bang on about stuff you like, it’s actually a bit of a headache whittling it down. I’ve gone for the slightly flippant/ random approach; and as always the David Shrigley postcard above my desk is a useful confidence-booster when preparing for public speaking…

Just booked tickets for our birthday treat, a Tuesday afternoon jaunt to London to wave down the Telectroscope and then on to see Guy Maddin’s fantabulous new documentary My Winnipeg, narrated live by the man himself. Regular viewers will know that mention of Mr Maddin’s work can get us all of a-flutter, in particular his shorts The Heart of the World and The Eye Like a Strange Balloon - we even devoted an event to them once. We’re also very fond of his book From the Atelier Tovar, a collection of journal entries and film treatments full of over-heated prose and candid accounts of his creative, financial and libidinous tribulations. Anyway, BFI Southbank are hosting a full Maddin retrospective throughout July and My Winnipeg will be perambulating the UK over the summer.

Terrific, random lineup of music for the Venn Festival in Bristol this weekend, running the gamut from A(rtamanova) to Z(unzunegui). (cheesy straplines our speciality!) Also a good opportunity to discover the world of Ergo Phizmiz, who has converted a scout hut into “an enchanted Bavarian woodland made of twigs, cutlery, mechanical birds and constant, ever-evolving sound”. Ergo will be one of our guests for Flummoxed next month, and has just released a digital single with People Like Us via WFMU.

(dang, can’t stop linking to WFMU…)

“The Bays incorporate a classical ensemble into their improvised electronic performance, using a unique system of real-time music scoring projected for the audience to see as well as hear.”

Sounds like there’s plenty of potential for disaster or triumph here. The Bays improvise, the composers throw the score at the orchestra as they go along, and the conductor hopes for the best… The video below gives you a bit more of an idea, and this writeup. Catch it on Friday as part of Integra; not the kind of thing you see at the Custard Factory everyday.

If you’re anywhere near Birmingham (uk) this weekend, be sure to book yourself an appointment with The Divine Edgar, which has found a new home in the Vaults restaurant as part of this year’s Fierce Festival. Scott Johnston’s unique premature burial experience was one of the highlights of our Halloween event at Ikon Eastside last year, and even if you’ve already sampled it a rerun is recommended; Scott tells us he is working on some modifications…

With superstar DJs no longer a guaranteed crowd-puller, clubnights are increasingly using films as a little extra something on the bill. Three examples coming up in Digbeth over the next couple of weeks:

> ‘Part of the Weekend Never Dies‘, a documentary about Belgium’s Soulwax outfit as part of their tour pitching up at the Custard Factory this Saturday;

> a ’21st Century Remix’ of epic Bollywood tearjerker Mother India (pictured) at the opening night of Drop Beats Not Bombs;

> and on May 10th DJ Yoda’s Magic Cinema Show, which is basically him cutting up lots of clips using Pioneer’s DVJ kit.

Went to the Cineworld Haymarket in London on Friday, currently bedecked with bunting and balloons for a stage version of Brief Encounter by Kneehigh Theatre. This started life at the Birmingham Rep (there had to be a Birmingham link somewhere, didn’t there?), but being almost completely ignorant of theatre we only just clocked it. What a show. It was the promise of clever film/performance tricks that pulled us in, and there were a few of those; it opens Purple Rose of Cairo style, with the heroine Laura jumping into the screen, and ends with an amazing train effect. But most of it is just ten actors and musicians working their arses off and having so much fun that the audience gets yanked along. We won’t start writing gushy reviews here; this Variety writeup gives you a fair idea of what to expect. £40 tickets, and worth every penny. Just smuggle in your own gin and tonic, theirs are rubbish and cost £7.

(And yes, this is the blogging honeymoon. Posting is guaranteed to slow down to a trickle in a couple of weeks.)

I remember back in the day - about 8 years ago - when we first started doing an event called Burdzeye at the Custard Factory. (Hopefully we’ve got better at coming up with names since then.) Fix Film Club was still around but that was about it, and someone even rang up to say ‘that was my idea, I was going to do a filmnight.’ Birmingham was very much a one- or two-filmnight kind of town.

Fastforward, and they’re everywhere. Last week, the Local Shorts Club. Tonight, the launch of a new AV night at Concrete in the jewellery quarter, and on Monday the Spotted Dog in Digbeth hosts a regular Irish Filum Night. Then next Sunday there’s us, plus Shorts on Walls, a new animator’s get-together the following night at the Rainbow. You’ve also got the occasional Monosin Short Film Festival (more of a night than a festival), until recently the Screen Test events at mac and from May a new season of screenings and events at the library theatre in town. And probably loads of others. They’re all doing quite different things, and all building audiences for different kinds of film. They’re egged on by cheaper kit, the marketing/programming power of the internet - and the increasingly limited choice in our cinemas. At least people are taking things into their own hands though. We may get misty-eyed about the days of latenight projector-battles, tussling over corners like dealers in The Wire, but on the whole this seems like a healthier scene.