My red-hot productive day has fallen at the first hurdle thanks to an innocuous recommendation from Synth Eastwood. Mr Hugh Cooney is based in Dublin and has turned himself into a one-man production line for deranged youtube despatches which seem to be plucked straight from his subconscious with very little filtering. At the same time, they’re smartly put together. And bloody funny. A prolific fellow so it’s difficult to know where to start, but here’s his most recent piece:

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.

Hitching a ride with the Travelling Picture Show throughout the summer, animator Claire Evans has been making a ‘chain-film’ with young people all over the Midlands. Here’s a silent extract from the Hereford bit; the full film complete with spooky soundtrack will be showing at our gala finale on Sunday.

magic box hereford from themagicbox on Vimeo.

A nice post-gig buzz today, with the usual craving for a fry-up. I just wanted to draw your attention to Pontypool, a smashing little Canadian film which would be easy to miss amongst the current zombie-movie bombardment. This one only uses scraps of the zombie format, with a remote radio station piecing together the picture of a strange virus infecting the countryside around them. Disregard the Guardian’s one-star review (Peter Bradshaw is an eejit) and hunt it down if you can. And if you can’t, there’s always the radio-play re-edit; not quite as claustrophobic but a pretty good modern-day War of the Worlds (as in Welles). Kill is kiss!

Unfortunately Bibio won’t be able to play at the gig in London tonight, due to illness. Apologies for any disappointment; we’ll definitely try and do a return trip with him in the future.

At the Roxy on Monday we are sharing film-picking duties with Electric Sheep magazine. Here is one of their choices, a gorgeous 360° animation directed by Martina Stiftinger.

Onde Sonore from design.hagenberg on Vimeo.

A brief word for Living by Henry Green, a 1929 novel set in a Birmingham foundry. Not sure how it took me so long to hear of this but it’s one of the most lovely things I’ve read in ages. Strange, elliptical style with very few definite/indefinite articles and amazing eye for detail, although maybe not such an ear for dialect (played more west country than brummie in my head). Anyway, worth picking up.

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Here’s another film showing at the Roxy on the 19th. An Aussie production created entirely in Photoshop, and featuring the inimitable voice stylings of Mr Nick Cave.

The Cat Piano from PRA on Vimeo.

Another good tipoff from Chris Plant.

Ginger beards and chunky pixels are temporarily back in vogue, with BBC4 drama Micro Men taking a satirical look at the early-80s computer wars between Sinclair and Acorn. Longtime 7inch viewers will know that ZX Spectrum Orchestra have been inhabiting this hand-coded world for many years, showing steely levels of commitment which go way beyond retro kitsch to create electro tunes and perfectly-formed animations on the most rudimentary processors. We took them to Norwich in a minibus a couple of years ago and it was a joy to see them getting mobbed by Sinclair fans at the end of the show. At our forthcoming event in London you can enjoy a brief 20Kb-sized retrospective of some of their finest film moments, including the premiere of new piece Alpha Omega.

In his background notes animator Mike Johnston describes the film’s origins in the theories of mathematician Gregory Chaitin and a recurring dream about a ghost-ferry (which reminds me of the railway in Spirited Away). He also confesses that he has finally made the leap from working on an actual Spectrum to an emulator on his laptop.