Some nice puppetry action in Ben Lister’s latest video:

Lisa Li-Lund ‘Bloodface’ from ben Lister on Vimeo.

PS: Birmingham band KateGoes need an audience of sock-monkeys for their next video. If you’d like to contribute check out this handy youtube guide.

This summer we welcomed a new office-mate to 7inch towers; Chris Keenan, a photographer/filmmaker who sent in some of our earliest submissions and has carved himself a living as a roving man-with-camera. It’s really nice to have him around. We get to be puppets in his slow-mo experiments:

Slomo tea from 7inch cinema on Vimeo.

Here’s a shot of some mountains which Chris took in New Zealand, recently selected for the Art of Photography show in San Diego:

Here’s a couple of shots from the Coffin Fittings Works in the Jewellery Quarter, out of action since the 1990s but accessible this weekend thanks to the Heritage Open Days. The workers at Newmans carried on in cosy, slightly lethal, semi-Victorian conditions right up until the place shut down thanks to the decline in folk getting buried. When Birmingham Conservation Trust had a look around they found a treasure-trove of old ledgers, ironwork, embalming fluid and hefty stamping presses, all of which has been catalogued and stored until the day when the place reopens as a museum. Unfortunately that day now looks a lot further off since Advantage West Midlands pulled out of the project. There’s more info here if you wish to voice your support, and some great images in this flickr group.

Having heard various rumours and had a couple of emails bounce back, someone confirmed to me last night that Metro have shut down their West Midlands office. This is a doggone shame. For some years this free rag has distinguished itself with excellent coverage of cultural stuff in the region. Us people in the arts find it very easy to moan about the limitations of the regional media, but in my experience when I’ve had an event to plug there’s always been someone receptive and enthusiastic at Metro happy to pass on the word. Often they’d get in touch with you rather than sitting back waiting for press releases to roll in, which seems increasingly rare amongst journalists. So bigup respect to Annette, David, Dan and the rest, and good luck with whatever you do next. Metro Life continues, but it will be a whole lot more London-centric from now on.

Of course this is part of a much wider meltdown for print media. In a big sprawling place like Birmingham it can be hard work getting the word out on your gig or exhibition, and it may well get harder if all the arts and listings writers vanish. Plenty of people attempt to fill the gap with DIY listings sites, blogs and mailouts, but although it’s more expensive and worse for the environment and really bloody hard to sustain I do think if this information is going to break out and reach new audiences then a printed listings mag is part of the answer. One with an attitude. Area, which launched before the summer, may be it. To cover all the city’s little scenes and pockets a publication should reflect the jumble of networks and voices that you can find online. Birmingham has a tradition of this – go hunt down 1900s back-issues of The Owl in the library, where arguments about the Boer war sit alongside writeups of the local variety shows, or opinionated 70s zines like Broadside… I know it’s the 21st century, but paper rocks! Here endeth the scrambled Friday afternoon rant.

A mountain of knitted mice, created by Joyce Hall. We’ve been steadily handing these out as we trundle around on the Travelling Picture Show, and will be distributing the last few this month. Beyond the jump is a list of the remaining tour dates, and a copy of this month’s copious listings mailout. If you want to receive these things on a regular basis fill out the box on the left.
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A little aching and fuzzy-headed today after a lovely few days in the Usk valley for Green Man festival. For the first time in three years we got a consistent view of the mountains around us, and barely a drop of drizzle until Monday morning. Our filmtent stuff went really well on the whole; very lively kids matinees, an attentive crowd for The Moon and the Sledgehammer, nice shambolic Sugarfoot boogying and a queue right across the field for British Sea Power, who did not disappoint. So exciting to be sat in a tent rammed with people watching a beautiful old movie with a great live band. A word also for Paul Shallcross, who accompanied silent comedy on Sunday morning and went down a treat. I had forgotten how brutal and hilarious Laurel and Hardy were in their pre-talkie days, and if hordes of children went on a destructive rampage that day it was probably our fault.

Of course we weren’t the only attraction of the weekend. Some of our highlights included -
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As we pack our bags for Green Man, here are my top 5 things for the month….

1) Moon (dir: Duncan Jones)
Saw it last night and was well impressed. Saturated in 70s sci-fi influences, but still its own film. Brummie-spotters should listen out for a nifty Clint Mansell score and adman Trevor Beattie also put some money in.

2) The Shape of Things to Come by Greil Marcus
Being a big fan of Lipstick Traces (which gets a 20th anniversary reissue this year) it was exciting to stumble on this in the library. Marcus can be quite dense and tangential but it’s worth hanging on for the ride with this one, a rollercoaster thesis on American prophets which goes from Lincoln and MLK to Laura Palmer and riot grrrl, finishing off with David Thomas of Pere Ubu. (Thomas is popping up in the lit tent at Green Man.)

3) It Felt Like a Kiss (dir: Adam Curtis)
Curtis has kindly posted the entire one-hour film from his recent Punchdrunk collaboration in Manchester. They’re touring it next year and it may not be online for long. Bit of a rehash of some of his other work, but some marvellous tunes and editing.

4) Ambivalence Avenue by Bibio
We already plugged this, but that was before we listened to it properly. It’s bloody gorgeous, a perfect summer album. Go get it!

5) We Love You So
If you’re going to plug a movie, why not add something to the world in the process? The trailers for Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are have been getting grown men all squishy, and the WLYS blog has updates on the film, Sendak online and also a plethora of vaguely related tipoffs on design, film, childrens lit and all sorts. Thanks to them we looked up the work of John and Faith Hubley, Google’s archive of Village Voice back-issues, and this smart video for Sour:

The trailer for Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr Fox, on the other hand, does not look so hot.

Another short from the Travelling Picture Show programme, made as a graduation film at CalArts by Nicole Mitchell. This one is part of Fantastic Planet, and always goes down well.

Our favourite short film review so far (not of the above) was: ‘Boring and weird and funny and sad’. All in ten minutes!

The Travelling Picture Show kicks off in Lichfield today. (I’m not there but apparently it’s going very well.) One of the most consistently popular films in the programme is a fifty year-old French short with hardly any dialogue about a boy and his balloon, and even if you haven’t seen it there’s a good chance you’ve come across something influenced by it.

For a start there’s a Juliette Binoche film and a stage production, and note the multicoloured balloon clusters currently floating about in Pixar’s Up and Sofia Coppola’s Dior ad. These films celebrate the feelgood side of The Red Balloon – if you want the brutal underbelly check out the Don Hertzfeldt cartoon Billy’s Balloon. Decidedly not for kids.

Two Birmingham film-happenings that have come to our attention…

Stalker Night
Friday 17th July @ AE Harris in the jewellery quarter
Stans Cafe present an evening devoted to one of their favourite films, including vodka and Zone images.

Shadow Shows
Sunday 26 July @ the Custard Factory in Digbeth
An ‘experiment in surreal horror’ by Pram and Filmficciones as part of the Supersonic festival. Scott has built a very impressive triple projector cradle for this. Oops, we just noticed that the show is already booked up. Well, there’s loads of other film-related stuff going on at the festival – including an installation at Moor St Station, AV performances by Tim Wright and Benton-C Bainbridge, and of course a Sunday night prog-synth blowout courtesy of horror soundtrack legends Goblin.

Also look out for music doc screenings at the Victoria pub during the summer, courtesy of Let’s Go Swimming.