Category: BPreviews

On Thursday 19^th March, Flatpack Festival begins its annual ‘affectionate assault’ on Birmingham’s senses, running until 29^th March. Tickets vary for each screening or event, with limited ‘Flatpass’ advance tickets available for  £80 – allowing entry to (nearly) everything on the festival programme.

For further details about events & tickets, including online purchase points, visit http://flatpackfestival.org.uk/

2015 marks the ninth Flatpack Festival, a Birmingham phenomenon and selling point for the city’s artistic underground. Flatpack doesn’t position itself in the mainstream and it maintains a healthy autonomy through the selection of locations the festival is delivered in.

From café’s to pubs, and cathedrals to conservatoires, most of the events, covering ten days, are concentrated within a mile or so of Birmingham City Centre – with a few events reaching out to Newtown, Digbeth, the University of Birmingham and even Dudley.

Critically acclaimed and achieving a fair amount of national attention, Flatpack Festival has consistently delivered a magnificently eclectic line-up each year; 2015’s festival is no different, covering film in every definition possible through music, arts & exhibitions.

From building your own hand held camera obscura, to visiting an exhibition of the history of visual music and live cinema, from exploring the history of coffee from farm to cup, to watching a series of the best British comedy shorts or voyaging through the hidden world of slime moulds – there is something at Flatpack Festival 2015 for pretty much everyone.

Here are a few events at Flatpack Festival 2015 that Birmingham Review will be keeping an eye out for:

8bit Lounge @ The Old Joint Stock, Fri 20^th Mar, 12noon – 6pm
For those of you that find modern day gaming a bit of an anti-social endeavour, which only allows you to enjoy the company of flailing limbs or brotherly carnage, this oldskool hark-back to the glory days of simple gaming will have you dancing for joy.

The Old Joint Stock is hosting an afternoon of retro gaming on prehistoric consoles; if you’ve got a soft spot for Pong, and don’t mind playing games where you only have to use one hand, then this is probably the place for you.

Entry is free, for more details visit http://flatpackfestival.org.uk/event/8bit-lounge/

Also check out the screening of Europe in 8bits, Javier Polo’s documentary about ‘the 8 bit scene in Europe’ – at The Old Joint Stock on Friday 20^th Mar, between 6:30pm – 7:50pm [Cert.15] / http://flatpackfestival.org.uk/event/europe-in-8bits/

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The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant [Cert.15] @ John Lee Theatre, B’ham & Midland Institute, Fri 20^th Mar, 6pm – 8pm
For those of you with a love for German cinema, Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972) is a look into the loneliness and power of a prominent fashion designer based in Bremen.

A curious 124min narrative scripted almost entirely to her apartment bedroom, with an all female cast. The Flatpack Festival 2015 screening will show a newly restored version of the film. Fassbinder made 39 feature films in his 37 year life; Alan Fair will be leading an informal discussion about the The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant after the film’s after screening.

Entry is free, for more details visit http://flatpackfestival.org.uk/event/the-bitter-tears-of-petra-von-kant/

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Edwardian Horror Show @ B’ham Museum & Art Gallery, Fri 20^th Mar, 8pm – 11pm
Ever wondered what a gallery is like without the hustle and bustle of visitors? This is a chance to wander the halls of BMAG after hours, experiencing the accompanying emptiness that is so often missed in the busy(ier) daylight.

There will be screenings of some early cinema spooky short films, including Frankenstein – a take on the Mary Shelley original from the Edison Company (1910), and the demonic The Red Spectre (1907) by Segundo de Chomon. Hosted in the Edwardian Tea Rooms at BMAG, there will be gothic music and haunted show-tunes to accompany the show.

Tickets are £7.50 / £10, for more details visit http://flatpackfestival.org.uk/event/edwardian-horror-show/

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Internet Cat Videos @ The Old Joint Stock, Sat 21^st Mar, 2pm – 3pm
What feels like one of the oddest concoctions to come out of Flatpack Festival 2015, but perfectly fitted to their eclectic approach (and possibly the most likely subject to guarantee an Internet audience these days) is a bunch of under 5’s showing cat videos.

But for those who are unaware of the phenomenon that is furry-creatures-doing-stupid-things-online, you will be introduced to the ‘cutest, funniest and strangest videos’, spliced together by a team of under-5’s for an hour. And submissions are still being taken… is there no end in sight – email info@famalam.org

Entry is free, for more details visit http://flatpackfestival.org.uk/event/internet-cat-videos/

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Time + Motion @ Millennium Point (atrium), Wed 25^th Mar, 7pm – 11pm
For those who like to disconnect completely with reality, immerse yourself in an evening of live animation and performance at Time + Motion – including the first UK showing by Japanese duo Usaginingen. Usaginingen’s self-made machinery produces real-time visuals through filters which are soundtracked by a live percussion score. Something you have to see and hear to believe.

Also at this event, Sam Meech will be sharing his brand of ‘knitted cinema’ with a mix of stop motion, 7-inch singles, Eadweard Muybridge photography and (of course) knitting. Whilst Sculpture will be ‘using a mix of analogue and digital practices’ to ‘explore the realm of electronic music, kinetic art, comic strips and audiovisual cut-ups’.

People can also explore the atrium between performances, checking out Jim le Fevre’s ‘spinning world of phonotropes’, Paul Gittens’ psychedelic wall of shadows, and Sellotape Cinema’s world of… clue’s in the title. Or you can ride a life sized ziatrop; there’s really quite a lot to do for a fiver.

Entry is £5, for more details visit http://flatpackfestival.org.uk/event/time-and-motion/

Flatpack Festival 2015 runs across Birmingham from 19th-29th March. For full details, including all events on the festival programme and online ticket purchase, visit http://flatpackfestival.org.uk/

On Friday 20^thMarch, Warpaint come to the Birmingham Institute – performing their first date in a five date UK tour. Doors open at 6pm, tickets from £16 (advance). For further gig details & tickets, click here.

N.B. This gig has been rescheduled from its original date of Dec 5^th 2014 – previously purchased tickets will apply

Formed in 2004, Warpaint are an Indie rock group based in LA. Now an all female four piece, today’s members of Warpaint include Emily Kokal, Theresa Wayman, Jenny Lee Lindberg & Stella Mozgawa.

Warpaint are known for their American style indie/psychedelic rock. Their debut EP, Exquisite Corpse, was initially self released in 2008 after being mixed and mastered by John Frusciante. Picked up by LA based record label Manimal Vinyl a year later, Exquisite Corpse received a global release in 2009 to widespread critical acclaim – with the track ’Elephants’ being featured in Andrew Hull’s final film thriller, Siren.

Following the success of Exquisite Corpse, Warpaint signed to Rough Trade Records, with their debut album, The Fool, being released through the London born label in 2010. The Fool received more positive reviews for the LA based garage band, including a 9/10 from the NME, sparking a further tour of Europe and America – including an autumn tour with The XX.

Warpaint’s second, self titled album was released in 2014, and is mainly composed “from the ground” up by the band – with drummer, Stella Mozgawa, further admitting to the NME “we don’t have any concept of what it should sound like. Unless all of us decide that it should sound particularly minimal or electronic. Right now it’s important for us to experiment and write with one another.”

Produced by Flood, widely known for his portfolio of prominent rock acts (Smashing Pumpkins, U2, NIN, Nick Cave, PJ Harvey) Warpaint has been heralded as ‘seriously loaded with ambition and prowess’ and the band’s most accomplished release to date.

NME rated Warpaint with another 9/10, further stating ‘the listener becomes so embroiled with ‘Warpaint’ it’s like being in a relationship with someone who’s emotionally unavailable. Yet you keep coming back, and the album grows more intense every time you hear it.’

Warpaint come to the Birmingham Institute on Friday 20^th March, performing their first date in a five date UK tour. Doors open at 6pm, tickets from £16 (advance). For further gig details & tickets, visit http://theinstitutebirmingham.com/listings/upcoming-events/16775/warpaint-2/

For more on Warpaint, visit http://warpaintwarpaint.com/

For further listings from the Birmingham Institute, visit http://theinstitutebirmingham.com/listings

On Friday 13^th March, Ort Cafe hosts Ort Sings Nina Simone. Doors open at 8pm, with admission charged at £5 (suggested donation)

With all proceeds going to Dudley Mind, Ort Sings Nina Simone is a showcase of the artists’ best, performed by Abi Budgen, Amit Dattani, Eleanor Dattani, Sadie Roach, Kate Wilkins, Anne-Marie Allen & friends.

Ort Sings Nina Simone celebrates the music of the American jazz singer/songwriter and civil rights activist, Nina Simone, who died in 2003 from breast cancer. Considered one of the finest songwriters and musicians of her day, her music has lasted over fifty years and remains some of the most memorable music the world over.

Born Eunice Kathleen Waymon in Tryon, North Carolina in 1933, (she took her stage name because she did not want her religious family back home to find out she was playing piano in an Atlantic City bar) Nina Simone’s talent as a musician was evident when she started playing piano by ear at the age of three. She studied classical music with an Englishwoman named Muriel Mazzanovich, where she developed a love for Bach, Chopin, Brahms, Beethoven and Schubert.

After graduating from high school, the small community where she grew up raised money for a scholarship to study classical piano at The Juilliard School, New York City.

Turning her interest to jazz, blues and folk music after lacking the money to complete the course, she released her first album in 1958, and within a few years became known as a civil rights activist.

Nina Simone released forty-five albums from 1958 to 1993, a mix of live, compilation and studio albums. As one of the most extraordinary artists of the twentieth century, it is only fitting that this event celebrates the best of her.

With Nina Simone known to have lived with bipolar disorder and/or borderline personality disorder, as well as substance abuse, Dudley Mind is a fitting cause for an evening of the artists’ well loved music. Ort Sings Nina Simone also stands as testament to the potential, talent and achievements of people who also battle against mental heath issues.

You can access information on Dudley Mind at www.dudleymind.org.uk or by clicking on the logo.

A quote form their website states: ‘Dudley Mind aims to improve the mental health of people living in the local area, and to assist people experiencing mental health distress on their journey of recovery.  We are an independent charity that is affiliated to Mind (the national mental health charity).’

Ort Sings Nina Simone is held in loving memory of Chris Long.

Ort Sings Nina Simone will be held at Ort Café on Friday 13^th March. Doors open at 8pm with admission charged at £5 (suggested donation). For further event, visit http://ortcafe.co.uk/ort-sings-nina-simone/

For more on Ort Café, visit http://ortcafe.co.uk/

Sid Peacock comes to mac Theatre on Sat 7^th Feb, bringing with him a twenty strong big band – Surge. In addition to adding further string players, Sid Peacock & Surge Orchestra will feature two musicians as soloists: pianist Steve Tromans and drummer Mark Sanders.

Doors open at 8pm. Tickets are £12 (£10), available through mac box office.

Supported by Jazzlines, Sid Peacock & Surge Orchestra will be playing original compositions inspired by Sid’s recent experiences working with Ulster marching bands, traditional Irish musicians and as a British Council musician in Chongqing, China, in 2014. The concert also marks the culmination of Sid Peacock’s year as associate artist at mac.

Sid borrows the phrase ‘Bog Gothic’ from novelist Patrick McCabe to describe his new compositions. “McCabe’s books Butcher Boy and The Dead School dig deeply into the farcical and macabre side of everyday small town life,” says Sid.

Surge was formed in 2003 with a commission from Paul Murphy to mark the St Patrick’s Day celebrations in Birmingham. Since then the ensemble has released two CDs, Live in Birmingham 04 and La Fete, alongside performing live at Belfast, Cheltenham & London jazz festivals.

La Fete was recorded live for BBC Radio 3, with the track Hallucinogenic Garden nominated for a British Composers Award. The CD launch of La Fete, also at mac, featured Django Bates as special guest.

Reviewing Surge’s La Fete concert, thejazzbreakfast blog’s Peter Bacon said: “This band and this music has a clear musical lineage – that tussle of order and chaos, and riding the balancing line between them, was a crucial feature of the Charles Mingus band, is there in Hermeto Pascoal’s music, and fed the exhilaration in Loose Tubes.”

Cheltenham Jazz Festival programme advisor Tony Dudley-Evans further calls Sid Peacock “one of the most exciting composers in that difficult-to-define area between jazz, contemporary music and improv” and refers to his ”truly original voice”.

Sid Peacock & Surge Orchestra come to mac Theatre on Sat 7^th Feb ’15. For further information & tickets visit http://macbirmingham.co.uk/event/sid-peacock-and-surge-orchestra/ or phone (0121) 446 3232.

For more on Sid Peacock, visit http://www.sidpeacock.com/

For more from mac, including a full events & exhibition programme, visit http://macbirmingham.co.uk/

In celebration of his birthday (albeit a couple of weeks late), Tell-Tale Heart is an evening dedicated to Edgar Allan Poe.

Held at the Spotted Dog (Digbeth) on Friday 6^th Feb, the one off event will consist of readings, films and the occasional cupcake to honor the literary figurehead. Doors open at 7:30pm with free entry all night.

Widely known for his gothic short stories (alongside an occasional accreditation for the defining the fiction detective genre) Edgar Allan Poe also contributed a significant portfolio of poems, literary criticism and satire in his relatively short life as a writer.

Indeed Poe’s first published short story, Metzengerstein, is an ambiguous prod at the then popular gothic genre – prompting questions around the original MO behind much of the author’s more recognised works. Poe was also prominent in the burgeoning periodical and newspaper industry of the nineteenth century, both in the UK and USA, and published much of his work though publications he contributed to or edited.

But it is Edgar Allan Poe’s dark tales that stand as the man’s legacy, with works such as The Raven (Poe’s first  published success – albeit not a ‘tale’), The Fall of the House of Usher , The Masque of the Red Death, The Pit & the Pendulum and the Tell-Tale Heart still cited as influences with the kings of horror today.

And whilst the Cravens and Cronenbergs can respectfully pastiche the sound of skin against metal or muffled screams behind brick, many of Poe’s prominent and recurring themes, such as death, torture, isolation, insanity and being buried alive, are often attributed to the chaotic and self destructive life the author led. Orphaned at an early age, and consistent in his struggle with alcohol abuse (which directly claimed the life of his older brother and arguably claimed his own), Poe’s personal life was far from a happy one.

Later estranged from his foster family and ‘abandoned’ by the prominent women he knew, through death or desertion, Poe manifested a conflict with the world around him – falling out with many of his literary peers and accumulating a history of professional misconduct.

And despite laudable aims to live solely off his writings, Poe’s professional pretentions to start his own literary journal were never realised. His family and love live were perpetually unstable, in many cases due to his alcohol abuse, and the man now immortalized as the ‘master of macabre’ was found dead in suspicious circumstances at the age of forty.

But Edgar Allan Poe’s work lives on – influencing each cultural generation after the man himself passed away.

So sandwiched between his actual birthday (Jan 19^th) and the auspicious Friday the 13^th, what better way to celebrate the dark side of both literature and humanity than with The Tell Tale Heart: Edgar Allen Poe at the Spotted Dog (Digbeth) on Fri 6^th Feb.

Just watch out for a muffled du, dumm… du, dumm… du, dumm as you walk alone to the bathroom.

For more information on Tell-Tale Heart: Edgar Allen Poe, at the Spotted Dog (Digbeth) an Fri 6^th visit, http://www.spotteddog.co.uk/events/1119/the-tell-tale-heart-edgar-allan-poe/ or https://www.facebook.com/events/341593309358984/

For more about the Spotted Dog, including a full programme of events, visit http://www.spotteddog.co.uk/