Ikon Eastside, 183 Fazeley Street, Fazeley Studios
Digbeth, Birmingham B5 5SE
Ikon and 7 Inch Cinema present a weekend of film screenings, performance and discussion.
Tickets for each event are £5 unless stated otherwise. All Flatpack tickets are on sale from 17
February. Online at www.visitbirmingham.com, in person at Birmingham Ticket Shop, the Rotunda,
Birmingham B2 4PA or by calling 0844 888 3883
Man with Mirror
Saturday 14 March, 7pm
Filmmaker Guy Sherwin, with Lynn Loo, introduces a selection of his work, including his astonishing performance Man with Mirror. Aged 26, Sherwin
shot a Super-8 film of himself standing in a pastoral landscape, holding a screen in front of his torso. Now more than twice that age, the artist projects the original film onto an identical screen held in the same way, attempting to ‘mirror’ his own earlier movements. For the artist, the work’s “subsequent enactments... have now become a sharply focused document of transience.”
Cyrk_Points and Slashes
Sunday 15 March, 1pm, £3
Dir. Various
When not designing things like the Flatpack brochure Dave Gaskarth organises events as part of the Cyrk collective, exploring the outer reaches of noise and computer music. This programme, exploring the intersection between experimental film and sound art, includes:
Saturnus (dir: Ludo Mich) A debauched hallucinogenic fisheye orgy from the Belgian Fluxus artist.
Capitalism: Slavery (dir: Ken Jacobs) Antique stereographic image of cotton-pickers, reworked using computer animation.
Black and White Trypps no.4 (dir: Ben Russell) A Richard Pryor routine disintegrates before your eyes.
Starlight 1 (dir: Tina Frank) Short piece by the influential Austrian designer (Mego).
Also includes work by Otomo Yoshihide, Mark Fell, Oren Ambarchi, Pan Sonic, Curtis Roads, Ben Rivers and Survival Research Laboratories. Points and Slashes will end with a live performance by fellow Cyrkist and laptop entangler Lee Gamble (Entr’acte).
Contains nudity and strobe lighting. Suitable for ages 18+.
Privilege
Sunday 15 March, 3.30pm
Dir. Peter Watkins
USA 1967, 103 mins
Feat. Paul Jones; Jean Shrimpton; Mark London; William Job
Privilege is a dystopian satire bankrolled by Universal Studios and directed by Peter Watkins (Culloden, The War Game), made in that strange period when Hollywood got nervous about losing the youth market and put money into all kinds of crazy stuff. In the opening sequence pop messiah Steven Shorter (Jones, then of Manfred Mann) is paraded through his home city to Birmingham Town Hall, where he performs a prison-cell stage act with mock guards in front of a crowd of authentic screaming teenagers. From there we are plunged into the machinery behind Shorter, a shadowy conspiracy between business, government and the church designed to breed docile consumers. Simon Cowell’s favourite film (perhaps) and shot by the brilliant Peter Suschitzky - now a regular Cronenberg collaborator.
John Madin: Architect
Sunday 15 March, 6.30pm
A rare screening of this BBC portrait of the man who designed Birmingham Central Library, first broadcast in 1965. This event explores Birmingham’s architectural legacy, and includes a variety of archive film clips plus an introduction by writer Catherine O’Flynn.
For further details please visit www.flatpackfestival.org.uk