Flatpack Palais Opening Thursday 28 March, 8.30pm Flatpack Palais / Free
If you’ve not been to Flatpack before, a glance at last year’s video postcard (vimeo.com/41970971) gives you some idea of the various uses our festival hub gets put to: talks, 16mm screenings, psychedelic gigs, OHP draw-offs and magic lantern shows. It’s also a place you can drop into for information or free screenings, and grab a drink. This year we’ve moved to a larger space: the former home of the Deritend Free Library, just across the road from last year’s Palais. As well as tea, coffee and the obligatory cake, the bar will include ales from Purity in Warwickshire and Kingstone Press Cider, product of Aston Manor, Birmingham. Around the corner you can also find lovely fresh food – see below. The challenge with these pop-up cinema spaces is often ensuring a good view of the screen, and so we talked to students at Birmingham City University’s School of Architecture about creating a raked area of seating. Their solutions to this brief covered an amazing range of ideas from foam hills to concertina sheds, and we can’t wait to see their final design put into practice. We’d like to thank them all for their energy and imagination, and
particularly their lecturer Alessandro Columbano who has pulled the whole thing together. Given that we’re paying tribute to Birmingham Arts Lab this year (see p.6), it’s fitting that the students ended up deciding to create an auditorium out of pallets just as the Lab did back in the 70s. A number of original Lab members will be reuniting in the Palais on Friday 29 March to talk about this fascinating period (p.24), and throughout the weekend you can also see a selection of the eye-popping posters they created on their silkscreen press. The whole place is officially unveiled on Thursday 28 March from 8.30pm, where you can sample a range of delights on offer over the following three days. None of the above would have been possible without our brilliant Kickstarter backers: over 150 of them. Our first foray into crowd-funding was occasionally nerve-wracking, but it also helped remind us what the festival means to you lot. Thanks! All backers are listed at the back of this brochure, on the website, and occasionally onscreen in the Palais.
Flatpack Kavarna
Birmingham Arts Lab Sessions
Poster show
Exhibition opening:
Basha Baranowska
Kjærsti Andvig & Lars Laumann: 999321
Thursday 28 – Sunday 31 March, 12–5pm daily + performance, Saturday 30 March, 7pm Vivid Projects / Free Vivid Projects is delighted to be working with Flatpack to present some very special events focusing on the unsung story of the Birmingham Arts Lab, a sometimes itinerant and ferociously creative structure that is more relevant than ever for those in the arts today. Expect a bricolage of sounds, films and memories celebrating the anarchic spirit of the period; from post '68 revolutionary fervour to Rock Against Racism. Interviews with key players from the scene will be channelled via Trevor Pitt and look out for an extraordinary performance from Sarah Angliss in the spirit of Bruce Lacey.
–18–
Thursday 28 March
29-31 March, 11am-8pm Flatpack Kavarna / Free Barbara ‘Basha’ Baranowska was part of the famed Polish Poster School that began in the late 1950s. Together with artists such as Jan Lenica and Roman Cieslewicz, Baranowska employed a striking graphic sensibility with limited means to create a procession of startling film posters. However, perhaps her finest achievement in Poland are the book jackets and illustrations she created for the Polish-Jewish writer Adolf Rudnicki. She relocated to Paris in 1968, and throughout the 1970s created numerous striking images employing a variety of techniques and styles. Best known for her poster for Andrzej Zulawski’s cult 1981 film Possession, screening on Friday 29 March (see p.25), Baranowska’s work is ripe for rediscovery. This exhibition presents a selection of Baranowska’s posters from Poland and France.
So that the sound of munching doesn’t interfere with your film viewing, we’re setting up a temporary café around the corner from the Palais, right next door to the Custard Factory theatre. This will be open from 11am–8pm, Friday 29 to Sunday 31 March, and each day Birmingham’s brilliant Change Kitchen will be serving fresh vegetarian and veganfriendly meals from 12–2pm and 5–7pm. While you’re in there check out Basha Baranowska’s incredible film posters (see below) and a paste-up display of Arts Lab ephemera.
Thursday 28 March, 6pm Grand Union / Free 999321 is the first collaborative exhibition in the UK by Kjærsti Andvig and Lars Laumann. The video installation narrates the true story of the relationship between Norwegian artist Kjærsti Andvig and Carlton Turner, a Texan Death Row inmate. Consisting of work made by Turner, Andvig and Laumann, including the documentary-style video Shut Up Child, This Ain’t Bingo which charts the development of their artistic and romantic relationship until Turner’s execution in 2008 and its ensuing implications. Exhibition continues until 4 May 2013: see www.grand-union.org.uk for details.