Matt Watkinsworks in photography, light projection, motion graphics and animation. With Lucy McLauchlan he formed the Beat13 collective in his hometown of Birmingham to encourage the collaboration of artists and musicians and also worked extensively with Jamie Hewlett on his platinum-selling animated-band Gorillaz for 10 years.
In recent years he has been directing live performance visuals for stage projects such as Joy Division Reworked (with The Heritage Orchestra & Scanner) but with Mothwaspadopts a lo-tech philosophy utilising old projectors, modified instruments, homemade effects pedals and hand crafted visuals.
KINO 10 presents another installment of their Sunday Film Club as part of the Discovery Season at Library of Birmingham
This Sunday, they’ll be
playing host to the UK’s most prominent silent film accompanist, Neil Brand, who will be doing something completely magical on the piano as he accompanies Charlie Chaplin in his 1917, 20 minute film, The Immigrant, Buster Keaton in his classic short One Week, and a surprise film from another silent comedy giant with many funny gym jokes. A real treat for the eyes and ears.
The Immigrant (Charlie Chaplin) + One Week (Buster Keaton)
A programme of silent comedy shorts with live piano accompaniment.
All this week the Pavilion houses Carousel – Slide/Tape by Cathy Wade. She has created an immersive environment that explores ownership, time, sound and image. Come and meet Cathy and work with the carousels, original slides and mementos, to create ever changing projected environments. This residency is open til Sunday 20th October.
Image by Katja Ogrin
On Saturday 19th October, there’s another chance to catch the Birder’s Paradise workshop. Nestled around the library are 12 bird sculptures inspired by birds that feature in the content of the library’s collection. The tour is free, just meet at the Pavilion at 11am or reserve a place online at www.birmingham-box.co.uk
The next in our Sunday Film Club series an archive travel compilation of shorts with a focus on Birmingham on Sunday 20th October at 2pm. Amazing footage has been sourced from BFI and MACE (Media Archive for Central England). Tickets are £5 and kids go free. www.birmingham-box.co.uk
Masaki Batoh will be demonstrating his brain pulse music at Bring To Light
The next Discover New Music event is Bring To Light25-27 October – a Supersonic Festival inspired weekend featuring adventurous new music. The event features the internationally renowned artist Dinos Chapmanperforming his new sonic work, South African dance phenomenon Shangaan Electro, the roboticist and theremin player Sarah Angliss, the ‘brain pulse’ music of Japan’s Masaki Batoh and many more. Weekend and day tickets are available via www.theticketsellers.co.uk
Also that weekend, Flatpack Festival are celebrating early cinema with Box of Light. There’ll be performances, screenings and workshops. Bookings are open for very intimate performances of The Icebook. Thoroughly recommended, it uses miniature projects and delicate paper cut outs to create an extraordinary visual effect.Tickets are £5 www.birmingham-box.co.uk
Join us this weekend for the next Sunday Film Club, programmed by
Kino 10, where we delve into archival footage documenting Great British holidays (before we were calling them ‘staycations’).
Before there were package holidays and budget airlines, us Brits used to be more than happy jumping on a train and holidaying right here in good old blighty. For this special film screening, we’ll be looking back at those traditional English holidays and transporting you back to a bygone age with a selection of shorts from the 50s, 60s, and 70s. We’ll be reminiscing about summer holidays on the east coast in We Chose Skegness (1961), taking a high speed cab ride from Paddington to Snow Hill in the classic Let’s Go to Birmingham (1962), and coaching it up to the Peak District (1952). Part travelogue, part comedy, and part propaganda, these films, from both the British Film Institute and the Media Archive for Central England are a fascinating insight into how we once used to travel. They’re sure to make you smile and get you thinking about summer 2014. Expect deck chairs, tea ladies, and some tasty picnic treats.
Birmingham and Beyond is at 2pm on Sunday 20th October at Library of Birmingham Studio Theatre. Tickets are £5 and kids go free www.birmingham-box.co.uk
Before the days of film, the magic lantern was an important source of entertainment, using glass slides to create moving images and visual tricks. Birmingham played a key role in this pre-cinema world, producing thousands of lanterns for export, leading to the birth of the flipbook, and eventually the cinema. The Library of Birmingham boasts a hefty archive of 60,000 lantern slides, and to coincide with the Magic Lantern society’s annual conference in Birmingham, Flatpack Festival presents Box of Light, a weekend full of events, workshops and activities celebrating early cinema, part of the Capsule curated Discovery season.
Box of Light Variety Show / 25 October / 7.30 – 9.30pm / £8
An evening of edification and entertainment featuring acclaimed performer Professor Heard, followed by the Physioscope, a Victorian experiment with light and mirrors. The finale of the show is provided by French artist Julien Maire, whose Open Core performance includes a live dissection of a video projector.
The Icebook / 26 October / performances from midday / £5
Beautiful and intimate theatrical performances using paper cut-outs and miniature projections. The Icebook will delight small audiences using old pre-cinematic illusions and magic lanterns; to create shadows and silhouettes complemented with a film footage backdrop.
Projecteo / 26 October / 1.30PM / FREE (bookable)
Designer Benjamin Redford will be giving a talk about his ingenious miniature slide projector. In response to modern technology and the craze for Instagram, Benjamin has created a tiny projector to share Instagram pictures called the ‘Projecteo’. This analogue approach works by creating wheels of slide film to hold up to 9 images, which can be watched and enjoyed as a slideshow.
Mirror Mirror Lantern Workshops / 26 & 27 October / FREE (drop in)
Mirror Mirror will host an array of free family workshops, where visitors will have the chance to create their own lantern slides and experiment with colour projection.
Box of Light’s weekend is set to include more talks and activities and a comprehensive walking tour of key locations in Birmingham’s pre-cinema history. Watch this space for updates.
We’re thrilled to announce a wonderful event in partnership with Vivid Projects. A presentation of amazing footage from the Alan Lomax archive and Mississippi Records, featuring rarely seen film shot during Alan Lomax’s North American travels between 1978 to 1985 and Mississippi Record’s own enormous library of folk blues, gospel, esoteric, international and punk music. I DON’T FEEL AT HOME IN THIS WORLD ANYMORE takes place on Wednesday 26th June.
Eric Isaacson of Mississippi Records will be present and will screen a film of musicians associated with the Mississippi Records label such as one man band Abner Jay, angel channeling Bishop Perry Tillis, Rev. Louis Overstreet and his four sons, legendary folk singer Michael Hurley and many more. Each film segment will be introduced with brief stories about the musicians. There will also be a short slide show that tells the story of the underground music industry and Mississippi Records.
“Alan Lomax (January 31, 1915 – July 19, 2002) was one of the great American field collectors of folk music of the 20th century. He was also a folklorist, ethnomusicologist, archivist, writer, scholar, political activist, oral historian, and film-maker. Lomax also produced recordings, concerts, and radio shows in the U.S and in England, which played an important role in both the American and British folk revivals of the 1940s, ’50s and early ’60s. During the New Deal, with his father, famed folklorist and collector John A. Lomax and later alone and with others, Lomax recorded thousands of songs and interviews for the Archive of American Folk Song at the Library of Congress on aluminum and acetate discs.”
“Eclectic independent record label named after the record store located in Portland, Oregon, Mississippi Records specializes in vinyl reissues of American roots, blues, gospel, art punk, and world music, among other recorded obscurities. “
This event takes place on Wednesday 26th June at Vivid Projects. Tickets are £5 and available via theticketsellers.co.uk
Our friends at Flatpack Festival have set up a Kickstarter campaign, asking people to pledge fund to their festival hub – the Flatpack Palais.
“A lot of what goes on in the Palais is free, and we’d like to keep it that way so that as many people as possible can enjoy a piece of Flatpack. Some of the budget is already in place, but setting up a temporary cinema-cum-music-venue-cum-café-bar isn’t cheap. Your support will help to pay for technical equipment, seating, signage, and most excitingly all the great things that we’re hoping to put on in the building during the festival: from short film programmes to live bands to psychedelic poster shows. In return you’ll have the satisfaction of helping to make a unique cultural event happen.“
One of the most innovative film festivals around, the programme is a treat each year and we can’t wait to see what they’ve got planned for 2013.
Brace yourself for a juggernaut of Heavy Metal cinema, blazing a trail across the Black Country with an awesome programme of documentaries, rare archive, late-night horror and special guests. The heart of the action will be at the Light House Cinema in Wolverhampton, with a menu of movies that will take you from Midlands’ foundries to Moroccan rooftops, from spandex nonsense to raw doom.
Below are some of the highlights, but you can read the full programme at www.homeofmetal.com
The Home of Metal Roadshow – FREE
The Vintage Mobile Cinemais a beautiful 1960s cinema on wheels that has been restored and will be traveling across the Black Country for the weekend. Come onboard and watch archival and Heavy Metal related short films, exploring the industrial landscape of the region.
Thursday | 3pm – 8pm | Queen Square, Wolverhampton
Friday | 10am – 4pm | Dudley Museum & Art Gallery
Saturday | 11am – 4pm | The New Art Gallery Walsall
Sunday | 11am – 4pm | Haden Hill House
Detailed programmes for each day can be found here.
As part of a special knees up, Home of Metal is taking over the gallery with films, live music and a Silent Metal Disco. ‘Patch Jacket’ is a collection of shorts exploring the full spectrum of Heavy Metal devotion and Gentlemans Pistolswill be bringing their no frills, filthy rock n roll.
Sponsored by The Kraken Rum – cocktails will be available.
The legend goes that some blokes from a heavy blues band called Earth passed a film poster in Perry Barr, and decided to pinch its title for their new name. Expect women in peril, clunky dubbing, bags of suspense, lush, lurid colours and Boris Karloff threading it all together in style.
Sound It Out | Saturday 3 Sept | 4pm | The Public | FREE
Nottingham-based filmmaker Jeanie Finlay’s latest film sees her camera trained on the employees and punters of Sound It Out, Teesside’s last surviving independent record shop, and crafted a moving portrait of vinyl obsessions. We’re delighted that she will be present to talk about the film.
A self-portrait of Loughborough teenager, Chris Needham deals with adolescent trials including woman trouble, musical differences and an annoying little brother. Chris is still pledged to Heavy Metal, and will be here to talk about his film afterwards.
It’s 25 years since Jeff Krulik and John Heyn walked around the Capital Center’s parking lot in Maryland, interviewing boozed up rockers before a Judas Priest gig. The resulting document has become required viewing on tour buses across the globe, and now you can enjoy the clothes, the hair and the language in all their glory. Featuring live music from Stinky Wizzleteat and Selfless, DJs and food. Sponsored by The Kraken Rum – cocktails will be available.
After our Saturday night party, you can check out a late night screening of this video nasty. Napalm Death lynchpin Shane Embury has selected one of his favourite horror movies, where a hotel conceals the gateway to hell. Expect gore, mayhem and face chewing spiders.
Cathy Come Home + Q&A | Sunday 4 Sept | 3.30pm | Light House, Wolverhampton | £4.70/£4.20 concession
The gripping tale of a family turfed out of their home, Cathy Come Home is best known as a campaigning drama-documentary that helped to change housing policy. It’s also a vivid snapshot of Birmingham in the 60s, filmed on the same Aston streets where Black Sabbath played as kids. Producer (and long-suffering Villa fan) Tony Garnett will be here to talk about the film.
This is Spinal Tap | Sunday 4 Sept | 8.30pm | Light House, Wolverhampton | £4.70/£4.20 concession
What better way to round off the weekender than with the mother of all metal films? A spoof documentary (or, if you will, rockumentary) which set out to satirise the worst excesses of hair metal and pomp rock, This Is Spinal Tap ended up becoming a touchstone and perhaps even an inspiration for many of the bands it took the mickey out of.
Between the Hammer and the Anvil