The tenth festival is nigh. Having been lovingly crafted for your discovery and delight, the full programme is now on sale, so dive in and enjoy. Kicking off slightly later than usual (19-24 April 2016), you can expect the usual boundary-defying cinematic fun and games in venues across Birmingham.
Born in a Digbeth pub and a Balsall Heath attic, Flatpack has since grown in many interesting and wonderful directions. If you’re feeling nostalgic you can take a look back at the festival archive.
Flatpack is a festival which takes over venues across Birmingham every spring. It draws people from far and wide with a mixture of films, performances, contraptions and surprises, and has been described as “magnificently eclectic” (Time Out), “joyously inventive” (the Guardian) and “the UK’s most creatively curated film festival” (the Independent).
But Flatpack is not just a festival – it’s also a state of mind. Actually, that’s overstating it, but it’s not confined to one time or place. The annual event was spawned from the year-round antics of 7 Inch Cinema, originally a mixed-media filmnight at the Rainbow pub in Digbeth. This grew to embrace inflatable cinema-tents, archive detective-work and DVD compilations, and ten years on we continue to produce our own projects and provide guest programming for others throughout the year. Recent collaborators have included Home of Metal, Green Man Festival, First Light, Birmingham International Dance Festival and the Independent Cinema Office.
Recurring themes include animation, music, artists’ film, archive discoveries, offbeat shorts for kids and live cinema. Flatpack are firm believers in creating a sense of occasion, exploring the fertile territory where film bumps up against other artforms, and showing people things they might not otherwise have seen.
See here for full events guide: http://flatpackfestival.org.uk/events/list/
Flatpack 2016 teaser from 7inch cinema on Vimeo.