Day One at The Flatpack Film Festival
Published 15 months ago
Birmingham is an industrial city and at first glan...
Birmingham is an industrial city and at first glance it does seem strange that the current cultural obsession with all things ‘urban’ has passed this place by. The lilac pearlescent jellyfish of the Bull Ring hovers like a hallucination above the city centre and huge viaduct like arches which cut through Mill Heath Lane where there is a kind of art house village, a huge complex of studios, shops and galleries.
I’m here for the Flatpack film festival an alternative film festival taking place in independent cinemas and galleries around the city. With shorts and feature length film from all decades and parts of the world it seemed like and is pretty essential viewing.
Last night the Finnish documentary The Living Room of the Nation was screened at the Electric Cinema. Directed by Jukka Kärkkäinen, the film follows the lives of ordinary people living in Finland, which, of course lets us see them in a truly extra ordinary light using long still camera shots of them speaking to the camera or to the people in their lives giving the ‘characters’ space to tell their story.
The most moving part of the film being the following of Tero, a young father, as he at first comes to terms with becoming a father and the subsequent changes following the birth of his son Henri.
Following that was the Mexican Panic Movement film Alucarda which featured bandaged hysterical nuns, exorcisms and (of course) a hell of a lot of screaming, nudity and well, panic. Great stuff.
