September Screenings: It's Nick's Birthday in Budapest & Pilot For A 22nd Century Sitcom in Manchester

Two of the Institute's short films will screen in fully two different countries over the next few days, as It's Nick's Birthday plays Budapest and Pilot For A 22nd Century Sitcom returns home to Manchester.

It's Nick's Birthday will show at the BUSHO Budapest Short Film Festival, former hosts of both Pilot and our debut A Case Of Making The Knife Fit The Wound. If you’re in the area, the Institute heartily endorses spending at least a day and a night and a mealtime (oh sweet, sweet pasta!) at this intimate and friendly festival.

WHAT: It’s Nick’s Birthday @ BUSHO Budapest Short Film Festival
PROGRAM: Information Screening Mixer 2
WHERE: VÖRÖSMARTY SMALL HALL, VIII. Üllői út 4, Tel: 311 4542, Metro: M3 to Kálvin tér
WHEN: This Thursday, 3rd September 2009 @ 21:00
COST: FREE

The Manchester Pilot screening is a different sort of arrangement. You will certainly remember that Manchester's Kinofilm festival gave both the film and the Institute our debut screening at their 9th incarnation in 2005. In the run up to the relaunched Kinofilm 11, the organization is putting on a series of short film nights, and Pilot will feature in next week's courtesy of guest programmers Cinematopia.

WHAT: Pilot For A 22nd Century Sitcom @ KINO SHORTS 5
Presented in association with CINEMATOPIA.
WHERE: Green Room, 54 56 Whitworth Street West, Manchester, M1 5WW
WHEN: Next Wednesday 9th September 2009 @ 20:00
COST: £4 full/ £3 (conc)

Some sort of public interrogation will take place after the screening, for which Pilot director Graeme Cole will represent the Institute. Please note it is advisable to email johnw[at]kinofilm.org.uk in advance to reserve tickets.

This from Cinematopias comms dept:

“Just to let you know we're running the BEST OF CINEMATOPIA 09 programme at KINO SHORTS in Manchester. If you missed it at Glastonferret now's your chance to see it, if not come and see it again on a reet big screen!

As usual in normal Kino style, a number of the filmmakers will be present to talk about their films and be grilled by our eager audience of Cinephiles. Questions posed by Manchester's one and only John Robb, legendary punk-rocker, journalist, writer and media commentator."

It's Nick's Birthday screening :: 15th Sarajevo Film Festival

Our short Super-8 musical It's Nick's Birthday plays at the 15th Sarajevo Film Festival this weekend. If you, like my personal hero James Nesbitt (actor), are in town for the premier film festival in the Balkans, these are the details you will need:

WHAT: It's Nick's Birthday @ 15th Sarajevo Film Festival

PROGRAM: New Currents

1st screening

WHERE: KINO MEETING POINT

WHEN: This Sunday, 16.08.2009, 20:45

COST: BAM 5,00 KM and KM 6,00

2nd screening

WHERE: POZORIŠTE MLADIH

WHEN: This Monday, 17.08.2009, 12:30

COST: 4,00 KM and 5,00 KM;

Glavni Box Office/Main Box Office
Bosanski kulturni centar, Branilaca Sarajeva 24

Right click-save to download the festival brochure

I won't be able to get away from the office, but if you happen to spot Mr Nesbitt and fellow guest, the lout Mickey Rourke (former pretty-boy),do set the former on the latter on my behalf - we'll soon see who the real so-called "Wrestler" is!

I apologise for any violent sentiment that may be implicit in this last paragraph. Really they should talk it out. I just wish I was there.

There are further screenings coming up at the BUSHO Budapest Short Film Festival at the beginning of September and the 7th World Film Festival of Bangkok (November 6 to 15) - more details when we get them.

My artistic credentials

7pm, and in our compulsory - as they should be - lab coats, the evening begins with Abramović's The Drill. Forced to stare unblinking into strangers eyes, we are slowly disarmed, but school hall conversation between initiatiates undermines our mutual separation and suspicion. Marina's personality is authorative but the exercise lacks discipline. No explanations, Marina, just drill us!

The tests continue during the more rigorously dogmatic performances, 13 of them, that take place simultaneously for the remainder of the four hour show. My companion unintentionally breaks the rules by getting close to a boy pressing himself to the floor and being sad with an iPod. This behaviour is clarified by Amanda Coogan's turn, in which she repeatedly climbs half-naked up the stairs to think for a while, then with dignity toss herself from her perch to a "mountainous mound" below. The challenge is clearly set: which one is the more upset?

Into the next room, and here is the man who has taken all the shoes. No! Half the shoes. The other half are where you left them. Subsequent debate reveals a divide in olfactory appreciation of the performance. Were the pigs heads real? No they weren't, I didn't smell them; yes they were, I smelt them. We will return to see whether or not the shoe-hatted twig man has moved or not, though either eventuality would be disappointing.

Eunhye Hwang's orchestration of four transistor radios, variously between her armpits or legs or those of the audience, works, and no-one knows why. Perhaps the faux-naivety of the giant 80s specs or the willingness to both feed and be fed jelly by us animals conveyed a generosity that inspired trust and receptivity. Absurd bird dancing may be just what we do in life, when you think about it, in the same way that crawling on the floor or rolling our Sisyphian selves upstairs and off institutional precipices may be just what we do in life, when you think about it, but Hwang's conviction is mainlined through instinctive, improvised relationships. On the other hand, it matters more that the habitual art of the competing miserables is always going on, even when you are elsewhere. Returning later to see what Hwang is up to now, we find Garth Williams (among other animals, targeted with intense arbitrarity) of the Institute's It's Nick's Birthday cast has been handed a transistor. He will later suggest the jelly was apple.

It is Williams, too, who suggests the lack of male nudity versus the lots of female nudity may be down to the inconsistency - and unpredictability - of the male organ over a four hour period. There would be no guarantee that all the participants would have a fair go.

In the basement, the man smashing a rock or something on some metal or something or vice versa is definitely the most saddest artist so far. He is audible from the staircase down which (rather than off which) another nudie lady falls slow-motionly. I wonder what will happen if she reaches the foot of the stairs before the four hours are up? "Only a fool looks at the staircase when there is a bare bottom on show." A fool or a well-brought up boy from Surrey.

The wolf in sheep's in bear's in woman's in wolf's clothing is fully explained in the programme so nobody is daft enough to participate. But the paranoia starts pulsing on arrival at the disembodied mouth of Vitaly Titov. Has the artist invented the moment in Russian medical history here recreated, in which the victim of a factory mishap was kept alive for 20 days as nothing more than a head? Or has he fallen foul of, or paid tribute to the Soviet state's notoriously imaginative way of lying about its scientific breakthroughs? Is the artist an artist at all, or just a man? Possibly a Soviet plant? Is the set, complete with antiquated hand-washing basin and "glory hole" through which participants are variously requested to feed or apply lipstick to Titov's disembodied mouth really here, or is it all done with mirrors? Are mirrors a genuine phemonenon, or is what I have come to think of as mirrors in fact just a continuum of of hard-working lookey-likeys?

After a pub debrief, I return to find my bicycle has been locked in the grounds of the Whitworth Art Gallery. Manchester's queer vegan poet and I proceed to unlock it through the gaps in the railing and are able, with mutual co-operation, to lift the contraption to freedom. A frenzied flurry of activity taken to satisfy fleeting subjective needs framed by an uncaring institutionalised urban space performed for the passive consumption of the UK's excessive surveillance network - just what we do in life, really, when you think about it.

Glaston-Ferret Weekend

Pop up yer tent and take some drugs - it's Glaston-Ferret weekend at the Mad Ferret in Preston, with the full Festival package: "turfed pub, live bands, barbeque and real scrumpy (and the outdoor area’s roofed so you don’t need to worry about the British weather)". Our short Pilot For A 22nd Century Sitcom will be playing as part of The Best Of Cinematopia on Friday evening. Tents and drugs are not allowed.

WHAT: Pilot For A 22nd Century Sitcom @ Glaston-Ferret
EVENT: The Best Of Cinematopia Outdoor Film Screening
WHERE: Mad Ferret, 55 Fylde Road, Preston, PR1 2TQ
WHEN: This FRIDAY 26th June from 7pm
COST: £3

In Edinburgh? Industry?

It's Nick's Birthday is available for industry professionals to watch at the Edinburgh International Film Festival Videotheque from today until the 28th of the month.

"The Videotheque helps industry professionals make the most efficient use of their time at the Festival, and is used by sales agents, distributors, producers, acquisition executives, talent agents, exhibitors and festival programmers, with priority access given to buyers."

The official Institute line is: mug a suit and watch our film with his pass.

It's Nick's Birthday screening :: Bourges

WHAT: It’s Nick’s Birthday @ 11th International Festival Bandits-mages
EVENT: SI_11 (Rencontres internationales)
WHERE: L’amphithéâtre, ENSA Bourges (école nationale supérieure d’art), 7 rue Édouard-Branly, F-18000 Bourges
WHEN: This SATURDAY, 9th May between 2pm and 8pm
COST: FREE

Please check their programme for details.

The film features in their dynamically unwieldy cyber-catalogue of the future on p.144.

It's Nick's Birthday honoured at IndieLisboa'09

It's Nick's Birthday received a Special Mention from the Jury at the 6th IndieLisboa International Independent Film Festival, at the awards ceremony last Saturday night.

Barely more than a greyish-brown speck in the massive auditorium of Lisbon's art deco Cinema São Jorge, our representative Mr Cole made his way up on stage to collect the menção honrosa in the style of the film - stumbling, flickering and slightly out of tune with himself.

The full list of awards is available for perusal here.

Sun and Sangria on the Humber

In a strange and unexpected moment at about 11.45 on Wednesday morning, the charming proprietor of Sabrini's cafe (Princes Road, Hull) plonked a chilled jug of pink sangria on the terrace table in front of Mr Brown and myself, and we two out-of-towners squinted through the bright sunlight at each other: we had arrived, young gods on the Yorkshire riviera.

Feeling rather marvellous, we were ushered inside by our genial hosts - Messrs. Boyce and Jensen of the Hull Film organisation - where the Importance Of The Medium program began with Eva Weber's ethereal documentary on cranes and their drivers. Following a break for nachos and cigarettes, the moment came for It's Nick's Birthday to be unveiled to the public - a lunchbreak public 20-strong and united in festival spirit. The homemade and accident-happy ethos of the film was channelled into the atmosphere of the room through the guitar amp sound system and reinforced by the phlegmatic purr and splutter of the coffee machine and obsessive brush-strokes of the hot chilli-oriented hung paintings. Afterwards, Mr Brown and I were interviewed to video by Boyce's people, a process that could have been torturous had the sun and the breeze and the people (and the bellyful of punch) not been configured so divinely, and which was all the same makey of pitsweat.

For weeks in advance, we had awaited with childlike anticipation our trip to Hull's Glimmer short film festival, so it was perhaps inevitable the hit-rate of our daydream-embellished expectations would be at best off-centre, if never off-target. Having been tipped that Hull would smell of death (it did a bit) and planned in mouthwatering detail the fish and chips we would acquire for our midnight train journey back to Manchester (we didn't feel like eating after an unsettling aperitif of top-drawer David Firth animations), we met reality half-way on discovering that Hull wasn't in fact a coastal port and the big bit of water by it was (to quote Mr Brown) "merely an estuary". We had promised ourselves we'd see the sea, and the see the sea we would: Mr Brown, and myself, and a young lady from Australia whose acquaintance we made over sangria at Sambrini's, stared out at the glistening brown Humber, alone and together, imagining it to be the ocean for the best part of forty minutes. Although we stood in silence, the synchronised remapping (more accurately re-demapping) of three neural networks (one of which was Australian) was felt to be an adequate riposte to the tyranny of fluvial geography. (Mooring fees in the area have not been affected).