Flatpack Festival on Film: Tom CJ Brown

In 2007, Flatpack Festival no.2 included an absurdly confident short called t.o.m. by two students from the University of Wales, about a schoolboy with a taste for exhibitionism.

One of the filmmakers, Tom Brown, came along to take part in a Q&A, and it was clear that he was going to have some kind of career in animation.

Sure enough, Tom spent a number of years working with New York production house Psyop. Alongside his commercial work there has been a steady trickle of personal projects, culminating in the magnificent and award-winning Christopher at Sea (2022) about a young man reckoning with his own desires on a transatlantic cargo ship.

17 years on from his last visit to Birmingham, Tom returned to Flatpack Festival earlier this year for a canter through his back-catalogue and a chat about what a career in animation might look like. (Assuming that it hasn’t all been delegated to robots by next year.)

In addition to a live in-conversation event at the festival, Flatpack director Ian sat down with Tom to chat about what he’d been up to in the last couple of decades.

Watch the conversation here:

Filmed and edited by Idriss Assoumanou.