Reliving Flatpack no.5

As a festival-organiser, one of the nice things about this internet business is finding out what you missed. Skipping from event to event like the Scarlet Pimpernel with a bad head and an unfortunate takeaway habit, we only get a very limited sense of what's actually going on. Then during the recuperation period we can browse souvenir photos (see below), wade through comment cards, and gorge ourselves on google in order to relive the whole thing. Here are a few writeups from 2011...

Shots discovered Rubber, Open Cinema and every minute, always;
Little White Lies particularly liked Marwencol, Self Made and Chris Needham;
i-D Online were also very taken with Mr Needham, and called the whole thing a 'love-child' and 'a Brummy epic';
Guest Frances Morgan reviewed Kinshasa Symphony for Sound and Music;
Electric Sheep celebrated the 'Birmingham-ness' of the festival, and delved into the work of Al Jarnow; Rachel from Support Your Local Cinema spent one jam-packed day here, and left feeling 'stimulated and inspired';
Anime UK News were knocked out by Redline at the Electric, while Screen Insight were more ambivalent;
And the Cultural Bible enjoyed The Cinema Exists to Please Women, although they were a little flummoxed by Digbeth.

[A brief aside here: just after the festival started we were ordered to take down all laminated signs from lamp-posts. Now we probably should have cleared signage in advance with the council, but this is a clear barrier which stops visitors engaging with Digbeth. I hope we'll be able to work out a more productive arrangement next year so that people don't get lost.]

Ian Ravenscroft reflected on the first screening of Man In A Cat at Shorts on Walls, which went down a storm by all accounts;
As well as being extremely talented, David Wilson was a dream guest and up for anything - so we're glad he had a good time. He also posted some of Jack Adams' photos from David and Sam Potter's brilliant Paper Party set;
...and from the same event Jack also posted photos of a well-heeled man on his own Uber Brum blog;
...while high paper fashion was also much in evidence on Alex Mason's flickr stream;
The E Film Blog reviewed Rubber and Marwencol (judging from general feedback, one of the most well-received films in the programme). and was particularly taken with our surprise showing of All Flowers in Time;
Nicky Getgood kindly hosted the screening of The Forgotten Irish, and reflected on her Fierce/Flatpack highlights;
One of our excellent legion of helpers, volunteer Krzystof Krzeminski blogged about 'one of the best experiences in my life as a student';
Katharine sent a postcard from the Vintage Mobile Cinema. She concludes it: 'I only hope the cuts to arts funding don't mean next spring won't be as vibrant.'
Jaye Ho posted some photos from the installation of Mordant Music's Nesst 2;
And the Unravel collective spent a manic weekend creating hand-made film at the mac along with hundreds of keen participants. Somehow they found time to take a couple of photos.

Also at the mac, Chris Plant from Colour Burst did amazing things with an X-Box Kinect and posted a little video;
Intriguing evidence of Mothwasp's first performance;
A phone-cam film of Scree at Ikon Eastside;
A full recording of the Keystone Cut Ups;
And Phantom Circuit once again podcasted the festival, interviewing both Pram and Hiromichi Sakamoto.

If you were too busy Flatpacking to do Fierce as well, you can also whizz through the whole experience in a couple of minutes if you visit their blog.

And finally, a data-visualisation challenge. At the end of each day before passing out we were stunned by the variety of festival impressions and moments captured on Twitter. I remember 3 or 4 years ago saying: 'if only we could bottle the festival atmosphere and then show it to people' - and now Twitter allows you to get very close to doing that. The problem being there's so bloody much of it! Our marketing dynamo Annabel diligently archived all the Flatpack-related tweets throughout; over 1300 in March alone. If you so desire you can scroll through the whole lot. And if you have any bright ideas on how we might make this digestible, let us know...