Flatpack 2023

From 16-21 May 2023 we celebrated not only festival no. 17, but also twenty years as an organisation!

We popped up in spaces across Birmingham with a programme of mind-altering AV performances, brilliant music documentaries, exciting guest programming and a delectable smorgasbord of films long and short.

News

7inch stories

This year marks twenty years since Flatpack's first film night in the Rainbow pub in Digbeth. Back then we were known as 7inch Cinema, and were just a bit scrappier than we are today. Not much else has changed, we're still all about bringing people together, and we've lost none of that DIY sensibility. We asked a few people who were around for those early gigs to reflect on what they meant to them, what they're up to now, and how things have changed.

2 May 2023

Archive

Made In The Midlands

Our competition programme features shorts from across the world, but we needed a special place to celebrate the host of home-grown talent right here on our doorstep.

May 10 at 5:30pm, 2024

The Mockingbird Cinema - Screen 1

Billy Connolly: Big Banana Feet

Inspired by other fly on the wall documentaries like Bob Dylan’s Don’t Look Back, this documentary follows Billy Connolly on his 1975 tour of Northern Ireland and Ireland.

May 10 at 7:30pm, 2024

The Mockingbird Cinema - Screen 1

People Like Us & The Light Surgeons

The Festival kicks off this year with a journey through cinema coupled with consensual hallucination…

May 10 at 8pm, 2024

Birmingham Black Box

R21: aka Restoring Solidarity + Bint Mbareh

Programmed by Maria Paradinas

May 11 at 1pm, 2024

The Mockingbird Cinema - Screen 1

Chasing Amy + Chasing Chasing Amy

Sometimes double bills are hard to programme. Which two films make that perfect match? On the other hand, sometimes a documentary comes along that explicitly recontextualises a 90s cult comedy, and it’s almost too easy.

May 11 at 1:15pm, 2024

The Mockingbird Cinema - Screen 2

Naked Acts (4K UK Premiere)

‘I don’t really know a woman who doesn’t hate a part of her body and I kept thinking: what does that mean for us as women, how we see ourselves?’

May 11 at 4pm, 2024

MAC Birmingham - Cinema

Saving Smallbrook

On 1 February 2024, Birmingham City Council’s planning committee voted 7-4 in favour of demolishing Smallbrook Ringway.

May 11 at 4pm, 2024

Bethel Presbyterian Church of Wales

Booty + Q&A (world premiere)

Countless objects sprawled on tarpaulin, relics of an existence, each with their own complex story. Or, just a load of old tat?

May 11 at 4:15pm, 2024

The Mockingbird Cinema - Screen 1

Chinese Queers; Diasporic Dykes: Saving Face + Reality Fragment 160921

Programmed by Yifan He

May 11 at 5:45pm, 2024

The Mockingbird Cinema - Screen 1

Short Film Competition: Flesh & Bone

There’s no two ways about it: having a body is weird, and no one knows that more than the characters in this programme.

May 11 at 5:45pm, 2024

The Mockingbird Cinema - Screen 2

Colour Box Bingo + Workshop

After the triumph of last year’s short film bingo (possibly the first bingo where everyone won!), we're dusting off the bingo balls and bringing them back to the MAC with an exciting new array of short films sourced from across the globe

May 12 at 10am, 2024

MAC Birmingham - Cinema

Before Sunrise

Ever found yourself trapped in an enclosed space with a cinephile? Chances are they mentioned the Before… trilogy.

May 12 at 11am, 2024

The Mockingbird Cinema - Screen 1