Hocus Focus
474 words After last year’s enjoyable evening in the company of Godfrey Salter and his Invisible Ducks, I was pleased to see the return of the Flatpack Film Festival. On Friday, this year’s equivalent event was entitled “Hocus Focus”, and promised an odd Czech dream-onset-of-puberty-witch-vampire film, some live music and, er, more.
I invited the Happy Friday crowd, saying “I don’t promise the greatest night of your life, but I do promise an interesting change of scene.” Debbie obligingly agreed to come without really investigating what she was letting herself in for, and Jim enthusiastically embraced the opportunity for novelty. Everyone else went for a curry in South Leamington.
We started the evening with some very nice Mexican food at Santa Fe in the Mailbox, then walked over to the Electric via the charred remains off Edwards No. 8.
The Electric was full of Moseleyites, and the event started with a bloke in a beanie hat playing some records — funky stuff from the second hand shops of the world, I think — while a compilation of odd images was projected on the screen.
With no announcement, the lights dimmed. The man tuning a guitar on stage turned out to be “Voice of the Seven Woods”. He was plunged into darkness, so we couldn’t watch him play his live soundtrack to the film that was then shown.
Now, I don’t know what Armenian film you watched this weekend, but I bet ours was odder: Sergei Parajanov’s ‘classic’ “The Colour of Pomegranates”. YouTube has parts of it here — but turn the volume down, as our music was different: a hypnotic guitar noodle. Every now and again the film would show something so incongruous that my attention would jolt back to it, but it did drag on somewhat. Some 15 minutes in, Debbie was literally weeping onto my shoulder: “Does this never finish?”.
Birmingham’s Broadcast took to the record decks, and played some bleepy music, and we hung around in the lobby for a while, for a drink and a chat. Then the main attraction came on: “Valerie and her Week of Wonders”. Think Singing Ringing Tree with bare breasts. And a monster called “The Weasel”. I found it best not to try and follow the plot, and just to let the atmosphere sink in: Hammer Horror with some added Central European exoticism.
We could have stayed around for some more tunes, but it was 1am, and we were all tired. I wouldn’t say it was the best night of my life, but it was an interesting change of scene. It was all a little po-faced for my liking: “we are nodding in sage appreciation of an Armenian classic dripping in symbolic subtext”. I’ll be hoping for something more fun and lighthearted next year.
We were all glad we went: you have to speculate in order to hit the jackpot once in a while.