Ruth Singleton’s work can be viewed via www.youtube.com/user/roof475 and http://roof475.newgrounds.com/
In 2009 she submitted a short animation called The Dust Bunny to the Stoke Your Fires Festival 2009. Ruth has also made a short animation, Crickets (11 secs), after being inspired by a sound bite.
Thomas Pugh-Roberts’ artist statement: I have always enjoyed drawing and painting, with particular emphasis on portraiture and caricaturing. After spending several years at school and college studying fine art, I sought after a medium that would allow me to bring my creations to life. As a result I studied Animation at degree level and began experimenting with different techniques that would best reflect my stream of consciousness, which led me towards sand animation. This method allowed me to play with composition through its flowing dexterity and metamorphosis of form.
10/3 : Sheila Fawkes, performance artist and film maker. This screening will also be attended by a contemporary art discussion group led by Heike Wischmann (E: heike.wischmann@o2.co.uk)
Sheila Fawkes has previously screened Jubilee in December 2008. Sheila is a performance artist who explores issues surrounding the regulatory powers of patriarchy. The use of video, the role of the audience and the use of the body are important factors in her work. Feminist issues form the foundation of her practice, which is also influenced by the DADA movement, and the mother of DADA, Barones Elsa. Gertrude Stein, Emma Goldman are other examples of women who have informed her work. Another film by Sheila, is inspired by the Manifesto of Futurist Women, written by Valentine de Saint-Point.
Heike has put together a contemporary art discussion group. These are the details if you would like to join:
OPEN CALL for people engaged in contemporary arts practice to form an artist led group for regular debate and displaying work. I am an MA student graduating in 2011 and looking to continue practice in collaboration with others. Visual artists from the Leamington area who are interested in interdisciplinary practices, use a variety of media (time based media, performance, moving images, photography, installation, drawing, conceptual etc.), want to open up dialogue with others and are keen to work outside the traditional gallery space, please contact heike.wischmann@o2.co.uk
17/3 : Made in Birmingham: Reggae Punk Bhangra. Music Documentary directed by Deborah Aston. Produced by Roger Shannon and Jez Collins. Production Company: Swish Productions, Birmingham. http://www.birminghammusicarchive.co.uk/
Reggae, Punk and Bhangra musicians from Birmingham discuss their musical styles and reflect on how music has played its own role in fostering a new sense of collective identity in the city. Including interviews and archives from Steel Pulse, UB40, Swami, Au Pairs and Nightingales.
Made In Birmingham - the city's punk, reggae and bhangra heritage
Aug 6 2010 By Alison Jones BiRMINGHAM POST ARTICLE
Alison Jones talks to the team behind a new film chronicling the unique music of Birmingham.
Forty years ago there was a club that was the epicentre of all that was cool in music. John Peel was the DJ, Pink Floyd played there, as did The Who, Black Sabbath, Traffic, Led Zeppelin and Fleetwood Mac.
The American music press voted it the number one rock venue in the world. But it wasn’t in America. It wasn’t even in London.
It was above a furniture shop in Erdington and it was called Mothers.
“There is no recognition, no plaque but people still come from America to look at the shop,” says Jez Collins, of the Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research.
“This city has a rich musical heritage but we don’t use that history as Liverpool and Manchester do in the UK, or New Orleans, Nashville and Memphis do in the US.
“There’s a shop on the Coventry Road which sells 90 per cent of the bhangra music in the world.
“We should be celebrating those individuals, we should be shouting about it saying ‘Look, this is from Birmingham’.”
Jez and director Deborah Aston have been tackling this oversight head-on in a new documentary Made In Birmingham: Reggae Punk Bhangra, which “charts the cultural, social and political background to three music genres that have strong associations with the city”.
Funded by Screen WM through its Digital Archive Fund and produced by Swish Films, the Birmingham-based company run by Roger Shannon, professor of film and television at Edgehill University, it is a blast from the past via archive footage of news stories and band rehearsals and performances intercut with reflections from the musicians themselves.
UB40’s Brian Travers, Dennis Seaton from Musical Youth, Amlak Tafari of Steel
Pulse, Viv from Fuzzbox, Paul Foad and Peter Hammond from the Au Pairs, Paul Florence, aka Paul Panic, of the Accused, Pete Byrchemore of The Nightingales, Andy Sargent of the Denizens, Alan Apperley from The Prefects, photographer and DJ Boy Chana and S-Endz from Swami were all interviewed at patisserie and coffee shop Maison Mayci in Kings Heath. Even Janice Connolly, aka Mrs Barbara Nice, looks back at her time as a singer with The Surprises and The Ever Readies, who were regulars at the Fighting Cocks in Moseley.“The film is about voices being heard,” says Deborah Aston. “We are often overlooked as a region because we are too close to London and too close to Manchester.
“This (documentary) doesn’t only give the big names but also some of the unsung heroes an opportunity to be heard and to recognise their work as influential and important.”
The three genres were chosen because of how much they were tied up with a sense of community and of identity and because of how they would bleed over into other musical styles. Reggae and bhangra had direct links to the city’s large immigrant population while punk was another form of cultural self expression, a rebellion against authority and the system.
“We could see the overlap between all three,” says Jez. “Reggae was very strong in the city in the early 70s because it was the way black people expressed themselves, through music, through blues parties.
“There was an overlap through Handsworth and Moseley with punks, who had the same idea about how they wanted to express themselves, how they wanted to change society. This in turn fed into bhangra, where you would have second and third generation Asians taking traditional folk music then hearing reggae through their neighbours walls and employing those sensibilities in their music.”
They deliberately avoided metal, the other sound the region is most famous for.
Jez says: “There was never really a crossover between metal and reggae, bhangra or punk.
“There was Rock against Racism that Steel Pulse and the Au Pairs were involved in. UB40 grew up among black friends and that influenced their music.
“There were these really interesting stories to be teased out. We have found footage that hasn’t been seen for years. We have managed to tell this story about how Birmingham is, culturally, quite an accepting city.”
The film also acknowledges some of the more iconic hotspots in the city’s musical history like Barbarella’s, The Nightingale, Odeon, The Locarno, Rebecca’s, International, The Hummingbird, The Rum Runner, The Powerhouse, Pagoda Park and Romulus, as well as The Fighting Cocks, which still thrives as a pub.
Read More http://www.birminghampost.net/life-leisure-birmingham-guide/birmingham-culture/music-in-birmingham/2010/08/06/made-in-birmingham-the-city-s-punk-reggae-and-bhangra-heritage-65233-26996099/#ixzz1EK18LdGW
24/3 : Reel Dreams by Alan Van Wijgerden. Feature length documentary about film making in Coventry & Leamington. Alan has interviewed approx 35 film makers. This screening will start at 6pm.
Alan: “A film about filmmaking in the Coventry-Leamington area. Set over the last twenty five years. So it starts with the Thatcher cuts and ends with the Cameron cuts! By way of about 35 filmmakers, I think, I really must count them all! Finishes with what was going to be my next doc. One of very few features completed in the area this year. And possibly the only independent feature length doc finished in the area this year. "
31/3 : James Page’s latest works: King Hermit - Vile High Club (music video for Coventry band) and Self Help (award winning short comedy drama).
A lonely oddball, crippled by insecurity, attends a seminar given by his idol, a brash motivational speaker John Power, in the hopes of changing his isolated life.
http://www.vimeo.com/19381188
