The best alternative music videos
- Text by Alex King
Every year Flatpack Film Festival turns Birmingham into a buzzing mecca for alternative cinephiles who scour the city’s bars, galleries, museums, pubs and other random makeshift spaces for weird and wonderful cinematic treats.
Flatpack’s definition of film stretches far beyond that used by traditional festivals and it serves up short films, animated treats, retro oddities, interactive cinema, live music and a lot of partying.
Before the Flatpack London warm up party at Hackney Picturehouse on Friday, March 6, we spoke to programmer Sam Groves for his pick of the best alternative music videos from this year’s festival.
“I always think of music videos in pretty broad terms (as you’ll see),” Sam says. “For me, it doesn’t necessarily have to be a promo for a musician or a band; it can be something much more innovative and interesting.
“This eclectic batch are taken from five different programmes, and include Japanese Animator Mirai Mizue’s brilliantly vibrant Poker, a French poem turned into a song from our family programme, a bizarre short about a pony’s daytime adventure, a choreographed dance film about Shia Labeouf, and a Grandmaster Flash music video handpicked from a Zbigniew Rybczynski retrospective.”
Poker (dir. Mirai Mizue)
From one of our animation programmes, Beyond the Realm.
En Sortant de L’école (dir. Lila Peuscet)
From one of our colour box (family) programmes, Shape Shifters.
Lesley the Pony has an A+ Day! (dir. Christian Larrave)
From a programme of shorts celebrating LGBT, camp, and queer culture, LOLGBT.
Shia Labeouf – Rob Cantor (dir. Scott Uhlfelder)
From comedy programme of shorts, Shizzles & Giggles.
Sign of the Times – Grandmaster Flash (dir. Zbigniew Rybczynski)
From a retrospective of the Polish filmmaker, Zbigniew Rybczynski: Media Pioneer.
Flatpack Film Festival runs 19-29 March in venues all over Birmingham. Catch the London warm up party at Hackney Picturehouse Friday, March 6 from 7.
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