I can't think why I've never been to the Electric Cinema before.
Well, I can actually - years back it used to have dummies strapped to the windows high up on the front of the building - which made it look like a rather diseased fleapit.
Anyway, it's a rather lovely old fashioned cinema, with two screens. The most important bit is that you can take beer into the auditorium with you, important for the Flatpack shindig last Friday, Hocus Focus.
First up was hairy man Andy Votel playing a fabulous selection of blasting funk from the non-English speaking world. We've love a playlist, it was outrageously good, and happened to fit in nicely with the random visuals, including Serge Gainsbourg creeping around some young lady, as per.
Now then, now then. I can't speak for Jim, particularly as now it's likely he's ponced off to model for Storm given some of the recent photos he's been taking of himself, but this half of paper-jam likes stuff that straddles the art/pop divide. Voice of the Seven Woods take on soundtracking Armenian film "The Colour of Pomegranates" came down on the art side, and felt heavy going. It didn't help that the film was heavily chopped up, so it made possibly less sense than it might've - although the patina of the film and the photography was lovely.
Talking of perfect art/pop, Broadcast were on next, and blipped and blooped their way through their DJ set with a radiophonic selection, including Delia Derbyshire's tapelooped alien chantathon "Zi-weh zi-weh zi-weh oo-oo". Trust me, it's a space-drone-pop winner.
The final thing on the bill was "Valerie and her week of wonders", the tale of a rather lovely young girl who has her first period, which then leads to a surreal world of sex, adventure, vampires, getting burned at the stake, magic earrings, yknow - the usual stuff.
Again, it looked great, the soundtrack was great in parts (could see why Broadcast had been inspired by it), but even at only 73 minutes long it dragged, and had us lost in parts. Particularly the lesbian scene with the "married" woman, what happened there? Afterwards we found out that the actress that played Valerie in the film was in fact fourteen at the time, which made me feel rather dirty.
All in all, we'd have to stick our necks out and admit it was hard going at times, but we wouldn't change 7 inch cinema's aesthetic for the world, we need them around.
As part of the weekends Flatpack festival I went to the Sunday night screening of Science of Sleep (which was well worth going to) and was lucky enough to also catch Everything Will Be OK, a short animated film by Don Hertzfeldt. This was 17 minutes of a stickman called Bill pondering the seeming meaningless of his life as he gradually sinks into somekind of mental illness. It was great; quirky and funny at the start before becoming disquieting and disturbing (but still a bit funny) as it progressed.
