Paper Cuts: Black Country Short Film Night

Friendly Neighbourhood Cinema and Multistory’s Blast Creative Network invite local filmmakers, artists and film lovers to attend a pop-up screening event of short films by Black Country artists and filmmakers!

The event will share a selection of short experimental films ranging between 0.26 – 14.59 minutes long, that explore themes of love, home and the ways we encounter our surroundings. In the programme you’ll find ghostly standing stones, abandoned brutalist architecture, sun baked earth and scenes that explore the absurdity and joy of human connection.

The artists whose works have been selected for the screening are: Alex Billingham, Hannah Adereti, Fiona Moore, Hannah Rollason, Joel Foster Finn, Letizia Angermeier, Mia Osborne, Rupinder Kaur Waraich, Thomas Jack Brown, Seàn McGrail & Sonia Levesque.

View the full film programme below.

This screening is free and is open to all, arrive from 6pm to get settled in, grab yourself a drink from the theatre bar. The screening will start from 6.15pm, and selected filmmakers will be invited to present their short film. If you don’t have a film to share, come and support local filmmakers and meet others in your community.

Access: The event will take place in the Theatre, which is a ground floor space with wheelchair access.

If you have any access requirements you would like us to be aware of, please get in touch with us by emailing renefrancis-mcbrearty@multistory.org.uk or by calling / texting +44 7922 571832.

Film Programme

Energy Giants (7 min 33 sec)

Encounters with lone utilitarian monoliths in the West Midlands and their electromagnetic emissions.

Joel Foster Finn and Mia Osborne. Inspired by the interactions between the non-human and human, we are interested in the position of the individual, the lone figure and the onlooker.

We Are The Masses (5 min)

The Masses evolved from a poem into something comprising of circa two hundred voices, seven languages (English, Afrikaans, Mandarin/Chinese, German, Spanish, Russian + Malay), resulting in five distinct audio pieces that were then exhibited at Line London Contemporary Art Space in October 2020. The project incorporated elements of poetry, mass participation, physical installation and later reprised as a virtual installation. The centerpiece film was recognized with a British Journal of Photography Edition365 Award (2021). Looking backward, the piece may seem naïve, full of innocent hope, and in some ways it was. The world had a unique opportunity to course correct, and yet here we are, in 2024, at the wrong end of that fork in the road. This 2024 extended edition of the film sees voices intertwine, forming a harmonious tapestry across languages and cultures… because we are still the masses, and we need each other, now, more than ever.

LEVESQUE sashays around poetry, prose, audio-visual, installations and sculptural work. Creating animations with a fine-art sensibility with the help of game engine technology (Unreal Engine), her approach is characterised by curiosity, experimentation and the pursuit of truth, freedom and play. Recent highlights: ArtBasel Miami (2021), Affordable Art Fair (Battersea), Arts Council England DYCP recipient (2022), Longlisted for the Aesthetica Art Prize 2023, VERVE Poetry Festival 2024.

Soaring Shadows (1 min 41 sec)

Letizia Angermeier

This is an animation dealing with mental health, beliefs that are laid in stone in our minds that aren’t our own. A raven soars through the sky, a shadow, a darkness inside, following a person around through the day. This raven symbolizes our own beliefs. Ideas are set in our minds that we still hold on to, to this day. I am ugly, I am stupid, I am unworthy of love,… whatever your set beliefs are, they might not be your own, but those society has set into your mind. What lends these destructive beliefs power? Why do we hold on to them?

Meeting Kali (1 min 17 sec)

Meeting Kali – a poetic short film based on Rupinder’s dreams filmed on iPhone 11. Created during Artist residency at JOYA Arte + Ecología, Sierra Maria, Almeria, Spain in May 2022.

Rupinder Kaur Waraich (she/her) is a multidisciplinary artist based in the West Midlands. Her work often looks at the feminine narrative and gaze through the power of storytelling, exploring the linguistic intersection of the body, history, sexuality and spirituality. Rupinder has also been a BBC New Creative, been part of Kali Theatre’s Discovery program, India-UK Creative Industries at 75, and Tara Theatre, Artists Make Space. Rupinder is currently further working on experimenting with movement, dance and poetry through being awarded Developing your Creative Practice Grant.

San Francisco (3 min 12 sec)

‘San Fransisco’ utilises a 3 minute archive reel of 1970’s Chinatown in San Francisco. The reel of film has been altered and digitised several times, through the application of inks, bleaches, laundry detergents and layered together in Adobe Premiere Pro to create the resulting film, with audio purchased or recorded by the artist. The piece is part of the artists practice on collective and reconstructive memory

Thomas Jack Brown is a Video Artist/Installation Artist based in Worcestershire, United Kingdom. His practice focuses on reconstructive and collective memories and uses hand crafted archive or self shot Super8 film to create new narratives of experienced events.

Broken Systems & The Beautiful Yet Dangerous (26 sec & 1 min 25 sec)

Broken System: Click and print… Toner running low. Change and discard. Click and print… Good to go. A simple transaction. A stop motion film that aims to highlight the intricate nature of everyday devices and how this contributes toward the complexities of recycling human waste.

The Beautiful Yet Dangerous: Consumerism seeping into our lives… overflowing from our bins… Spilling into our streets. The beautiful yet dangerous. So much of climate change is unseen, leaving us with many unanswered questions.

Through the lens of her background in contemporary art and her career as a professional photographer, Fiona Moore explores technology in the modern age. Remaining neutral as to whether technology is negative or positive her work aims to highlight our relationship with devices in order to see the impact on our lives.

As a conceptual artist, Hannah Rollason creates large scale installations, to engage an audience physically and psychologically. Her work is of multimedia, including but not limited to drawing, photography, film, and ceramic. Embracing form, aesthetics and the manipulation of media to draw out symbolism, metaphor and myth within the context of the work. With initial inspiration being personal exchanges and everyday visual influences this often draws in subjects such as history, ecology, and social politics to create an interdisciplinary practice.

EQUINOX (6 min 27 sec)

During the summer of 2023 I had a residency with LEVEL Centre in Derbyshire UK. I spent the time seeing how my body connected with the landscape and weather. Particularly looking at how Disabled and Trans bodies are often excluded from such places. Considering how we might connect better into the future. I’d expected to be working with the rain and rivers of the landscape but Derbyshire had different ideas and so began 2 of the hottest driest weeks imaginable. The stones had spoken and I’d listened. The film your seeing is only a snippet of my time there but I feel shows how I connected the stones well. A massive thank you to the staff at LEVEL Centre for being wonderfully supportive and creating such an oasis of tea.

Survival underpins Alex Billingham‘s work across various disciplines. Considering how we might all survive better together as we enter an uncertain future. Currently exhibiting at The New Art Gallery Walsall until July 2024 and SMQB artist in residence with The University of Birmingham.

Love’s Legacies (4 min 11 sec)

What happens when we start from Granddad’s house? Utilising poetry and archival visuals, Adereti weaves together the threads of their experiences of community, family and navigating ecosystems rooted in love.

Hannah Adereti is a curator, producer, filmmaker, dancer and evaluator, rooted in their love for theory and critical analysis of how it’s practised. Through their artistic practice, they create environments and provocations that implore learning from social justice methodologies rooted in disability justice theory, Black queer theory, Black feminism and land justice. Hannah is the Directorial Architect at Onyx Magazine, creating infrastructure that is liberating for Black creatives and informed by anti-capitalistic, radical, disruptive, non-hierarchical and care-centred ways of being.

This is My Town (14 min 59 sec)

A Finnish man travels to Walsall, West Midlands, on a fan pilgrimage to see his favourite band, Slade. With time running out and a spare ticket in hand, he searches for a companion for the gig, but finding one proves more complicated than he imagined. This Is My Town is an affectionate look at life in the West Midlands – recognising the difficulties outsiders can face in unfamiliar towns – while celebrating the things that unite and bring us together despite our differences. Filmed in Walsall, West Mids with a majority Walsall cast and crew.

Seàn McGrail is a writer/director with a background in documentary. He’s made films about cult musician Jeffrey Lewis, director Paddy Slattery, and worked with BAFTA-nominated director Sean McAllister on several projects, including the BFI/BBC documentary ‘A Northern Soul’. His first short fiction film, ‘This Is My Town’, recently screened at Short is Beautiful Film Festival, and his follow-up ‘To Disappear Suddenly’, was developed through the BFI Script Lab and will be released later this year, produced by Margaret Milner Schmueck and starring Graham Fellows. Both films explore Seàn’s interest in alternative perspectives of life in the Midlands, especially his hometown Walsall.

 

About Friendly Neighbourhood Cinema

Friendly Neighbourhood Cinema is an independent pop-up cinema born in Stourbridge, that screens in a variety of spaces and places across the Black Country to create memorable and unique cinema events. Bringing the Kings Heath’s Kingsway Cinema back to life during the 2020 pandemic, appearing across a host of Stourbridge venues including Green Duck Brewery, The Ryemarket Shopping Centre, The Duke William to name a few, recently appearing at Mary Stevens Park in 2023 with an Invisible Cinema designed for the visually impaired in consultation with Beacon & the RNIB.

About The Blast Creative Network

The Blast Creative Network (BCN) is Multistory’s artist development programme, offering artists in Sandwell and the wider Black Country a free annual programme of talks, workshops and social events and is a space for mutual support and knowledge sharing. It was set up to provide artists in the local area opportunities for critical engagement and collaboration outside of formal arts education. It’s a friendly place to meet other creatives from a range of practices who are based in Sandwell and the Black Country, experiment and test out new skills, and explore questions around contemporary arts practice.