This is very exciting! On Thursday 4th March The Electric Cinema will be screening Beyond Biba a portrait of the life of 1960s fashion legend Barbara Hulanicki. All information can be found here with tickets available from The Electric.
Our first screening in Birmingham. We’re screening for one night at the Electric Cinema, Birmingham. The cinema is the oldest working cinema in the UK first opening on December 27th 1909. The building is now home to luxury sofa seating, waiter service and a full bar.
There will be a post screening Q&A with Director Louis price and Producer James Collie, which will be hosted by Tom Lawes, owner of the Electric Cinema.
Special edition DVDs signed by Barbara Hulanicki will be available after the screening.
Typography and lettering is an expressive part of Birmingham’s visual identity. Islamic calligraphy, neon signs, tags, mysterious handwritten signs in Mandarin stuck to dirty windows and the fallen glory of broken shop lettering – which now reads ‘Ma l ather s ores’. The aim of ‘Graphic DNA’ is to document these letterforms and to trace the changes to the city’s graphic DNA brought about by regeneration, recording the evolving lettering landscape before the opportunity is lost for ever.
Graphic DNA is a long term project which aims to delineate and profile the graphic character of Birmingham through photographing, gathering, curating, cataloguing and describing the letterforms found in the city’s urban and civic environment. The Project is led by Type with the able assistance of Alexander Barton, Hilary Lovell, Matt Murtagh, Veronika Pechova, Hannah Wood all students at the Birmingham Institue of Art & Desgn.
Why Birmingham?
Birmingham is in a state of metamorphosis, evolving from a city dominated by manufacturing to one led by the creative sector. Industrial Birmingham is being redeveloped and regenerated and a new city is emerging: letterforms that have been obscured for decades are being temporarily exposed before the developers move in, and new letterforms are being added daily. Further more, Birmingham is a hybrid city that for centuries has been home to immigrants from across the country and around the world. The history and evolution of Birmingham’s immigrant populations are relvealed in the letterforms on its streets and the marks left by the city’s multicultural society will be documented and curated by the project. The project is in part graphic rescue.
Why lettering?
Street lettering is an artistic amalgam of letterforms mixed with substrate, language, placement, and proportion. Letterforms are excellent vehicles for demonstrating how the environment, human judgement, necessity, and repetition can add visual music to the streets. This project will capture, catalogue and curate images of letterforms culled from Birmingham’s streets - both past and present – to show the city’s unique graphic character.
To read more about this project check here. If lettering and design is your bag then you may fancy a look at Helvetica a documentary film by Gary Hustwit.
Helvetica is a feature-length independent film about typography, graphic design and global visual culture. It looks at the proliferation of one typeface (which celebrated its 50th birthday in 2007) as part of a larger conversation about the way type affects our lives. The film is an exploration of urban spaces in major cities and the type that inhabits them, and a fluid discussion with renowned designers about their work, the creative process, and the choices and aesthetics behind their use of type.
Picture credit: Blacksmile from Spinwell.
Screen WM has announced that on 14th October Power to the Pixel is bringing a satellite event to Birmingham. The day long event will be held at Novotel Birmingham on Broad Street. This event is free to attend and will be of interest to anyone working in content creation (film, television, animation, games) and digital media.
Power to the Pixel’s London Forum is firmly established as the leading event in the UK film industry calendar for creators to connect with key digital innovators: pioneers who are developing new models of storytelling, film financing and film distribution across multiple platforms.
Power to the Pixel’s Birmingham event will feature sessions directly from the London Forum as well as studio debate from Birmingham. Sessions brought to you from London will include award-winning producer Ted Hope’s keynote presentation. International speakers including Slava Rubin, Co-Founder of New York-based IndieGoGo and Rachel Mordecai, producer and digital content strategist.
To book a place and for more info click here.
