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The Electric Cinema on Station Street proudly holds the title of ‘The UK’s oldest working cinema’ – but in order to truly live up to that billing its new owner knows he needs to get the picture palace performing again. Unlike the multiplexes. the cinema has not reopened after closing its doors in March 2020 at the time of the first national lockdown but the good news is film fans won’t have to wait too much longer, Omicron permitting.

On November 2, BirminghamLive enjoyed an exclusive interview inside the cinema with passionate new owner Kevin Markwick who told us of his dream to have the two screens flickering into life before Christmas. Except that he had a funeral to go to in Europe, the projectors didn’t work and the building desperately needed its heating back on to feel comfortable again. Work to get The Electric fit for purpose has taken longer than expected, partly because Kevin’s first cinema is the 104-year-old Picture House and it’s 170 miles away in Uckfield, East Sussex.

Since he acquired the keys from former owner Tom Lawes and paid his first proper visit to the cinema on November 2, the country has been hit by the uncertainty of the Omicron variant of Covid-19.

Moving Forward

Although Kevin’s dream of opening before Christmas has been dashed, missing that target merely confirms the accuracy of his own personal website which says: “I’m in the dark. It’s my job. Sometimes I succeed and sometimes I fail.”

And so this irrepressible cinephile is still defiantly optimistic it won’t be too long before the site is welcoming films fans once again. “Now the heating is on, it’s warm and toasty,” says Kevin. “And I think people are going to love what we do once we finally get over the starting line.”

Not being able to reopen this year means The Electric Cinema will be closed for its second birthday running. Nobody could have foreseen what would happen next after its 110th birthday was celebrated at the end of December, 2019.

On December 27 it should have jumped to having 112 candles on one of its famous handmade cakes – but then there’s always next year’s 113th birthday bash to look forward to.

Asked if he’d been renovating the cinema, Kevin said: “That’s too strong a word. Resurrecting, I’d say. We are getting there, but there has been more to it than expected, which is fair enough considering how long it’s been closed. Still, we’ve got new toilets! And I’ve hired some digital projectors to get us going… hopefully we’ll have laser ones coming in February and we’re keeping 35mm too, though I’m the only one who knows how that works.”

The seats have been cleaned up, too, but replacing some or all of them might take two or three years as and when funds allow.

Electric Cinema Reopening

“The current plan is to reopen on Friday, January 21,” said Kevin. “I’m booking films so let’s hope that events don’t overtake us – if they do, there’s not going to be a lot we can do about that. What I don’t really want to do is to open and then have to close again – (so if things worsen) do we then wait a bit longer. But our website will be going live, our social media will be active and we’ll be rolling out the kind of subscription service we run in Uckfield where we have 4,000 members and up to 160,000 admissions per year in a town of 15,000 people. Who knows what the take-up will be at The Electric, but young people especially seem to like it in Uckfield.”

Interviews have been held in the past few days to recruit staff to run the cinema which is expected to create ten jobs.

One reason Kevin took on The Electric was to give members of his own team the chance to “spread their wings a bit”. And so the cinema will be managed by his own daughter Katie, 32, who is moving up to Birmingham with her partner. She has learned all about the trade from Kevin, who inherited the Uckfield site in 1994 following the death of his own father who’d taught his son everything he knows.

After relinquishing The Electric, former owner Tom told BirminghamLive in November: “Kevin is definitely the best man for the job. Unlike me, cinema exhibition is his full-time career.

Source: www.birminghammail.co.uk

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The Film Birmingham office will be closed for the festive break from 22nd December – 4th January (inclusive). No filming applications will be processed during this time.

Filming request forms can still be submitted online here. We will process your request as soon as we return on January 5th, 2022.

Resources

If you are searching for filming locations, view our online location database here. You can also register your property as a filming location.

To search for local crew, visit our crew database, or register yourself as crew here.

To view current industry opportunities, view our news page.

Best wishes for this holiday season, and we look forward too working with you in 2022!

Halesowen College lecturer Jez Alsop has directed his first feature film – which stars Gregory Piper.

Fixed is about what happens the night before gambler Daz Clemance leaves Birmingham to start a crime free life in Spain. The story follows Daz and his fateful night where he is beaten, stabbed and left for dead. Gregory Piper, who appeared in BBC’s Line of Duty as PC Ryan Pilkington, plays Daz’s estranged son. Daz is played by Nicholas Clarke and the film also stars Laurence Saunders who has appeared in Doctor Who and The Bagley Boys.

Film and media lecturer Jez said: “We felt that the story had resonance, because it depicts a man who is devastated financially following an accident at work. He turns to gambling and crime, and it seemed like it reflected the harsh realities for a lot of normal working people. We knew we wanted to make a feature film but we had very little money, so we worked on an idea that we thought would be realistically achievable, made the production values as high as we could and it just worked.”

Fixed was filmed in 20 days in one location at The Lampworks Studios in The Jewellery Quarter in between Covid lockdowns.

Jez has worked at Halesowen College for 15 years and has already written and directed short films and music videos. Fixed is his first feature film.

It is available to watch on Amazon Prime Video, AppleTV, SkyStore, Googleplay and Xbox.

Source: www.halesowennews.co.uk

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*Applications are now closed*

Film Birmingham is excited to announce the Working in the Locations Department (WILD) Course 2022. It will be delivered in person on February 26th-27th and March 5th-6th 2022. It is designed to inform, educate and give hands-on skills to the next generation of aspiring film and TV location managers. The deadline for applications is Friday 28th January 2022.

WILD 2022 will be led by award winning Location Manager, Harriet Lawrence. Harriet has worked in location management for over 20 years and her impressive CV includes Downton Abbey, Parks and Recreation, Dancing on the Edge, The Personal History of David Copperfield, My Cousin Rachel, Suffragette and Burton and Taylor. 

Eligible participants will have an opportunity for a 2-month paid placement with Film Birmingham following completion of the course.

About the WILD 2022 course:

15 applicants will be selected for the WILD 2022 Course. The locations department has a wide and varied remit within a production. It extends from the creative beginnings of a script breakdown, working alongside Directors and Designers and scouting locations, to the logistical and detailed planning of a shoot. It enables all other departments to go about their jobs as smoothly and safely as possible. This film locations course will cover what to expect in this challenging, yet rewarding work environment.

It will give an overview of the industry, the different types of productions and then move on to the exciting challenges of scouting, planning a shoot and managing all aspects of the shoot day. The sessions will also outline some of the essential principles of health and safety, touch on some of the many things included in the locations budget and give tips on how to take great location recce pictures. 

About the Course Leader

The WILD 2022 course will be led by award-winning locations manager Harriet Lawrence, who has worked in commercials, film and TV during her time in the industry. She was also the 2016 recipient of the Production Guild Inspiration Award and is a member of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences (“Overlord,” “Suffragette”).

More facilitators will be announced shortly.

Previous Participants’ Feedback

WILD 2022 is now in its successful fourth year, with some of our past graduates going on to work in the locations department of a range of film and TV productions including Small Axe, Father Brown, You Don’t Know Me and TV commercials.

Past participants have said: “Harriet isn’t only a font of knowledge, but her style of delivery is fantastic. I am suffering with screen time and meeting fatigue from work and COVID-19 but I have looked forward to all these sessions and each one has flown by. That is definitely down to how Harriet has delivered the sessions. I’m going to miss them!”

“The amount of information given was extremely useful and really motivating. Having had a love for photography and locations and interest in architecture and buildings, I’ve found my area in media. This has inspired me to want to work in Locations. Thank you so so much.”

“Most of my experience has been rooted in factual content, so it was great to learn about feature film processes. I loved the emphasis on how interdisciplinary the skillset is for working in locations and it was nice to have an ongoing case study in David Copperfield! All of the sessions were important and helped build a clear picture [of the locations department].”

To Apply

Film Birmingham welcomes applications from a broad range of participants; from new entrants with some production experience to those more established in the media industry. The only requirement is that you have a keen interest in working in the locations department. We especially encourage participants from underrepresented groups including Black, Asian and minority ethnicities. Priority will be given to people who live in the West Midlands.

The course fee is £110, although subsidised spots are available for £11. Please indicate if you would like to be considered for one of these places.  

If you are interested in being considered for the course, please complete this form. The deadline for applications is Friday, 28th January 2022 and successful applicants will be notified Tuesday, 1st February 2022. Successful applicants will receive additional logistical information once their place has been confirmed.

If you have any questions, please email wild2022@filmbirmingham.co.uk, with WILD 2022 in the subject.

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Aspiring screenwriters and playwrights have been given the chance in 2021 to take centre stage with two regional writing competitions, namely Enter.Stage.Write and Amplified, which will end with a glitzy red carpeted annual awards screening and gala in January 2022.

Both competitions are the brainchild of the Birmingham born Natalie Yesufu-Edwards, founder of Transition Stage Company and Enter.Stage.Write. Natalie has run Enter.Stage.Write successively for the last three years in Birmingham, bringing people from all backgrounds to celebrate the intrinsic value of new writing and visual arts and changing the life of aspirational screenwriters firmly planted in the competitive world of stage and broadcast TV such as Abraham Adeyemi and Tonia Daley. This year Natalie has not only launched Enter.Stage.Write but for the first time also Amplified (part of the Enter.Stage.Write franchise), a comedy competition for diverse voices. Through Amplified Natalie wanted to create more opportunities for British Asian and Black and comedic voices and bring back the diverse renaissance of Comedy of Goodness Gracious Me and the Real McCoy. Indeed, after 2020 and the era of Black Lives Matter, she felt that there needed to be more joyful comedic storytelling.

Natalie, who recently won the ‘Downtown in Business’ award ‘Woman Of the Year’ for her endeavours with Transition Stage Company said: It is time to take ‘Enter.Stage.Write’ to the next level and turn this theatre competition into a TV format similar to a scriptwriting X-factor using Birmingham as a conduit and showcasing talent on a larger scale globally.”

These two annual West Midlands scriptwriting competitions where budding writers from the UK have the opportunity to see their work brought to life on stage have been filmed and transformed into a factual entertainment television pilot. With the restrictions now lifted,  a screening gala of the filmed shortlisted scripts will take place at the Millenium point on the 20th January 2022. Television moguls globally and creative leaders from the stage world have collectively thrown their support behind the competitions here in Birmingham with the aim to find the next big screen or stage writer.

Judges

Sara Asante, the Commissioning Editor of Comedy UKTV, part of BBC, is judging and throwing their weight behind Amplified. Furthermore, the BAFTA-winning Lisa Walters, is the headlining judge for Enter.Stage.Write. Darcia  Martin, a prolific award-winning director of multiple BBC shows, is also judging in the competitions this year once again. Last year one of the previous year’s finalist writers were lucky enough to have their script optioned by Darcia
Martin. Other notable judges were Louise Le Puloch from France who works with ‘FrenchKiss Pictures’ who are currently working with Netflix, and the American director Miguel Paguel who has won a prestigious Emmys for his work in the screen industries.

Gala Night

The Enter.Stage.Write gala in 2022 is going to be again a red-carpeted screening event. The audience will also be treated to the Dj Otley Don spinning tunes on the deck. The event will finish with an award ceremony where the guest panel of judges, business leaders and audience will get to crown two of the shortlisted writers of Enter.Stage.Write and Amplified as grand champions. The winners will receive £1,000 cash prize, trophies, and the opportunity for finalists to meet and greet with industry professionals.

Transition Stage Company will be encouraging everyone who wants to support the arts to come along.

Buy tickets here for the red carpeted ‘Enter.Stage.Write’ award gala.

For more industry information, visit Film Birmingham’s news page. Or add us on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook.

A Sedgley based filmmaker has created a unique animated version of a classic fairytale which has now gone on general release.

Matt Hickinbottom is the writer/director of ‘Emily – The Little Match Girl’ which he has adapted from the original and much-loved Hans Christen Andersen fairytale. It premiered at the IMAX at Resorts World NEC on Sunday November 28 before going out on general release the following day. The film features the voices of screen stars David Bradley (Harry Potter/Game of Thrones) and Lesley Joseph (Birds of a Feather) as well as Deb Nicholls and Sue Hawkins, of Black Country comedy group The Fizzogs.

The idea for the film originated when Matt was still a college student and he stumbled across the book of the fairytale. He said: “A book fell off the library shelf and saw this image of a girl striking a match. I flicked through it and suddenly these images and story jumped off the page at me. It told of all this magic which was happening to her in what little life she had left.”

Matt was not a trained pianist but sitting at the piano at his family home he wrote a song called “If I Could Wish Upon A Star” which now features in the movie. It was not until the peak of the pandemic that Matt decided to put his idea for the film into production. Matt, who has worked on projects for Walt Disney, Sony and other TV and movie channels during his career, said: “We had lot a few people who were close to us and I thought if I am not going to do something with this now it will never get done. So, between Christmas 2020 and the New Year, I made the decision that nothing was going to stop me making this movie. I used an amazing 3D animation creator called iClone and am delighted with the result.”

Music from the film is available on CD or download.

Source: www.dudleynews.co.uk

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The BBC series You Don’t Know Me, adapted from the Imran Mahmood novel of the same name, has hit our screens. Airing for four weeks on BBC One starting Dec. 5, the high-stakes court drama takes us through a twisted social commentary of crime, innocence, and justice. The plot follows the perspective of a young man from South London and the various events that led up to the murder he has been accused of.

The cast is made up of up-and-coming talent, with Samuel Adewunmi (The Last Tree, Angela Black) in the lead role of Hero. He is joined by Sophie Wilde, who plays his love interest Kyra. Other cast members include BAFTA Rising Star winner Bukky Bakray (Rocks), Yetunde Oduwole (Meet The Adebanjos) and Tuwaine Barrett (The Personal History of David Copperfield).

The drama immerses the viewer in the sometimes vibrant and sometimes messy corners of South London, but where exactly was it filmed? Well, contrary to expectations, Birmingham locations feature in the majority of the show.

Why Birmingham Locations?

Speaking to the BBC, series producer Jules Hussey said, “Why Birmingham? Having researched a number of cities in the UK, Birmingham is England’s second city and is incredibly diverse. It’s huge. The architecture is very similar in many places to London…”

It seems the Birmingham locations worked so perfectly that their original plan for a week of filming in London ended up being cut down to only a few days. Birmingham ended up providing the “Camden streets, tower blocks… and areas” that worked for the show.

Filming at various locations around Birmingham, the show even managed to include a block of flats set for demolition. The tower block in Druids Heath had been all but cleared out when they were filmed as a backdrop in this upcoming series.

Speaking to Birmingham Live, a spokesman for the production company, Snowed-In, said, “The residents in Druids Heath have been brilliant, really helpful and they have welcomed us here.” Other areas they filmed in included, Redditch, Birmingham city centre, and the Nechells.

List of Birmingham Locations

Filming for BBC You Don’t Know Me took place in the spring and summer of this year at various locations throughout the city.

One location was Saxelby House in Druids Heath. The crew used a 13 storey tower block earmarked for demolition by the council.

The film crews were also in Allison Street in Digbeth – which was used to double up as the famous Camden Arches in London.

Interior and exterior shots were taken from the National Exhibition Centre.

Also featured is Michelin starred eatery Adam’s in Waterloo Street, which was used to film a series of restaurant scenes.

The court scenes were shot at the Priory Rooms, a business conference centre in Bull Street.

The club scenes, meanwhile, took place at the Lion’s Den in Redditch, Worcestershire. There were extra scenes shot at the Fly By Nite studios, also found in Redditch.

Training Programme with Film Birmingham

Hussey was also passionate about positively contributing to Birmingham throughout the course of production. As well as the production company donating to local charities, a training programme was also implemented. In collaboration with Film Birmingham, 10 trainees from underrepresented backgrounds were able to work on the production. She told the BBC, “Film Birmingham, and the BBC specifically, are excited by this. This scheme is unique because it’s not reaching out to the usual suspects.”

Source: www.bustle.com and www.birminghammail.co.uk

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Hopeful filmmakers and TV series creators from across the West Midlands pitched their ideas to executives from leading international studios at the first Birmingham Film Market.

Senior representatives from 12 top production companies including Sony Pictures, Bad Wolf Studios, and Acorn TV listened to proposals from 50 delegates at The Grand Hotel, in Colmore Row, on November 26. Endorsed by Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight and Kidulthood and Tomb Raider actress Jaime Winstone, the event was set up to give talented local people the rare chance to meet top-level industry bosses on a one-to-one basis.

For more industry information, visit our news page. Or add us on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook.

A Kidderminster film director is over the moon after receiving an honour from the creator of hit TV show Peaky Blinders.

Steven Knight, the creator of the BBC drama, named the winner for an award in his name as Fernando Antonio Maffei, who has been recognised for his TV script The Britalians.

Fernando and Lawrence pitched their idea for the show to film companies such as Curzon and Sony, which the director described as an “eye-opening experience.”

Mr Maffei will now receive a mentoring session from Steven Knight and went to the Birmingham Film Festival Awards Ceremony, held at the Grand Hotel on Saturday (November 27), where he was presented with his trophy.

Mr Maffei said: “To have a mentoring session with the creator of peaky blinders is one of my dreams. I’ve always had this ambition to meet with Steven Knight, he’s been an inspiration for some of my own work.

“Films like Eastern Promises and Locke have inspired me in many ways.

“My business partner and good friend Lawrence Donello worked with me to shape the story that we wanted to tell.

“As we both have British Italian roots we feel we want to put our stamp on this an share this wonderful story with the world.

“Lawrence an I were both really impressed with the reception the BFM had on its first year, I personally would love to see this growth follow suit throughout, with the high end professionalism and a step up for Birmingham Film overall.”

Source: www.kidderminstershuttle.co.uk

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The spotlight has been shining brighter and brighter on Birmingham over the past few years, which has seen the city slowly begin to make its mark as one of the creative hubs in the UK.

Jaime Winstone, who attended, is known for playing Becky in the film Kidulthood, playing Kelly in the E4 horror series Dead Set and Lauren in the Sky 1 sitcom After Hours. She said: “So it’s been very exciting to be welcomed here as an ambassador for the Birmingham Film Market, and to be in this extremely exciting room of fresh talent – script developers, young, old. A mixed bag of talent.”

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