Flatpack Film Festival celebrated its tenth edition this spring and launched Flatpack: Assemble, a new year-round partnership with BFI Film Audience Network to help develop film in the West Midlands. Birmingham on Film is funded by the BFI and forms part of the BFI’s Britain on Film project showcasing hidden histories from the film archives.

Highlights of the Birmingham on Film season include:

– 60s pop satire Privilege (28th September, Town Hall), returning to screen at Birmingham’s Town Hall half a century after its memorable opening sequence was filmed there.

– Screening and walking tour to mark forty years since the first broadcast of the off-the-wall crime drama Gangsters (2nd October, The Electric).

– Canalside screening of offbeat Brit musical Take Me High (6th October, Regency Wharf) featuring Gas St Basin and starring Cliff Richard as a merchant banker who invents a ‘Brumburger’ (to be recreated by Original Patty Men).

– Rare opportunity to watch and discuss Britain’s first and only black soap opera, Empire Road (15th October, mac birmingham), set and shot on location in Handsworth. Actress Corinne Skinner-Carter will be present to talk about her breakthrough role in the show.

– A peek behind the scenes of some of Birmingham’s recent productions from the zombie dystopia of The Girl With All the Gifts to spy thriller The Game, in City of a Thousand Locations (10th October, Mockingbird, Digbeth).

– Recently restored home front drama Millions Like Us (13th October, Greenwood Academy), filmed at the Spitfire factory in Castle Bromwich with thousands of actual employees acting as extras.

– A Private Enterprise (9th October, The Electric), one of the very first British-Asian features about a young man inheriting his father’s Birmingham factory.

With Steven Spielberg currently filming his latest feature (Ready Player One) in Birmingham this announcement is very timely.

Ian Francis, Director of Flatpack, said “You might not think of Birmingham as a natural movie city like London or San Francisco, but it’s actually a fantastic, versatile place to make a film. This season is like a time-machine journey from 1900s street scenes to 21st century zombie thrillers, and we hope it will inspire more people to shoot here.”