Face to Face with... Ian Francis

Birmingham wouldn’t usually be first on the list as an ideal weekend getaway destination, but when it involves an eclectic mix of parties, live scores, AV performances, feature film previews and a restored 60s mobile cinema, it has to be reconsidered as a damn good contender. The event has been described as ‘the perfect mixtape’ and here, director Ian Francis tells us about why he started it, taking a break to recharge and how the social media boom has helped raise Flatpack’s profile.

When you started Flatpack, what was your original vision for the festival?

To put on the kind of thing that we’d love to go to ourselves. We’d been to a lot of film festivals where regular punters were secondary to industry delegates, so we were keen to avoid any kind of pecking order and make it fun for people while challenging them with the programme as well. It was also important to make full use of Birmingham, and to create communal experiences which reflected the mad, eclectic mixture you find online.

And how has this developed or matured since then?

We’re a bit slicker than we used to be! There’s a wider range of voices in the programming and we’re more ambitious about the kind of work we put on. The first festival was done on a shoestring and you can only rely on favours for so long. At heart, though, I think the spirit of the whole thing is pretty close to what sparked it in the first place.

Why wasn’t there an event in 2008?

We were starting from scratch each year and it became clear that we needed to plan a bit further ahead if it was going to grow and thrive. It was a really tough decision to take a break, but it turned out to be the right one.

The festival received major national recognition in 2010. Did that help with this year’s planning and prep in terms of getting the word out?

Flatpack is a real mixture of genres and audiences, so it’s a tricky one to summarise. Having a strong profile makes things so much easier, because we don’t have to explain ourselves quite so much. People have got their head around the festival, and seem to enjoy the fact that it’s quite unpredictable and unique. The biggest thing for us though, is word of mouth, people having a brilliant weekend here and then dragging their mates along the following year. We always used to say ‘if only you could bottle the festival atmosphere to show people what it’s like’, but the social media boom means that our audience does that for us now.

Pick one thing you’re most looking forward to and tell us a little more about it?

We’ve got a vintage mobile cinema coming up from Devon and travelling all over the city, showing shorts and archive films. It was commissioned by Tony Benn [Minister of Technology] in the 60s to tour around factories, but spent many years rusting in a field. The couple who run it have done a beautiful restoration job, and it’s the kind of thing that will allow us to reach a completely different crowd. Of the more straightforward screenings, I’m really looking forward to seeing how people respond to Gillian Wearing’s debut feature, Self Made. It’s powerful stuff.

Where did the name Flatpack come from?

We wanted to suggest immediacy, portability and the idea that anyone could construct their own film festival. For some it has negative connotations of schlepping around IKEA and cheap MDF, but hopefully we’ve made the name our own. Sometimes we get called the Flapjack Festival instead.

So have you ever attempted to build anything flat packed from IKEA?

I’ve got to admit that I’m absolutely rubbish at that sort of thing! I quite like making my own lampshades though.

Will you get time to enjoy what’s on show at the festival, or is it all work and no film?

It’s very unlikely that I’ll watch anything the whole week. You’re basically running on adrenaline, and if I sat down for more than five minutes I’d just start panicking about all the things that still need doing. I’ll be looking forward to a celebratory cocktail on Sunday night, though.

Sum up in a sentence or two what people can expect from this year’s festival...

A psychotic tyre, a man playing cello with an angle-grinder, vintage mobile movie house, 16mm rarities, bunker installations, live scores, archive cut ups, headphone cinema, turntable zoetropes, shadow shows and shed loads of good films.

Flatpack runs from 23-27 March and for more information go to http://www.flatpackfestival.org.