Happy noo year. Been watching quite a few films about movie-going recently, and came across this three-minuter which the Coens made for the 2007 Cannes film festival:

Sort of reminded me of ‘The Day of the Premiere of Close Up’, with Nanni Moretti losing sleep over the box-office reception for a Kiarostami film. (On youtube, but only in Italian I’m afraid.) And on a similar tack, in this article Mark Cousins talks about showing ‘The Red Balloon’ to hordes of kids in northern Iraq when filming his documentary The First Movie.

Here are some of the images created on Alex Mackenzie’s rayogram workshops while he was in the UK recently, including a few made at VIVID on 15th November. (No sound.)

While you’re consuming your bodyweight in minced pies and mulled wine over the next few days perhaps raise a glass to Birmingham’s Electric cinema, celebrating its centenary on Sunday and almost definitely the oldest cinema in the UK. Earlier this month the current owner Tom Lawes staged a whistle-stop tour of the building’s last hundred years, from its early days as a news theatre (with punters including George Bernard Shaw) via soft porn intrigue in the 70s and 80s to the carrot-cake-and-Tarkovsky era in the 90s and finally its somewhat more upmarket current guise.

I first encountered it as an arthouse fleapit, and cherished memories of being on the dole in Birmingham are all wrapped up with drizzly Tuesday afternoons watching double-bills along with three or four other punters. Its survival seemed to defy the laws of capitalism. But then as the centenary event made clear, 47 Station Street has led a remarkably enduring, chameleon-like existence as it shapeshifted from Electric to Select to Tatler to Jacey to Classic to Tivoli and back to the Electric, while all around it bigger, sexier cinemas have bitten the dust.

This shot is from the 30s Tatler period (not Prohibition-era Chicago, believe it or not), when the cinema shot its own newsreels. We got a tantalising glimpse of original footage from their launch event, and an insight into the building’s creepier side thanks to a letter from an employee who worked there in the 50s. At that time there was a mortuary next door, and he was told that during the war the basement had been used as a store for dead bodies. He also recalls attempting to wake a punter at the end of the night and finding that he had shot himself. “My happiest years, and I hope the cinema always is there.”

I am pretty crap at best-movie lists and end-of-decade summaries but if you got me in an armlock and forced an answer out of me, I would have to admit that Terrence Malick’s The New World is my favourite film of the last ten years; one of those transporting experiences which come around very rarely. None of the writeups I’ve read since have done it any justice, but John Patterson – one of our finest film writers – nailed it on Friday.

Endless film-hunting for Flatpack at the moment, and this was a nice smack in the face this afternoon. (Gracias to Cartoon Brew.)

As usual at this time of year our blogging and listings have tailed off horribly. If we weren’t so distracted we’d be telling you about stuff like the Endless Supply film screening in Digbeth tomorrow, or maybe even our own gig on Sunday.

A couple of blurrycam shots from last night’s Wooden Lightbox performance by Alex MacKenzie at Vivid. During their flying visit we were able to introduce Alex and his partner Clare to the joys of the Bartons Arms, and on their return to Vancouver they’ll be informing the local elders that any self-respecting World-class City™ must have a German christmas market and ferris wheel. (Though I think they probably do free concerts better over there.) In the meantime you can catch the show in London, Bristol, Glasgow or Oban. Recommended.

We’re very proud of our shiny new sign, specially made for us by the lovely Holly Fuller. Here it is in pride of place at the office, and in action at the recent Travelling Picture Show gala.

My red-hot productive day has fallen at the first hurdle thanks to an innocuous recommendation from Synth Eastwood. Mr Hugh Cooney is based in Dublin and has turned himself into a one-man production line for deranged youtube despatches which seem to be plucked straight from his subconscious with very little filtering. At the same time, they’re smartly put together. And bloody funny. A prolific fellow so it’s difficult to know where to start, but here’s his most recent piece:

Birmingham timelapse from 7inch cinema on Vimeo.

This is a selection of images taken by amateur photographer Derek Fairbrother from the same spot in Birmingham’s Chamberlain square between 1963 and 1986. We’ve just compiled them for a new exhibition called Birmingham Seen which opens at BM&AG this weekend; other sequences include the Post Office tower and the Rotunda. With thanks to Pete James and Gaynor Fairbrother.

You might remember Danish troupe Efterklang from a joyous set at Supersonic last year. They’re returning to Birmingham next week, to play at new venue Asylum in Hockley. It’s just over the road from where Bonds used to be (home of Moneypenny’s, Boogie Down Brum and most importantly Oscillate) in an oft-ignored corner of Birmingham (by me anyway) which seems to livening up with student influx and pubs like the Lord Clifden.

Efterklang – Cutting Ice To Snow from Rumraket on Vimeo.

(The promo for Illuminant is great too)

Also coming up in Birmingham, one of the founders of Paris film collective Light Cone will be presenting a selection of work at Vivid on Saturday. And much further away, the Full of Noise festival in Barrow-in-Furness looks worth a visit.