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Birmingham Critical Film Forum: Sports Tower and Paradise Circus

Birmingham Critical Film Forum: Sports Tower and Paradise Circus

Curated by Ian Sergeant
Hosted by Birmingham Critical Film Forum as part of Birmingham School of Art’s “Night School”
Tuesday 28th February 2023

This event hosted at the School of Art will be a screening and discussion with Ladywood-based filmmaker Yonatan Tiruneh and composer Mia Sugunasingha.

Tiruneh has produced a short film and led a series of engagement projects with local young people about Tower Ballroom, at Edgbaston reservoir. Therefore, the discussion will focus on notions of identity and belonging in relation to place.

In addition to Yonatan’s film there will also be a screening of Paradise Circus, (1988), directed by Heather Powell as part of the Birmingham Film and Video Workshop. Paradise Circus is about the ways in which the city is perceived by women, living in an environment largely designed by men. How different would a city like Birmingham be if women could influence its design? What stops cities from doing this?

Sports Tower

Dir: Yonatan Tiruneh

Duration: 3min 20

Sports Tower (2022) is a eulogy to the Tower Ballroom that hosted so many important sports events to people of all backgrounds.

Working with a group of young people the film celebrates the history of almost two hundred years, in a meditation of what the place could have been dreamed into with young people’s imagination. Mia Sugunasingha, the film’s composer will also be in attendance along with Yonatan for the screening and discussion.

Paradise Circus

Dir: Heather Powell

Duration: 1 hr

Paradise Circus (1988)  is about the ways in which the city is perceived by women, living in a n environment largely designed by men. How different would a city like Birmingham be if women could influence its design? What stops them from doing this?

“When you’re redeveloping a city, it shouldn’t be in the small print, ‘this is for men only, this is for the able bodied only “

Paradise Circus was made with the Birmingham Film and Video Workshop.

Images above: Courtesy of Yonatan Tiruneh.

The Birmingham Critical Film Forum received a Stuart Hall Foundation Curation Award in 2020 to develop artists film culture through a number of opportunities for engagement in the West Midlands.

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