Found Footage Festival at FACT - all the ffs
IT came into being in New York City in 2004. Now the The Found Footage Festival plays all over the world. It is a one-of-a-kind event featuring VHS tapes picked up at thrift shops and garage sales throughout North America.
Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher
FFF is the creation of two high school friends, Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher, who have spent years trawling through America's charity shops, warehouse sales, house clearances, dumpsters and vintage shops for lost and forgotten VHS tapes.
They began screening their collection of tapes to their college housemates and at parties. They quickly gained a devoted following at The University of Wisconsin, so they decided to take their show on the road showing this sort of thing. FFF makes its triumphant return to the UK and to FACT this weekend - with Pickett (The Onion) and Prueher (Late Show with David Letterman) host Saturday's screening in person, providing observations and commentary on these found video obscurities.
Highlights from the 2013 show include: A new collection of exercise tapes, including one called 'The Sexy Treadmill Workout' and a 1996 video about how to care for your ferret .
*Found Footage Festival, Screen 2 at FACT, Wood Street, Liverpool 1. Saturday March 23, 9pm. Tickets £10 from here Tickets are available now from the Box Office, online and by phone on 0871 902 5737.
Strangers In A Strange Land by Robyn Woolston
Coke adds life
Do you ever wonder what happens after you've chucked those milk cartons and cola bottles into a recycling bin.
Sometimes, just sometimes, they come out as an art installation.
You see, one man's wash-n-squash is another's rich canvas for creating, and the winner of the Liverpool Art Prize will be showing you how and why from now until June.
Robyn Woolston's prize for winning the LAP was a show at the Walker Art Gallery. Could they have known that she would fill the spaces next to the old masters with a shedload of waste plastic?
Thus we have Strangers in a Strange Land in which nine large bales of discarded plastic form the basis of a major new installation.
“Exploring the burden of inorganic waste, the work highlights our relationship with the Earth and its finite resources,” it says here. “The layout of the bales nod to Carl André's infamous Equivalent VIII (1966), a sculpture created from 120 firebricks. Like André's bricks the bales are imbued with a double-meaning; they are waste yet embody value, they have been both discarded and harvested.”
*Strangers in a Strange Land, Walker Art Gallery, Saturday March 23-Sunday, June 23. Daily. Free.
Sir Henry At Rawlinson's End
Loving and Vivving
VIVIAN Stanshall, Big Shot of the Bonzo Dog Band, would have been 70 next week – but the world lost his genius in house fire back in the 1990s - and just as he was recording a comeback album, with, among others, Wizard of Twiddley life member Andy Frizzell.
Viv might have been consigned to the canyons of fans' minds but for the dedication of local actor and musician Mike Livesley and his affectionate tribute show, Sir Henry at Rawlinson End.
To mark Viv's birthday, it's playing to a sell-out Bloomsbury Theatre in London on Monday - its biggest ever audience by miles and probably everybody who ever knew Stanshall will be there. So no pressure or anything.
Just as well Mike and the team have decided to do a Liverpool warm-up.
The upstairs bar at the Fly In The Loaf will suffice for this, with a steady supply of Okells MPA to steady the the cast's nerves and yours.
*Sir Henry at Rawlinson End special warm-up performance, The Fly in the Loaf, 13 Hardman Street, Liverpool 1. Friday, March 22, 8pm. Tickets, £5, available behind the bar, on the night, or can be reserved on 0151 708 0817.
I Was A Rat
Philip Pullman’s classic children’s novel I Was a Rat! Has been enthralling audiences of all ages this week, as famed Italian company Teatro Kismet bring his gloriously dark and gripping story to life on the stage for the first time.
Catch its stunning visuals and live music at the Liverpool Playhouse this Friday and Saturday, the last two dates in its run here.
I Was a Rat! introduces us to Roger, a scruffy page boy who turns up one evening on the doorstep of old married couple Bob and Joan. “I was a rat!” he insists! But what is he now? A terrifying monster rampaging in the sewers? A money-spinning fairground freak? A champion wriggler and a downy card? Or just an ordinary boy, though a little ratty in his habits?
*I Was A Rat, Liverpool Playhouse, Williamson Square, L1. Friday March 22, 7pm, Sat March 23, 2pm and 7pm. Tickets £12-£20. 0151 709 4776.
