The Triangle Cinema - Gosta Green, Birmingham
After much searching I have at last found the video I made in about 1988 about the Triangle Cinema in Gosta Green, Birmingham. I can’t fathom why there is so little is writen about this place during its Birmingham Arts Lab period in the 1970s or later, when I used to go there, as The Triangle. It was originally a cinema and in the late 1960s a TV studio for the BBC.
The video was produced whilst I was a trainee at a place called Handsworth Viewpoint about which I may write more at some point.
There is a longer version of this video somewhere, I’m sure it was about 10 minutes long. This is a 5 minute version which was on a VHS video labelled ‘Dave Harte showreel’. The other stuff on the showreel hasn’t really stood the test of time - this at least has some historical interest and a top soundtrack by Big Audio Dynamite:
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[...] The Triangle Cinema - Gosta Green, Birmingham | Dave Harte Dave says “After much searching I have at last found the video I made in about 1988 about the Triangle Cinema in Gosta Green, Birmingham”. [...]
What do you mean the OTHER stuff hasn’t stood the test of time. this is great - just for the clothes, and VHS ness. please please lets see more from Dave Harte’s Show reel. and i do mean it. I AM interested. archive is the new black
This is great stuff; thanks for posting it. Many of the characters behind the Arts Lab have remained as backers and players locally, often behind the scenes. The Arts Lab movement’s time has come - I’d love to do a show on it! I recently put together the retrospective on the MAC (see link) with my friend Rob Hewitt. Please post any more gems like this!
http://sch01ar.blogspot.com/
They should bring back the Artlab. It started off my interest in Indie cinema and film making generally. I’m sure a similarly sized World/Indie cinema in the same location would do well with all the students around there. Plus its an extra option for the rest of us. We need more indie venues…
Thanks for these comments. I too learnt about non-mainstream cinema at the Triangle so there’s lots of memories wrapped up in this short film.
Toby:I like the notion that there is something about their ‘VHS-ness’ as well as the other aspects that you mentions. I will indeed make further plunges into the archive I think.
General point: watching them again reminds me of how enabling video technology was in the 1980s. I used to shoot Super 8 film but with video - wow, you could shoot on a 3 hour tape, edit quite simply, even add titles with a computer thingy. This was technology that let us be producers of television as well as consumers. As enabling in fact as digital technologies feel today.
Dave
Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery hosted a show about the history of the Arts Lab, which ran from 28th March - May 1998. There was a catalogue, “Birmingham Arts Lab: The Phantom of Liberty”, which I expect the Local Studies dept. of the Central Library will be able to dig out for those who are interested. It’d be a nice step, towards gathering the material needed to write a much-needed ‘history of art-making in Birmingham’, if someone could scan it and place it online.
Sorry to lower the intellectual tone…..but .that jumper tucked into trousers at 0.19 secs takes me back a bit!
Crikey, that is a blast from the past. I knew Pete from when I worked at the Film & TV Festival. He’s now at the Irish Film Institute as cinema manager. As for that 1998 exhibition, the Festival contributed various things and I vaguely remember that Roger Shannon might now have them. Shame that after all these years Birmingham is still without a cinema like the Triangle.
that takes me back. the whole area seems lacklustre now compared to the vibrancy of the drunken children who thronged the area from the sacks to the black horse. the old union mill has gone too.
i saw reservoir dogs there, when tarantino was ‘new’
i was working on the last ever filmshow at the triangle… thus ended my couple of years worth of education in cult films and beligerant ticket-cashiers(not naming any names… but at the end of the night he crawled down the hole where the takings went, to sleep…)
happy times, and some great films as well as kenneth branagh ones…)