Those Were The Decades – 1990s

Due to unforeseen circumstances we have had to cancel the day times sessions for this event however the evening film screening of Close-Up with Flatpack Festival will go ahead.

1990s: The March of Globilisation
Meeting Room 104, Conference Suite, Level 1 Library of Birmingham, Centenary Square, Broad Street, Birmingham B1 2ND

A series of special events focusing on the five decades of Ikon’s history and the social, political and cultural context, including talks, debates and film screenings.

11am–12pm – illustrated talk
“New, new, new: everything is new!”: Globalisation and British politics in the 1990s
Dr Will Leggett, Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Birmingham, discusses how the spectre of globalisation and ‘new times’ dominated British politics and society in the 1990s. Were Tony Blair and the ‘modernisers’ right that there was no alternative to their vision of global modernity? Or was, in the words of the anti-globalisers, ‘another world possible’?

12.15–1.30pm – panel discussion
Ikon in the 1990s
Chaired by Ikon Deputy Director Debbie Kermode with former Ikon Curator Angela Kingston plus special guests.

2.30–3.15pm – archive session
Exploring the Archives with Dr Chris Upton
Join Library Archive Manager Rachel MacGregor and local historian Dr Chris Upton, Newman University, as they explore rarely seen material from the 1990s.

3.30-5pm – screening
Made in Birmingham: Reggae, Punk, Bhangra
Dir. Deborah Aston, UK, 2010, 65 mins
A history of Birmingham’s vibrant music scene through the decades, featuring interviews with key local musicians talking about the global influences on their music, including members of Steel Pulse, UB40 and The Beat. Followed by a Q&A with Director Deborah Aston and Roger Shannon, Professor of Film and Television Studies, Edge Hill University, Liverpool.

7-9pm – screening
Close-Up
Dir. Abbas Kiarostami, Iran, 1990, 98 mins, cert U
Internationally revered Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami has created some of the most inventive and transcendent cinema of the past thirty years, and Close-Up is his most radical, brilliant work. This fiction-documentary hybrid uses a sensational real-life event as the basis for a stunning, multilayered investigation into movies, identity, artistic creation and existence, in which the real people involved in a case of stolen identity play themselves. The screening is preceded by an introduction by Dr. Saeed Zeydabadi-Nejad talking about Kiarostami as a global filmmaker and this being one of his last Iranian films.

Booking information:
Book online or call Ikon Shop on 0121 248 0711 (please provide full name, telephone number and email address at time of booking). Also available on the door (cash only). Please note that online booking closes at 5pm on Friday 10 October.

Day Passes (includes evening film screening)
£15 / £12 concessions

Evening film screening only (Close Up)
£5 / £4 concessions

Saturday 29 November
2000s: The Age of Turbulence

Organised in collaboration with Flatpack Film Festival, The Library of Birmingham, University of Birmingham and Writing West Midlands.