Berwick Young Filmmakers

Intended Ten: The Fate of The Middle Place is a collaborative film made by Berwick Young Filmmakers (a group of local 12–14 year olds). The film was produced over five days of workshops led by artist Kimberley O’Neill, which introduced the group to digital filmmaking and documentary techniques.

Essential Cinema

Essential Cinema is our pluralist retrospective series that provides a revisionist view of what might be considered canonical works of cinema. The 2021 selection brings new restorations and digitisations that evoke connections between political and spiritual awakenings, taking in projects from India, Cuba, USA and Palestine.

New Cinema Awards

The Berwick New Cinema Competition becomes the Berwick New Cinema Awards—a non competitive prize that is shared between the filmmakers. The strand encompasses a selection of work that has most spoken to our group of programmers this year and includes what we feel is some of the most distinctive works of new cinema and artists’ moving image being made around the world today.

Online Exhibitions

Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival’s 2021 Online Exhibitions take the place of its usual physical ones in Berwick. Here you’ll find places of radical world building, virtual spaces to gather and to contemplate.

Work in Progress

Returning for a second edition, Work in Progress is a Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival programme strand highlighting forthcoming feature-length films. For 2021’s Work in Progress, we will focus on Congolese director and visual artist Nelson Makengo’s Rising Up at Night (2022) his feature film debut currently in production.

Berwick Young Filmmakers

Enceindre

Essential Cinema

Our pluralist retrospective series that provides a revisionist view of what might be considered classic works of cinema.

New Cinema Competition

For the first time, Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival’s New Cinema Competition includes Short, Medium and Feature length films. The strand encompasses the Festival’s view of some of the most distinctive works of new cinema and artists’ moving image being made around the world today.

New Cinema Competition Features

A brand new remodelled New Cinema Competition, where all selected filmmakers share the Berwick New Cinema Award. For easy viewing the selection is presented in two screenings, one for short and medium length works, and the second for features.

Previews

Previews is a new Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival (BFMAF) programme strand highlighting forthcoming feature-length films. For its first edition BFMAF has invited artist filmmakers Tim Leyendekker (NL) and Fern Silva (US) to introduce their debut—work in progress—feature films.

Berwick New Cinema Competition

The Berwick New Cinema Competition’s 23 selections comprise our view of some of the most distinctive and unexpected works of new cinema and artists’ moving image being made around the world. Disregarding boundaries of genre, form, filmic conventions and expectations, these are vital works, imbued with a sense of liveness and agency in their resolute visions.

Berwick New Cinema Features

For the 2019 festival, the Berwick New Cinema strand expands to incorporate feature and mid-length films which bring surprising perspectives and new forms into being. Five distinctive films comprise this year’s selection, shown in the UK for the first time, some fresh from top international festivals and others perhaps unjustly overlooked.

Children and Young People

BFMAF presents a number of projects with, by and for young people. This includes Kaleidoscope, a drop-in bean bag cinema with hands-on making activity for families, a programme of screenings for school groups and work by young artists from Berwick Youth Project.

Essential Cinema

BFMAF’s essentially pluralist retrospective series provides a fresh look at classic works of cinema or a first view of overlooked masterpieces. Each film is all too rarely-seen and most are shown in new restorations for the first time in the UK.

Events

Seminars, outdoor screenings, workshops and performances that provide occasions for discovery, exchange and fresh experiences of sound and the moving image.

Exhibitions

Artists present recent and newly commissioned moving image works, reinhabiting Berwick’s town walls, animating historic buildings and rewilding its town centre.

Fantastika

Fantastika examines the many innovative ways filmmakers have utilised fairytales, folktales and fables in their work over the past sixty years. Curated by BFMAF Associate Programmer Herb Shellenberger, the series is international in scope, with films ranging between a number of genres and forms.

Festival Club

Propositions

Part screening, part talk or performance, Propositions provides a discursive setting to dive deep into new cinema. Whether filmmakers expand on their work, demonstrating research and contexts, or curators illuminate new perspectives and complications, Propositions shares discoveries encountered through research and practice.

Seminar

Berwick New Cinema

Presenting the very best in artists’ moving image and new filmmaking, the Berwick New Cinema competition features resolutely contemporary films that transgress restraints of genre, capital and expectation.

Children & Young People

BFMAF presents a number of projects with, by and for young people: Kaleidoscope, a drop-in bean bag cinema with hands-on making activity for families, films for school groups, and The Hurt Goes On?, an analogue foray into a digital world by young people from Berwick Youth Project.

Essential Cinema

BFMAF’s retrospective series provides a fresh look at classic works of cinema or a first view of overlooked masterpieces. Each film is rarely-seen and most are shown in new restorations for the first time in the UK.

Events

Exhibitions

Artists present new and recent moving image work in exhibitions around Berwick-upon-Tweed, taking over historic buildings, empty shops and hidden corners of the town.

Films

Los Otros: John Torres & Shireen Seno

The first major UK retrospective of filmmakers Shireen Seno and John Torres, whose studio, film laboratory, library and platform Los Otros is one of the most invigorating forces in Philippine cinema today.

Screening the Forest

Curated by Dr. Graiwoot Chulphongsathorn, this series takes nature as its point of departure. ‘Screening the Forest’ weaves together forests from Japan, Myanmar, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, Vietnam and the Philippines, understanding the forest to be a network of living beings where agency distributes beyond human forms of life.

Seminar

BFMAF’s popular series of seminars provide an informal space of communication between artists and audience. Los Otros (John Torres and Shireen Seno), Lucy Clout and Sophia Al-Maria will participate in this year’s seminars, moderated by writer and curator Taylor Le Melle.

Special Features (Opening & Closing)

Berwick New Cinema

Closing Gala

Education & Participation

Events

Exhibitions

Galas

Seminars

Ultramarine

Uzbek Rhapsody

An Early Clue to the New Direction: Queer Cinema Before Stonewall

Berwick New Cinema Shorts

Throbbing with innovation, risk and unbounded visual imagination, the Festival’s Berwick New Cinema strand features 13 short films from some of the most exciting and ambitious filmmakers working today.

Essential Cinema

Exhibitions

Films

Opening & Closing Gala

Philip Trevelyan

Primetime

Special Events

The Artist’s Cut

The Artist’s Cut is a Northern Film & Media scheme for UK-based artists with a background 􏰒􏰅􏰇in film or photography to take part in a film commission and development programme designed to nurture bold new voices in narrative film.

Berwick New Cinema Features

Throbbing with innovation, risk and unbounded visual imagination, the Festival’s Berwick New Cinema Features strand is composed of four features from some of the most exciting and ambitious filmmakers working today.

Berwick New Cinema Midlengths

Midlength films can become entangled between short and feature length film formats, falling outside of what is usually possible in commercial cinemas or broadcast television.

Events

Exhibitions

Films

Inntravel Short Film Awards

Children and young people

Closing Film

Events

Exhibitions

Films

Inntravel Award

Installations

Opening Gala

Short Stories from the Border