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Located on Eastern Lane, The Maltings is the Festival’s main hub. The Main House is a traditional cinema with seating for over 300.
This a large venue on 4 floors which includes a theatre and cinema, The Maltings Cafe Bar and the Henry Travers Studio. It’s a busy venue with a programme of films and theatre. This venue offers step-free access to all spaces and has a lift.
There is ramped access on the left side of the main entrance or 8 wide steps with handrails on both sides. Their are either push doors at the main entrance or power assisted doors with a push button on the left side.
This entrance takes you to the foyer of the venue with a box office desk directly in front, the Henry Travers Studio through a door to the left and The Maltings Cafe Bar through a door to the right.
To access the theatre and cinema auditorium you need to either take the lift or the stairs. The lift is yellow and it is to the right as you come in. The stairs are also on the right with a yellow handrail on one side.
You need to take the lift to the lower levels or go down the stairs.
Steps and Lifts: To access the theatre and cinema you need to get the lift or stairs to the lower ground levels. The lift has a maximum capacity of 630kg and can fit one wheelchair or mobility scooter at a time. The circle has an accessible seating section which is on the -1 lower ground level. This is accessible via the lift or down 16 stairs. There is more accessible seating options in the stalls which is on the -2 lower ground level. This is accessible via the lift or down 32 stairs and through the stage bar. If you are sitting in a non step-free seat, there are stairs to the seats and they have silver contrast edgings. All stairs outside and inside the auditorium have a handrail.
Room Description: A large theatre auditorium with a stage and cinema screen, raked seating, additional seating on a circle mezzanine and in boxes.
Doorways: Doorways into the auditorium are 112cm wide.
Seating: Fixed auditorium style padded seating with padded seat and back and no arms. Loose chairs with padded backs and seats and no arms, spaces for wheelchairs.
Temperature: Heated and warm, not much ventilation.
Lighting: Lighting in the stairways, corridors and theatre bar are from shaded lamps and are generally dim and warm. There are some bright round shaded fluorescent lights on the walls of the corridor on -3 level and in the toilets. In the auditorium it will be softly lit with a large colourful splash screen projected. There will be very low music playing.
Flooring: Smooth grey-beige carpets.
Sound: It is a large space and the ambient noise before, after and during breaks from people chatting can be quite loud.
Patterns: The walls in the corridors are white or red and are made from a combination of large blocks and small bricks creating a grid-like pattern. There is contrast between the red walls and chairs and the vertical black beams and gold features in the auditorium.
Smell: Neutral
Temperature: Heated, warm, hot
There are gendered toilets on the -1 lower ground level. There is an accessible adapted toilet with babychange facilities and gendered toilets on the -3 lower ground level. All toilets are accessible via the lift or down the stairs with a handrail. The doorways of the toilets are 91cm wide.
There is food and drink available at the Cafe Bar on the ground floor. The opening times are;
‘Opening hours for 2025 :
Tuesday – Saturday 9.30am – 4pm
Lunches served from 11.45am – 2.45pm
Drinks and home baking served until 3.45pm
Sundays/Mondays – CLOSED
There will be a bar service available one hour before every show/film.’
There are also drinks available at the Theatre Bar on the -1 lower ground floor level before and during events.
There are multiple emergency exits throughout the building, including step-free emergency exits, marked by illuminated green signs which will take you either to the outside of the building or external refuge points. Follow the signs and the directions by staff in the case of an emergency. The closest step-free emergency exit in the theatre is back through to the theatre bar and through a corridor exit marked with a green emergency exit sign. The closest step-free emergency exit in the Henry Travers Studio is through the marked emergency exits within the studio into a glass corridor which leads out to the carpark. The emergency meeting point is across the road outside the Sports Direct.
Eastern Lane, Berwick-upon-Tweed, TD15 1AJ
I wouldn’t want to belong to any club that would have me as a member. That includes Chauvin-ists; children who disturb corpses; frightened men living in a matriarchal society; or a film crew consisting of a slime robot, talking mandrill and lesbian couple whose relationship crumbles under the glow of bisexual lighting.
Q&A with filmmakers Hardeep Pandhal & Benjamin Crotty
Empty Metal takes place in a world similar to ours—one of mass surveillance, pervasive policing, and increasing individual apathy. The lives of several people, each inhabiting poles of American social and political consciousness, weave together as each attempts to achieve some kind of forward motion, sometimes in contradiction, and always under the eye of more controlling powers.
A taut thriller, the film reveals a political fantasy, an alternative reality whose characters teeter on the dull knife edge that is contemporary American politics, at the same time refusing to fall right of left. Instead, they lash out from the soul, under the radar, in an attempt to achieve what their mainstream predecessors have yet to accomplish.
“Filled with energy, rage, and the smallest measure of hope, Empty Metal is a new kind of political film for these extraordinary times.” —Film Society of Lincoln Center
Q&A with filmmakers Adam Khalil & Bayley Sweitzer
Shine bright. Portraits of a nomadic musician and an animatedly-perverse single father butt up against a simulacrum of the Middle East and a tactile inquiry into the natural world. Taken together, expressions of personal, political, spiritual, mystical and sexual agency provide powerful statements of either resistance to or complicity in an increasingly commodified world.
Sensory, colourful and widescreen, the forest is already naturally cinematic.
Since the turn of this century, the forest has fascinated a new generation of global art filmmakers who have chosen the forest as a space for their creative exploration. ‘Screening the Forest’ takes nature as its point of departure by weaving together cinematic forests from India, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines. In some cases, the forest may even refer to nothing but a world construed as its own territory.
Like the real forest, where many genuses of trees coexist, the programme emphasizes that cinema is constructed not only culturally and aesthetically, but also ecologically or even animistically. As new strategies and interpretations of the forest emerge from a variety of Asian filmmakers, new trees can be sowed within our own imagination.
Q&A with curator Dr. Graiwoot Chulphongsathorn
An existential thriller with touches of magic realism, Jîn follows 17-year-old Jîn, a Red Riding Hood with a fierce survival instinct. She is a freedom fighter who flees her armed organisation for reasons unknown. Jîn finds herself battling bravely through dark forests, spending solitary days in the mountains, and ultimately heading towards a city where her future is still unclear. Symbolising the complex and heated conflict between military forces and Kurdish guerrillas, the film contemplates the effect this military conflict has on the forest and mountains, including their inhabitants: animals, trees and the ecosystem enfolding them all, which doesn’t have the ability to fight back.
Introduced by Dr Graiwoot Chulphongsathorn
This special screening of Jîn is kindly supported by Berwick Film Society
Now in its 10th year, the Young Filmmakers’ Competition is BFMAF’s annual award to help support and encourage budding young filmmakers. Featuring a variety of genres, from animation to documentary to narrative film, the competition showcases some of the best young talent from the region.
The competition is supported by Chrissie Anderson and Paul W.S. Anderson (director of Resident Evil and Alien vs. Predator), in commemoration of the life of Chris Anderson, a resident of Berwick who was an active supporter young filmmakers and of the Festival.
