7 March 2024

Give us your Feedback!

Thank you for attending the 19th Edition of Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival! We ask all attendees to fill in a survey telling us more about your experience. This is immensely helpful for us, for a few reasons: For Funding Applications We send this feedback to our funders, and your participation helps ensure that […]

31 January 2024

Essential Cinema

The 19th Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival will open with Ghassan Salhab’s newly restored debut feature film Phantom Beirut (Lebanon, France, 1989) from the Essential Cinema strand. Phantom Beirut is an extraordinarily articulate film on how the most brutal of power politics impact the psyche and inter-relations of people living through them. We will […]

31 January 2024

19th Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival Programme Announced

The 19th edition of Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival (7-10 March 2024) presents 47 films across 5 programmes chronicling desires for liberation. The programme grapples with the potency and ambivalence of hope – across complex emotional, social, and political entanglements. Spearheaded by a new identity stemming from a collaboration between designer Tom Joyes and […]

31 January 2024

New Cinema Awards

Featuring 14 UK Premieres, 2 European Premieres, 4 World Premieres, and 3 World Festival Premieres, this year’s New Cinema Awards celebrate some of the most distinctive cinema being made around the world today. Whether short or feature length, these films push against the boundaries of genre, form, and convention with liveness and agency. Take a […]

31 January 2024

Exhibitions

The 19th Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival will host a free programme of Exhibitions around the town of Berwick-upon-Tweed responding to the specificities of space and place. Cécile B. Evans presents Reality or Not (France, 2023), a video installation that narrates the intriguing tale of a group of students hailing from a high school […]

31 January 2024

Filmmakers in Focus

The 19th Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival celebrates the works of two internationally acclaimed filmmakers with new and retrospective works responding to the contemporary moment and re-interpreting the contexts of their production. Respectively, Basma al-Sharif and Eduardo Williams bring works examining histories that demand remembrance and cyclical narratives of the perpetual present. Basma al-Sharif’s […]

31 January 2024

Propositions

The Propositions strand is a discursive setting for filmmakers to expand on their work, demonstrating research, contexts and perspectives as a means to dig deeper into the questions, ideas and complications encountered through the filmmaking process. This will include the UK Premiere of Emila Beatriz‘s barrunto (Puerto Rico, United Kingdom, 2024) by followed by a […]

14 December 2023

First Look: 19th Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival

Announcing the Filmmaker in Focus, Propositions, and Essential Cinema strands as tickets go on sale!

13 December 2023

Filmmaker in Focus: Basma al-Sharif

Announcing Basma al-Sharif as the 19th Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival’s Filmmaker in Focus!

13 December 2023

First Look: Essential Cinema

Discover the 19th Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival with Essential Cinema, a pluralist retrospective proposing revisions and additions to what might be considered canonical cinema.

13 December 2023

First Look: Propositions

Featuring Emilia Beatriz and Onyeka Igwe, Propositions is a discursive setting for filmmakers to expand on their work, demonstrating research, contexts and perspectives as a means to dig deeper into the questions, ideas and complications encountered through the filmmaking process.

10 December 2023

Welcoming BFMAF’s newest team members!

Welcome Ane Lopez, Dawn Bothwell, Miranda Mungai and Millie McRobbie, all joining us ahead of the 19th Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival this March!

29 November 2023

Solidarity with Palestinian Peoples

29 November is UNESCO International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival are deeply grateful to all the Palestinian artists, filmmakers and cultural workers whom contribute to our Festival. We learn a lot from you. Our solidarity is unwavering.

24 October 2023

Save the 2024 Festival Dates!

Mark your calendars now for the 19th Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival We are excited to share that the 2024 Festival will take place over the long weekend of Thursday 7 to Sunday 10 March 2024. Save the dates to your calendar through the links below. We’ll look forward to seeing you this March.

24 January 2023

Watch it here first! Festival Premieres🥇

31 filmmakers have premiere screenings at BFMAF, including world festival premieres of new films from Jenny Brady (Ireland), Éiméar McClay & Cat McClay (UK), Basim Magdy (Switzerland),  Sophio Medoidze (UK), Anya Tsyrlina & Sid Iandovka (USSR, Switzerland) and Christopher Ulutupu (New Zealand, UK). We can’t wait to share these films with you. WORLD FESTIVAL PREMIERES […]

24 January 2023

Encounter film across Berwick in our Exhibitions programme📍

Creating productive frictions inspired by buildings’ current and historic use, artists present new moving image works in Berwick’s Gymnasium Gallery, Town Hall, Visitor Centre, an 18th century ammunition store and a former Thorntons shop on Marygate. All exhibitions are free, open daily 10:00-17:00, 3-5 March.   Cultuur • Dir. Fairuz Ghammam • Belgium • 2022 […]

24 January 2023

Presenting the Berwick New Cinema Awards 2023 🏆

Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival’s New Cinema Awards celebrates some of the most distinctive works of new cinema and artists’ moving image being made around the world today.

24 January 2023

2023 Festival Programme is now live!

18th Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival announces its full programme in Berwick-upon-Tweed 3 – 5 March. The UK’s Festival for New Cinema and Artists’ Moving Image returns to their home town Berwick-upon-Tweed, championing films and filmmakers who push the boundaries of genre, form and convention to surprise expectations and enliven audience relationships with cinema.

16 December 2022

Festival Passes now available!

Festival Passes are now on sale for the 18th edition of Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival, 3 – 5 March 2023. Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival (BFMAF) has today announced that passes for the 18th edition of the festival have gone on sale. Festival Passes provide access to the full programme of events […]

7 November 2022

BFMAF receives funding from Arts Council England’s 2023-26 Investment Programme

We are very grateful that Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival will receive support from Arts Council England as part of its 2023-26 Investment Programme, providing essential baseline funding to continue our work. An uplift in ACE investment from 2023 means that we can employ a new staff member to work year-round, with a focus […]

27 October 2022

New Opportunities at BFMAF

Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival has created four new job roles which will help shape the Festival ahead of its 18th edition, 3-5 March 2023. This is an exciting time to join a Festival team which puts audiences, artists and filmmakers at the centre of what new cinema can be. For further details on each role […]

28 September 2022

MANIFEST – in person screening at ECA

MANIFEST Edinburgh College of Art, E.22 Lecture Theatre | Thursday 28 September  | 4-6pm BFMAF presents a programme of short films that showcases some of the best new cinema and artists’ moving image work being made around the world today. The screening is free and will be introduced by Festival Director Peter Taylor. The screening is free […]

17 August 2022

Right of Way | 11 September 2022

Right of Way (12a) The Maltings, Berwick | 11 September  | 14.30   We’re told we all have a right to roam in the countryside – but does that apply to everyone equally?   Right of Way, is a special preview screening presented by Independent Cinema Office and LUX Moving Image. It mixes stunning new […]

21 July 2022

Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival is Changing!

After 18 years the annual Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival (BFMAF) is moving from its regular autumn slot to a new date, 3 – 5th March 2023.

21 July 2022

A New Season: Renewing & Rewilding BFMAF

Since 2005, Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival (BFMAF) has taken place annually each September in England’s most northerly town, bringing visitors to North Northumberland and working year round with artists, filmmakers, local audiences and schools. Longer term work in progress has culminated in a decision to shift BFMAF’s film festival from its established Autumn […]

21 July 2022

New Appointments

Following our date change announcement, we are delighted to welcome and introduce the new team members who will oversee the 18th Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival in 2023. Artists and researchers Dan Guthrie and Ilinca Vanau will bring new perspectives to the fore as this edition’s Programming Fellows. They will join Programmers Alice Miller, […]

25 March 2022

Chris Ulutupu announced as recipient of the Tagata Moana Moving Image Award

Congratulations to Christopher Ulutupu who is the recipient of the 2022 Tagata Moana Moving Image Award. This commission will support Chris to create a new single channel moving image work to premiere at the 18th Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival (BFMAF) in March 2023. This commission is presented by CIRCUIT with support from TAUTAI […]

14 March 2022

Ecological Futurisms programme at Ambika P3 gallery

Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival is delighted to be a co-partner for 2 events launching as part of Ecological Futurisms (EF) at Ambika P3 Gallery this March. Ecological Futurisms (EF) is an emerging collective from CREAM, Centre for Research and Education in Arts and Media that Recognises the damage brought on by global climate […]

26 January 2022

SCREENTIME: Covid Safety Measures

In preparing for our upcoming screenings as part of SCREENTIME, the health and safety of our audiences has been at the heart of our planning throughout. Although restrictions surrounding COVID-19 are no longer a legal requirement, BFMAF remains cautious in our efforts to make screenings accessible and safe for all those returning to the cinema […]

21 January 2022

Presenting SCREENTIME

Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival and Berwick Young Programmers are excited to present the launch of SCREENTIME. SCREENTIME is a new initiative inviting young people aged 18 – 30 to gain first hand experience in programming cinema and producing screenings for an audience. In autumn 2021, the group of young programmers attended workshops ran […]