Clockwise from top right: Dan Guthrie, Elisa Kay, Ilinca Vanau and Hamish Young

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, Myriam Mouflih, Herb Shellenberger and Peter Taylor to form the programming team for the Festival in March 2023.

Dan Guthrie is an artist, researcher and writer whose practice often explores representations of Black Britishness, with an interest in examining how they manifest themselves in rural areas. In the last year, he has been a participant in East Bristol Contemporary’s Day School programme, a panel member for Stroud District Council’s review of streets, buildings, statues and monuments, and a part-time librarian. His work has been screened at Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival, Focal Point Gallery, Obsidian Coast and the ICA, and he has previously worked as a submission viewer for London Short Film Festival and Glasgow Short Film Festival.

‘After attending virtually for the last few years, I’m really excited to be joining the programming team at Berwick for the 2022 edition. I’ll be watching submissions from my bedroom and coming up to Berwick for programming meetings over the next months, and I’m really looking forward to everyone coming together next year!’ Dan Guthrie

Ilinca Vanau is a curator, researcher and artist living in Edinburgh. She has worked with programming teams at Cork International Film Festival and Edinburgh International Film Festival. She previously participated in BFMAF’s Early Career Critics Workshop and the Berwick Young Programmers scheme. She is drawn to works that lie between cinema and contemporary art and in many ways, lie at the interstices of categories more broadly, seeking to connect or rewrite them. This year she is beginning a PhD in Film Studies at the University of St Andrews on sound in recent moving image works made by women filmmakers and artists, which engage ideas of posthumanism.

‘I’m delighted to have been offered one of the two Programming Fellowships and work as part of a festival close to my heart, one deeply committed to artists and audiences alike. I look forward to discovering new artists’ moving image works through the lens of a collaborative and exploratory curatorial effort and to all the encounters along the way!’ Ilinca Vanau

Elisa Kay joins BFMAF after spending the last few years as a freelancer working in curatorial and research roles with the UK’s Government Art Collection and Somerset House, London, and as a fundraiser for a number of UK arts organisations. Prior to this she was a Curator at Spike Island in Bristol, where she worked on exhibitions with artists including Andrea Luka Zimmerman, Roman Štětina and Sriwhana Spong, as well as Spike Island’s public and artists’ programmes. Between 2012-2014 was Project Manager for How to work together, a shared project by Chisenhale Gallery, The Showroom and Studio Voltaire, and from 2008-12 she was the first Curator/Director at Flat Time House, the former home and studio of the artist John Latham.

Hamish Young also steps into a new role as Festival Manager. Hamish joined the Festival back in 2018 and has worked on planning and delivery, working across programming, marketing, film transport, and guest services in his previous role as Programme Coordinator before his appointment as Festival Manager earlier this year. Prior to Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival, Hamish worked at the 2017 Venice Biennale in both the German and British Pavilions and before this at the Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh.