23 September 2018
Collect a free ticket from the Maltings Box Office, the starting point for an informal exhibitions walking tour (1.5 – 2 hours approx) with the Festival team.
Run Time
120 mins
Programmes
22 September 2018
Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival presents the premiere of Enceindre, a new commission and first collaboration between artist filmmaker Luke Fowler and acclaimed sound recordist Chris Watson. Enceindre is a study in film and sound of two 16th century fortified cities: Berwick in the North-East of England and Pamplona in the Navarre region of the North of Spain.
Run Time
90 mins
21 September 2018
Berwick Visual Arts and BFMAF Artist in Residence Lucy Clout discusses Solvent Magazine, her new body of work produced in Berwick and exhibited in The Gymnasium, with Cubitt Curatorial Fellow and Cinenova working group member Louise Shelley and 2018 seminar leader Taylor Le Melle.
Run Time
90 mins
21 September 2018
America has ‘liberated’ the Philippines and the islands have just been proclaimed a new republic.
Every morning, at the crack of dawn, Father and Mother stretch Julio, pulling his limbs in opposite directions. They make him drink a concoction made from the liver of codfish, believed to stimulate growth in children. He stands in the blazing heat of the sun.
The family swells in size to six children. Father hunts for food while Mother tends to domestic duties, leaving Julio and his siblings alone, exposed to their lush natural environs. Soon enough, the youngest two are taken away and distributed amongst the two aunts without offspring of their own.
Big Boy chronicles the growth of a family, the myths of progress that consume them and the violence not just in war and colonization, but also that which is inherent in coming into being—for a boy, a man and a nation.
Q&A with filmmaker Shireen Seno
Run Time
89 mins
21 September 2018
Northern soul, R&B and club classics with DJs Carl Hudson and Michael Elliot. Free admission, all welcome.
Run Time
120 mins
20 September 2018
Shot in Colombia, The Magical State depicts the possession of a Wayuu woman by a 40 million year old oil demon. Framed as an interrogation, an off-screen male voice challenges the woman, who gazes back directly into the viewer’s eyes, placing a curse on ‘man’, the species who have woken it from geological time. The violence of natural resource extraction—and the resulting violation of land rights—are reflected in the demon’s iridescent-coloured rage and stroboscopic movements.
22 September 2018
‘Temporal Vertigo’ is a wide-ranging selection of moving image work made by artist, writer and filmmaker Sophia Al-Maria over the last seven years. As schizophrenic in form as it is in chronology, the ten works shown move from essay film to music video, documentary, narrative, performance and all points in between. Included are the two part ‘Gulf Futurism’ essay film The Future Was Desert, which images the desert as a place outside of time; enigmatic science-fiction/documentary hybrid Mothership; and two music videos for Fatima Al Qadiri. This program represents the first retrospective screening of Al-Maria’s formally rigorous and beautifully cinematic work, providing a view of visual and thematic cross-contaminations between many different projects.
Q&A with filmmaker Sophia Al-Maria
Run Time
45 mins
23 September 2018
Sophia Al-Maria discusses her diverse practice—particularly the series of moving image works shown in the ‘Temporal Vertigo’ retrospective screening and The Magical State exhibition in The Magazine—with BFMAF associate programmer Herb Shellenberger and 2018 seminar leader Taylor Le Melle. Working at the intersection of cinema and contemporary art, Al-Maria’s practice occupies a singular space within the field of artists’ moving image.
Run Time
60 mins
23 September 2018
A couple escape from their families and flee deep into the jungle. At nightfall, a song illustrates the innocence of their love and their search for happiness. Palme d’Or winning filmmaker Apitchatpong Weerasethakul invited fellow Thai filmmaker Pimpaka Towira to shoot a 35mm film in the forest while he observed the production though his digital camera. While Worldly Desires is dedicated to Weerasethakul’s memories of filmmaking in the jungle from 2001–05, it is also a story of forbidden love and desire, loaded with poetry, metaphor and mystery.
Run Time
43 mins
20 September 2018
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
Run Time
122 mins