Jet Leyco
A relative’s likeness surfaces as a tattoo on the arm of a Ukrainian soldier and an army base in Oklahoma, built to fight Kiowa and Apache, is rededicated to aid in the fight against Putin’s Western expansion. Adam Piron explores the contradictions of colonialism and anti-settler solidarity across time, geography and the muddled spaces of TikTok, where representations of Indigenous peoples are caught up in the chaotic circulation of images.
A hypnosis-inducing pan-geographic shuttle built on brainwave-generating binaural beats, Deep Sleep takes us on a journey through the sound waves of Gaza and competing sights of modern ruin. Precipitated by the artist’s restricted travel to Palestine, the work is an invitation to move between the corporeal self and the cinema space – transcending the limits of borders and the fallibility of memory.
An experimental horror film based on a series of paranormal events that took place in the early ’70s in Hexham, Northern England. In this modern-day folk tale, two brothers become terrorised by ghostly visions after bringing a pair of stone heads into their family home. Combining photographic documentation with personal archive material and dreamlike sequences, Hexham Heads reflects on the haunted nature of family photographs and domestic objects as vessels of trauma.
Reality or Not narrates the intriguing tale of a group of high school students nestled in the northern suburbs of Paris. They embark on a daring experiment, one that seeks to seize control of the reality enveloping them and reshape it according to their own vision. The project marks the latest milestone in the extensive research journey undertaken by the artist Cécile B. Evans, spanning the entirety of their career.
The Burr is a new social space, screening library and discussion series named after the local Northumbrian language. Each day we’ll gather to collectively explore different topics with film and with guests. Come along for a giff-gaff!
BFMAF and artist-run, Brussels-based film and distribution platform elephy invite you to join them for a peer-to-peer roundtable conversation called “Talking Collectively”. Here, artists, filmmakers, arts collectives, producers, distributors, curators, and writers come together to share know-how, triumphs and trials in the field of moving image and visual arts. Register here and propose a question, concern, or talking point on development, creation and (co-)production, distribution and presentation, self-organisation and maintenance.
This event is made possible with the support of the (Re)Connect with the UK grant of Flanders Arts Institute/Kunstenpunt (BE).
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An open, drop-in conversation inviting responses to the Festival’s programme of films in relation to the complications of home – or hyem in Northumbrian dialect.
When even the most basic understanding of home as residence/shelter is not guaranteed, we open up this theme to an expansive conversation that asks: who has the right to a home? What underlies the commonplace idea of a home? Where does land figure in our perceptions of home?
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BFI NETWORK partners BFI Doc Society and Film Hub North are hosting an informal talent mixer for independent filmmakers and narrative/doc-curious creatives
BFI Mixers bring together local creatives and provide opportunities for growing your network, finding collaborators and connecting with the filmmaking community. There’s no set agenda for these events; we encourage you to introduce yourself to someone new and get talking.
The event also offers the chance to connect with BFI representatives, hear about regional opportunities and short film funding from Jen Bradfield (BFI NETWORK Talent Executive, Film Hub North) and Luke Moody (Head of the BFI Doc Society Fund).
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Artist Debbie Bower (Foundation Press) hosts a drop-in workshop from 12:00 – 17:00 that asks us to envision a new film, and create a poster for it in response to the issues that are important to us.
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Heiny Srour’s often censored, newly restored work is the only film to document a radical historic moment where the Popular Front for the Liberation of Oman and the Arabian Gulf (al-Jabhah al-Sha’abiyah li-Tahrir ‘Uman wa-al-Khalij al-‘Arabi, PFLOAG) momentarily created a secular, feminist and equalitarian society in Dhofar, Oman. The collectively made film shows how The People’s Army liberated a third of their homeland and built the first road, hospital, waterhole, pilot farm and school in the country.
The first of two screening programmes animating the work of Basma al-Sharif, BFMAF24 Filmmaker in Focus.
Born stateless and of Palestinian heritage, her work explores cyclical political histories and conflicts. In films and installations that move backward and forward in history, between place and non-place, she confronts the legacy of colonialism through satirical, immersive, and lyrical works.
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When freedom is at stake, who has the right to speak? Two films troubling the politics and poetics of language in public life; how it might be bent and shaped towards liberation of our individual and collective selves.
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Five new films collaboratively combined to form a single work responding to Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman’s luminous News From Home (1976). Artists Sirah Foighel Brutmann and Eitan Efrat, Eva Giolo, Rebecca Jane Arthur, Katja Mater, and Maaike Neuville each engage in their own way with the epistolary device of Akerman’s film, as well as recurrent themes of alienation, distance and the mother-daughter relationship.
When markets crash, connections fail and logic boards burn out, what becomes of our augmented selves? A programme of films reflecting the impact of technologies on human identity, consciousness, love and society under late capitalism.
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A raw, moving portrait of motherhood and mutual aid in a Chilean prison, captured by inmates on banned mobile phones. Testimonies from mothers serving long sentences shape a collaborative narrative touching on ways in which friendship, intimacy, resilience and community bloom in conditions of impossibility. Malqueridas is a generative example of the documentary form and a powerful contribution towards the case for abolition.
Nadia El Fani’s pre-Jasmin Revolution espionage fable follows our hero Kalt as she hijacks the airwaves to broadcast political messages from a remote mountain village in Tunisia. Things quickly turn into a sexually charged game of cat-and-mouse with French intelligence officer Julia as the pair struggle with oppositional missions. Brimming with queer and revolutionary potential Bedwin Hacker is keenly critical of the security apparatus of the French state and its targeting of immigrant communities.
A pair of star crossed platonic lovers take flight from society in Isao Fujisawa’s surrealist road trip through 70s Japan. Channelling the avant-garde spirit of the American New Wave, Bye, Bye Love establishes a dazzling universe of psychedelic poetics to narrate Utamaro and Giko’s search for freedom and liberation in the free love era. Nuanced depictions of gender fluidity and queer relationships mark it out as a seldom-seen gem of countercultural cinema
Join us for an after-hours set from multidisciplinary artist and DJ, Alliyah Enyo. As a DJ, Alliyah’s sets build on a meditative approach to sound, queering ancient mythology and folklore whilst centring the harmonies of ambient dance music allongside the polyrhythms of outernational influences. She has further honed her craft as resident DJ at EXIT, a late-night DIY space in Glasgow, where she incorporates choral vocals and ethereal ambient into club atmospheres of psychedelic and percussive leftfield dance music.