Maria Saakyan
Maria Saakyan (1980, Yerevan, Armenia) was born and grew up in Armenia. In 1992, she moved to Russia with her parents and graduated from Moscow’s VGIK film school in 2003. During her studies she shot several short animated and experimental films. From 2003 to 2006 Maria worked as a creative producer for the Andreevsky Flag Production Company, and in 2009—alongside Victoria Lupik—she founded Anniko Films, where she developed her second feature I’m Going To Change My Name, an independent international co-production which was awarded Best Pitch from B2B, Belgrade and DAB at Golden Apricot International Film Festival, Yerevan. In 2010, Saakyan was selected for Berlinale Talent Campus. Her films have screen world-wide at IFFR, International Film Festival Telluride (USA); Premiers Planes (France), Film Festival Oberhausen (Germany), Karlovy Vary Film Festival, Sofia International Film Festival, among others. Her directorial debut The Lighthouse has been awarded Special mention at Premiera Film Festival (Moscow), Best Debut at ̈Golden Apricot (Armenia), Grand-Prix at Split International Film Festival and First Prize at Moscow Human Rights Festival.
One of Eadweard Muybridge’s earliest contributions to the photographic image were stereographs commissioned by the U.S. Army, capturing their war against the Modoc Tribe in Northern California. These stereographs, many of which were staged, are revisited here through violent collisions of image and sound – generating entangled histories of visual technology, genocide and expropriation of Indigenous populations.
‘If every person on the planet could make a love tape, then you’d really know what it’s like to be human’ ~Wendy Clarke
Endless Love Tapes (United Kingdom, 2025) is a pilot project by Wendy Clarke (US) and Kim Coleman (UK). Artist Wendy Clarke’s participatory video project, Love Tapes – which she began in 1977 – is an incredible collection of over 2,500 three-minute videos where people discuss what love means to them.
just above the tear duct on each side
A critical look at the evolution of Irish psychiatric institutions across the 20th century, examining the confluence of carceral, therapeutic and socioeconomic incentives that determined their influence.
Over 100 filmmakers and artists from around the world have formed Some Strings, an ensemble of unreleased filmic gestures rooted in Palestine, where poet and teacher Refaat Alareer was targeted by Israeli strikes along with seven members of his family.
A film, installation, and exhibition by artist and filmmaker Harry Lawson, created in collaboration with young inner-city horse riders from Stepney Bank Stables in Newcastle. Reimagining Byker as the Wild West, the project blurs the line between fact and fiction, weaving together recontextualised iPhone footage shot by the riders, archival material from the North East Film Archive, and Lawson’s own cinematography.
The first edition of Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival’s New Cinema Forum is an invitation to artists, filmmakers, critics and arts/film workers to consider new orientations to creating, exhibiting and working collectively. Offering practical ways to sustain and develop your practice and community, the NCF is a relaxed space to reflect and make connections ahead of our Opening Night film.
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When a supernatural entity plagues a village community in war torn Northern Sri Lanka, a mother loses her son. Set in militarily occupied territory marked by 26 years of civil war, this hybrid docufiction made collaboratively, and secretly, with impacted Tamil communities lyrically examines the stories of missing people. A potent, elliptical protest poem moving with grace and purpose between disparate cinematic forms.