Full Berwick film fest programme announced
Why this year’s Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival is special
The complete programme for this year’s 20th anniversary Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival (BFMAF) has now been announced and it’s as packed as you’d hope and expect.
On offer are four days – March 27 to 30 – of “transformative cinema, exhibitions and dynamic conversations”.
And all made possible, stress the organisers, by support from Arts Council England, North East Combined Authority, the British Film Institute (via the National Lottery), Northumberland County Council and the Community Foundation serving Tyne & Wear and Northumberland.
Festival director Peter Taylor calls it “a perpetual work in progress” and rejects labels that might restrict how we see, understand and experience cinema.
Instead, he says, “we embrace pluralist ideas and fluid modes of production and presentation, culminating in a kaleidoscopic, transformative programme of film and conversation - instruments of liberation”.
From which we can deduce that this is not a multiplex wallow in big budget Hollywood blockbusters.
Endorsement comes from Jane Tarr, North East director, Arts Council England, who says: “We're delighted to see yet another ambitious programme of film showcases, events and exhibitions set to take place in Northumberland this year as part of the Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival.
“The Arts Council remains a proud supporter of the festival, and we can't wait to see what opportunities this year's programme will bring for the local community as well as the emerging filmmakers who will be involved.”
It’s safe to say that this is a festival reaching places many others don’t.
The 20th edition showcases more than 50 films, including six world premieres, eight European premieres and 26 UK premieres, and with 28 countries represented.
Read more: Review - Only Fools and Horses the Musical, Newcastle Theatre Royal
A poignant screening in the festival’s Essential Cinema strand will be that of Nightshift, a 1981 film by Robina Rose who passed away on January 26 and is remembered as “an incisive and imaginative voice in experimental filmmaking”.
Newly restored, Nightshift is described as “a dreamlike exploration of nocturnal encounters at the Portobello Hotel”.
Guests at this London establishment have included countless music stars including Alice Cooper, Robbie Williams and Sex Pistols enfants terrible Sid Vicious and Johnny Rotten.
Rose’s film premiered at the Edinburgh Film Festival in 1981, was screened at the 12th International Forum of New Cinema in Berlin the following year and is now part of MoMA’s collection in New York.
Complementing all that will be five exhibitions at various locations around the town.
Among them is Endless Love Tapes (by American artist Wendy Clarke in collaboration with Kim Coleman) which follows a project initiated by Clarke in 1978 which resulted in 2,500 three-minute videos of people talking about their experience with love.
That was Love Tapes. Endless Love Tapes continues the process and an installation at the new BFMAF public video library on Bridge Street will invite local communities to create their own Love Tapes and view a selection of earlier works.
On the final day of the festival, the recordings made in Berwick will be screened after a conversation between Clarke and Coleman.
Also catching the eye is Stepney Western, a new documentary by Harry Lawson made in collaboration with a group of young horse riders from Stepney Bank Stables in Byker, Newcastle.
According to the festival organisers, it “sits at the porous boundary between fact and fiction, combining re-contextualised iPhone clips shot by the riders, archival material from North East Film Archive and Lawson’s own footage”.
See this intriguing new feature in The Magazine (also an intriguing feature) on Berwick’s Town Walls.
There’s more… so much more.
Peruse the full programme, with timings and ticket details on the BFMAF website – where you can also apply to the festival’s brilliant Early Career Critics scheme (applications close on Monday, February 17 so dawdle not).