Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival

Audiences throughout the UK and filmmakers and arts professionals from across the globe were invited to share in a Festival programme that embodied a pluralist and accessible cinema.

BFMAF 2019 presented Essential Cinema, a retrospective series that screened fresh looks at classic works and overlooked masterpieces from Marilou Diaz-Abaya, Christian Ghazi, Lionel Soukaz and Djibril Diop Mambéty.

Elena Gorfinkel (King's College, London) curated the Kira Muratova retrospective, the critically acclaimed titan of Russian language cinema.

[clarification needed] In 2019, BFMAF also presented a month-long, multi-part exhibition Double Ghosts that featured the work of George Clark in The Gymnasium Gallery.

It included the first major UK retrospective of filmmakers Shireen Seno and John Torres, whose studio, film laboratory, library and platform Los Otros is based in Manila, Philippines.

A new programme strand 'Propositions' gave four filmmakers, Jessica Sarah Rinland, Sky Hopinka, Morgan Quaintance and Giles Bailey an opportunity to develop an expanded presentation of their work.

Another programme strand at the 2018 festival was 'Screening the Forest' curated by Dr Graiwoot Chulphongsathorn: a series that took nature as its point of departure and presented films from Japan, Myanmar, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines.

It featured the first screening in 40 years of Tales of the Dumpster Kid by Edgar Reitz & Ula Stöckl, Lips of Blood by Jean Rollin, Some Interviews on Personal Matters by Lana Gogoberidze, the African cinema classic Hyenas by Djibril Diop Mambéty and TERROR NULLIUS by artistic duo Soda_ Jerk.

This included an exhibition by BFMAF and Berwick Visual Arts resident, Lucy Clout, entitled Solvent Magazine at the Gymnasium Gallery.

The Berwick New Cinema programme featured UK Premieres of El futuro perfecto by Nele Wohlatz, Maud Alpi's Gorge Cœur Ventre; and If It Was, by Laure Prouvost.

World premieres of several films were also presented, including Molly Palmer's Some Shapes Without Edges, Jenny Perlin's Tender Not Approved and Sophie Michael's The Watershow Extravaganza, which also featured as an exhibition.

BFMAF's 2016 exhibition programme included works by Artists in Profile Claire Hooper and Deborah Stratman, alongside Festival commission Persuasion by Lucy Parker.

Organised in collaboration with Berwick Visual Arts, the annual residency is an opportunity for an artist with a moving-image-based practice to create new work over a 6-month period in Berwick-upon-Tweed, which is then premiered at the Festival.

During her residency period (March 2013 – September 2013) she created 'The Case', a moving-image piece which premiered[15] at the 9th Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival and responded to the theme 'North by Northeast.'

[16] The award showcased and celebrated short form work being created across the UK and internationally, and was judged by a panel of industry figures and experts.

[18] Canadian artists Julia Feyrer and Tamara Henderson were the 2015 recipients of BFMAF's Inntravel Short Film Award for Consider the Belvedere.

In 2012, the festival reverted to a run of five consecutive days and took the theme 'Pictures in Motion'[22] to examine the relationship between the still and moving image, attempting to raise questions about the nature of both in a digital world.

In 2011, the three-day 7th edition of the festival, 'Once Upon a Time',[24] explored the enchantment of fairy tales on film, from one of the first examples of the genre, Alice in Wonderland (1903) through to the modern day.

In 2010, the 6th edition of the festival ran over five days and explored the theme 'Stagings', looking at the role of the screen as a stage and featuring, dance on film, music documentary, old classics and live performances.

The 3rd edition of the festival in 2007 ran for nine days and looked at ways in which artists and filmmakers use overt and conscious self-reference in the work they create with its theme 'Film on Film'.

Following his passing, his family set up the Chris Anderson Award to promote the work of young filmmakers which continues to form part of the festival programme today.

Inntravel Short Film Award presented at the 2014 Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival