Dates and first details of Berwick’s 20th film and media arts festival
The 20th edition of Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival will take place from March 27 to 30, 2025, it has been announced.
The annual celebration of the moving image offers “a kaleidoscopic programme of film and discussion” in one of the country’s most history-laden towns.
The 20th festival is supported by Arts Council England, North East Combined Authority, Northumberland County Council, the Community Foundation and the British Film Industry with funds from the National Lottery.
The funding big guns are clearly persuaded of its value as part of the moving image landscape and so are the devotees who come to Berwick every year in search of stuff you won’t find in the multiplexes.
Some details of the programme have also been revealed.
Japanese filmmaker Eri Makihara is the first Filmmaker in Focus, this marking the first showing of her films outside Asia, supported by the British Council.
Incorporating film and installation, her work focuses on the physical sensations of people who communicate primarily through sign language and other visual means.
As part of the festival’s Propositions programme, artist and researcher Conal McStravick will present a 25-minute video which was rediscovered this year after being feared lost for almost 40 years.
Kaposi’s Sarcoma (A Plague and its Symptoms) is a film about AIDS made in 1983 by video artist, documentary maker and gay rights activist Stuart Marshall (1949 to 1993).
The title refers to a type of cancer to which AIDS sufferers are prone and the video is offered as a compelling counter narrative to the demonising media reporting of the time.
Propositions also presents a new work by London-based artist and writer Morgan Quaintance who collaborated with Laura Harris, an artist and sociologist.
Available Light, which was shot in London and Tokyo, explores notions of home and belonging in contemporary society.
The New Cinema Awards will include new works by numerous filmmakers and artists who push at boundaries.
Among them is When the Phone Rang by Iva Radivojevic which recalls 1990s Yugoslavia as seen through the eyes of an 11-year-old girl.
Memory is also central to Hope Strickland’s a river holds a perfect memory, described as a multi-layered work tracing diasporic memory and family migration between the UK and Jamaica through archival footage.
Invention, directed by Courtney Stephens, explores the process of grieving for a complicated parent.
Meanwhile family expectations, class difference and psychological isolation are at the heart of Isadora Neves Marques’s My Senses Are All I Have to Offer, a sci-fi film envisioning a reality where other people’s sensations can be accessed through the invention of ‘sensory pills’.
The full programme will be announced in January. Check the Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival website for this and news of festival passes.