Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival

About

Now in its 18th edition Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival presents an artistically ambitious programme of new cinema and artists’ moving image. A platform for emerging and established artists and filmmakers, BFMAF is inspired by its surroundings to push boundaries and explore the unexplored.

Named by FilmFreeway and Moviemaker magazine as one of the 25 Coolest Film Festivals in the World, The 17th edition of the Festival was a hybrid one and took place in Berwick-upon-Tweed and online from Friday 10 to Thursday 30 September 2021. The Festival presented a total of 65 films (including world premieres, retrospective titles and works-in-progress) alongside live events, podcasts, online exhibitions, commissioned essays, and workshops.

'BFMAF has continued to win plaudits as a bell- wether event in the reception and re-evaluation of new and classic cinema, and experimental and artist’s moving image'
— Conal McStravick, 2022, Visual Artists Ireland

‘Berwick Film Festival was the best online festival, in terms of programme, but also cost, playback, site navigability, presentation of films and info, supporting materials’.
— Matt Turner, 2020

Last year, Filipino master of contemporary slow cinema Lav Diaz flew 17 hours to attend a screening of his 2016 film A Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery. If that level of commitment by one of our greatest living moviemakers isn’t a ringing endorsement, we’re not sure what is.
— MovieMaker Magazine, 2020

'BFMAF was like a potion that, once consumed, transformed the whole world into a cinema.'
— Christopher Small, MUBI, 2019

'Berwick’s bristling artistic spirit—contesting, contorting and re-shaping the traditions of the medium to tell bold new stories and challenge the status quo.'
— Ben R Nicholson - Mubi, 2018

Awards

Selected submissions for this year’s edition will be considered for the 2022 Berwick New Cinema Award as well as site-specific exhibitions in Berwick-upon-Tweed during the Festival.

The Berwick New Cinema Awards encompasses the festival’s view of the most distinctive works of new cinema being made around the world today.

All selected filmmakers receive an award rather than a single winner chosen by a jury.

Rules

Please ensure your work meets the following criteria before entering:

• Completed in 2022 or 2023
• No previous or scheduled UK film festival screenings before March 2024
• Feature films must not have been theatrically released in the UK before March 2023
• All works in a language other than English must be subtitled in English

To find out more, go to:
https://www.bfmaf.org/call-for-entries

For complete entry guidelines, visit:
https://www.bfmaf.org/call-for-entries/entry-guidelines

FAQs
https://www.bfmaf.org/call-for-entries/frequently-asked-questions

Premiere Requirements

No premiere requirement

Jury and Organizers

Past Jury members include:

Callum Hill (filmmaker); Hyun Jin Cho (programmer, London Film Festival), Julian Ross (programmer, International Film Festival Rotterdam), Sky Hopinka (filmmaker), Sonali Joshi (film producer and distributor, Day for Night), Gail Pickering (artist), Camilo Restrepo (filmmaker). Amal Khalaf (DIrector of Programmes, Cubitt), Joanna Raczyńska (film programmer, National Gallery of Art, USA), Shama Khanna (curator, Flatness), Rehna Zaman (filmmaker), Sebastian Buerkner (filmmaker), Beatrice Gibson (filmmaker), Salomé Lamas (filmmaker) and Fatos Üstek (curator).