Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival returns for its 10th anniversary from 17 – 21 September. Focusing on the theme of Border Crossing, the five day festival will feature film premieres, site-specific installations, workshops and live events.

The opening gala and UK premiere, Maramosh by Momcilo Mrdakovic explores the journey of middle-aged cinephile and film projectionist Pera from war-torn Serbia to New York. Installations can be found around Berwick and include work from artists Rachel Maclean, Douwe Dijkstra and Kristina Cranfeld amongst others exploring complex questions about identity and war. Orchestra of Samples is a live event by Addictive TV which delivers electronic music with visuals; the music will be provided by a group of virtual musicians from all over the world who have never met.

Find more information about the festival programme here.

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Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival returns this September. The 10th edition of the award-winning Festival promises to be bigger and better than ever before with international commissions, film premieres, installations as well as a Short Film Award for filmmakers and artists with a cash prize attached.

The festival, which attracts over 8,000 visitors is considered to be a highlight on the cultural landscape of the Scottish Borders and Northumberland and welcomes people from across Scotland and England who come to enjoy a range of film and art installations all set within historic Berwick.

Since its inaugural festival in 2005, Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival has had a vision to transform Berwick into one big moving image installation – a visual and cultural spectacle and it certainly delivers. The festival occupies a unique space in the UK festival landscape – in uniting cinema with moving image art, while taking inspiration from other art forms…all in one place, over five days.

Field Music perform score to John Grierson’s film Drifters – Photo: Will Sadler

It is also distinctive in its setting, the town of Berwick provides an awe-inspiring background to the festival programme, with screenings taking place in the most unusual of venues, from the medieval town walls to prison cells in the Town Hall and the more traditional Maltings Theatre & Cinema.

The festival organisers have announced this year’s call for entries which closes on 16 June. Each year, the festival curates its programme to a specific theme, and this year, with the Scottish independence referendum taking place, it seems pertinent that the theme is ‘Border Crossing.’ The Festival is calling all artists and filmmakers to respond to the theme by submitting work via its website.

‘Border Crossing’ will take audiences on a journey, setting out to cross and transcend borders in all directions, exploring border identities all over the world. Berwick-upon-Tweed makes an ideal starting point: a border town in a region once known as ‘the debatable lands,’ with an identity neither English nor Scottish, but all of its own; it will bring together independent film and artists’ video to explore boundaries – on the map and in the mind – and the spaces in between.

Works submitted to the festival can explore themes of cultural heritage, changing identities from individual to societal and cultural, travel and migration, and the crossing of boundaries; your work can be of any type and any length including including narrative and experimental, live action and animation, fiction and documentary. What’s more, all single screen works under 20 minutes will automatically be eligible for selection for the Inntravel Short Film Award. The competitive programme will be selected by the festival curators, and the winning work will be awarded by a professional jury during the festival, where £750 will be donated towards the artist/director’s next project.

Visit the festival website here for details on how to submit an entry.

Amit Madheshiya’s Talkies Wallah projected onto the Berwick Watchtower

In addition, Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival in partnership with Northern Film & Media have recently announced a new opportunity for filmmakers and visual artists from anywhere in the world to submit a proposal to create a new moving image work. Visual artists and filmmakers are invited to submit proposals in response to the festival theme of Border Crossing. Proposals may be for projected, installed or screened work, to be made either for single or multi-channel presentation. The new commission will be premiered at the 10th Film & Media Arts Festival in September 2014. The selected proposal will be awarded £5,000 GBP in artist/production fees, and installation costs will be covered in addition.

For further information and to submit a proposal for the commission, please visit the festival website.

Proposals Deadline: 28 May
Call for Entries Deadline: 16 June

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Like many of the very finest ideas, Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival was dreamed up in the pub. Academic and filmmaker Huw Davies, and Artist-filmmaker Marcus Coates were in the Barrels Ale House (a fine drinking establishment with a dentist’s chair at the Bar) when they developed a beer-fuelled vision to turn the small town of Berwick-upon-Tweed into one big moving image installation.

That was back in 2004, and every year since 2005 the border town has provided a platform for independent cinema, artists’ moving image and everything in between as part of a holistic festival of projections, installations, screenings and live events.

It’s safe to say that Berwick-upon-Tweed is most famous for its Walls – marking the border between England and Scotland, with the town being passed between England and Scotland 13 times in recorded history. For us, the Walls provides some of our most interesting locations, for example last year we commissioned Berwick-based artists Zoe Walker & Neil Bromwich to create a video, Dancing Borders, for Coxon’s Tower, while we also installed Croatian artist Goran Skofik’s 10-screen installation, Corpus, in the Magazine, where the gun powder was held and where the barrels are still on display. Incidentally, the Barrels is also a regular venue, where last year we screened All Tomorrow’s Parties, a documentary about the music fest of the same name, followed by a DJ spinning tracks from the film.

Last year’s event was considered our most successful in many respects – we engaged with more children and young people than in previous years, commissioned more work than ever before, attracted more audiences per day, built better partnerships with other organisations, and the event was nominated for Best Event Northumberland at the Journal Culture Awards. Since then, we were announced as one of Arts Council England’s new National Portfolio organisations, meaning we will receive regular funding for the first time, 2012 – 2015.

This year’s festival will be my third as director, and will be curated to a theme that is of a real personal and academic interest to myself: that of the fairy tale film. Under the title of ‘Once Upon a Time’ the programme will explore themes such as sexuality, transformation and otherness through everything from fiction to documentary, narrative to artist video, and live action to animation.

Once again the Festival will showcase international work whilst remaining rooted in Berwick, with contemporary moving image spilling into historical locations across the town. The Festival will very much be a celebration of the art of story-telling on screen, and its not too late to be a part of it! We’re still accepting submissions via the website until 29 July. The programme will be announced end August and the Festival returns Friday 23 – Sunday 25 September.