| Date | |
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| Author | DCM |
| Categories | cinema |
On Saturday, 21 September the 10th Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival drew to a close in the historic town of Berwick-Upon-Tweed. Over five packed days the festival attracted an impressive 9,000 visitors to see the diverse range of films and events on offer, which included 75 new films from almost 40 countries across the world, including six world premieres across 12 unique locations. Over 40 artists and filmmakers in the programme travelled to Berwick from across Europe and from as far as Lebanon and Los Angeles.
A returning theme for this year’s festival was border crossing - a subject to reflect on the significance of the Scottish referendum as well as exploring border identities and transcending boundaries all over the world. Fittingly, the festival undertook its first foray across the border with a 130 capacity sell-out screening of From Scotland With Love followed by a Q&A with Director Virginia Heath, at the fantastic new venue Paxton House.
The Mulberry House was the feature that the audience rated as their favourite over the five days and Director Sara Ishaq came to Berwick from Cairo to meet audiences and participate in a Q&A hosted by Alexandra Buccianti. Upon receiving the award Ishaq commented "I'm delighted to learn that The Mulberry House was received with such positivity at Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival and would like to extend a warm 'thank you' to the lovely audiences who took the time to attend, and for being a remarkably easy crowd to share such a personal story with."
Roy Dib won the 2nd Inntravel Short Film Award for his documentary, Mondial 2010. The film is about love and place, following a Lebanese gay couple of decide to take a forbidden road trip to Ramallah. The festival's youth programme was also bigger than ever, with 600 young people taking part as hands-on participants over the festival weekend and awards were given out in the under-14s category to Emmie & Lilly Thompson and 15-19s category to Jacob Crow.
Festival board member, Tamiko Mackie, commented, “We couldn’t be more thrilled with what turned out to be an incredible 10th edition of the festival. We presented more films and artist moving image work than ever before and in unique locations around the town’s Elizabethan ramparts and for the first time across the border in Scotland. The festival surpassed targets by attracting a record number of visitors to beautiful Berwick-upon-Tweed, including film enthusiasts, filmmakers and artists from UK, Europe and further afield. Plus, the weather was fantastic!”
Outgoing Festival Director Melanie Iredale said: “This was a huge year for us – inviting even more artists and filmmakers to Berwick from further afield, and presenting more works across even more venues around the town. We were committed to producing a bumper edition in celebration of our 10th birthday and the feedback we’ve had has been tremendous.”
The 10th edition of the festival proved to be a huge success and the 11th edition next September promises to be even bigger and better.
Further details on the festival can be found on the official website.