A gang of FECers at Berwick Film Festival

Published on by kemps70

Charlotte Micklewright (FEC 2014/15) has been working with the Berwick Festival for some months and has recently been joined by fellow FECers. She describes the experience below. It looks like it’s going to be a great festival.

It has been a great opportunity to be so involved with the Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival. I started off as an intern managing submissions as I was really interested in the festival’s curatorial process for my own research. I then took on the role of Programme Coordinator and am now liaising with artists, filmmakers, distributors, projectionists and technicians to bring the festival together!

This is a very unique festival nestled in the wee town of Berwick-upon-Tweed. It promotes a fluid relationship between artists’ film and cinema. The theme this year is ‘Fact or Fiction’ and there are some wonderful pieces which blur the boundaries between fiction and documentary, such as Mohsen Mahkmalbaf’s Salam Cinema and Peter Watkins’ The War Game. There will be some fabulous installations dotted around the local historical sites too, like a opera broadcast from a lighthouse in the Shetlands to a medieval tower in Berwick…

Some of my fellow FEC student-collegues are also involved in the festival, working across different departments including volunteer coordination and marketing. What’s great about the FEC cohort is that by working on applied projects together during our studies, we know we can rely on each other for efficient and imaginative collaboration outside the classroom. We are also developing a recognisable FEC brand through our collective experiences and contacts, which is really helpful when networking.
Saturday 26th is going to be a particularly full and busy day. Salomé Lamas is doing a seminar on ‘parafiction’ her term for artists films which combine fact and fiction storytelling, Abdul & Hamza is a documentary by a Serbian film student about refugees’ journeys, there’s the 50th anniversary screening of Peter Watkins’ The War Game which looks really good and bloody eerie, then an award ceremony, music and installations all around town. The are day passes are £8 for students.