Fri Sept 1, 17:00
DOCUMENTED REALITIES
An Ecology of Everything: Plants, Folklore, the Climate and Love
Sam Pickett & Debbie Yare | UK | 2023 | 7:48
A year in the life of the woods when everything was changing
Chain Home West
Sean Vicary | UK | 2019 | 5:09
Animated exploration of an abandoned wartime radar station in rural Pembrokeshire
de-composition
Laura Kraning | USA | 2023 | 2:40
A textural macro collage of a rust belt landscape
Fathers’ Land
Francesco Di Gioia | Italy | 2022 | 11:24
Poems with alternate rhymes narrate a journey by sea and by rail
Meeting Halfway
Lucy Bergman & Joanna Byrne | UK | 2022 | 4:59
A geographical halfway point between two small towns where the filmmakers were born
Glittering Barbieblood
Ulu Braun | Germany | 2021 | 26:45
An imaginative journey about sensory perceptions, self-discovery and social structures
Fri, Sept 1, 19:30
ENTANGLED LANDSCAPES
a fence is a fence but the clouds move freely
Curtis Byrnside Miller | USA | 2023 | 8:10
A brief essay on the origin of four small towns in rural Kansas and Oklahoma, told through each town’s respective water tower
Damp Moss
Christopher Thompson | USA | | 2023 | 4:22
Glittering illusions of vectorized providence attempt to emulate an inherited physical realm of diminishing significance
Extended Presences
Margaux Anne Ali Dauby | Belgium | 2023 | 12:30
Follows several women in their seasonal work as fire watchers in Portugal
Forest Coal Pit
Siôn Marshall-Waters | UK | 2023 | 14:38
Two elderly brothers live together on a small farm where they have been since childhood
rough cut botanical
Wendy Kirkup | UK | 2023 | 8:00
Interweaves multiple images of plant and animal life, while a voice speaks to the materiality of its subject matter and to film itself
tectum argenti
Joanna Byrne | UK | 2022 | 8:42
A meditation on the process of therapeutic healing through reconnecting with the self in nature
The Sun’s Tongue
Laura Jane Cooper | UK | | 2023 | 8:51
Documents the relationship between beekeeper, bees and the plant life of Birmingham city centre over the beekeeping season
Fri, Sept 1, 21:30
SPECIAL SCREENING: ONE MINUTE VOL.11
A selection of 1 minute films curated by Kerry Baldry
Featuring work by: Nick Jordan, Rastko Novakovic, Eva Rudlinger, Ruxandra Mitache, Steven Ball, Terry Flaxton, Anna Mortimer, Alex Pearl, Emily Richardson, Lynn Loo, Bea Haut, Nicky Hamlyn, Stuart Pound and Rosemary Norman, Philip Sanderson, Kerry Baldry, My Name is Scot, Andrew Vallance, Bob Georgeson, Julia Dogra-Brazell, Katharine Meynell, Tony Hill, Gordon Dawson, Michael Szpakowski & Anna Szpakowska, Robert Sherwood Duffield, Louisa Minkin & Alex Schady, Zhel ( Zeljko Vukicevic), Jonathan Moss, Guy Sherwin, Rachael Allain, Jacob Cartwright, Kayla Parker & Stuart Moore, Leister/Harris, Paul Tarrago, Jenny Baines, Jamie Naqvi, Guido Devadder, Hendrik van Oordt, Daniela Butsch, Debjit Bagchi, Daniela Lucato
Sat, Sept 2, 11:00
PERSONAL INTERIORS
Alma
Lenke Duyvendak | Netherlands | 2022 | 10:00
A puppetry film about a girl who tries to catch a light
Leaves-Leaving-Left
Wuon-Gean Ho | UK | 2023 | 13:33
An investigation into how drawing is an act of remembrance
Picturing Wonderland
Alfie Elms | UK | 2022 | 8:24
An experimental snapshot of the experience of living with a degenerative blindness
The Distance of Time
Carlos Ormeño Palma | Peru | 2022 | 19:27
In a Peruvian city corroded by an eternal and indifferent winter, a man with indigenous roots faces a future without his lover
The Last Tango / Viimeinen Tango
Niina Johanna Lehtonen Braun | Finland | 2022 | 4:45
The wistful closing song of Olento Orchestral’s Anatomy album, with water colour animations Niina Lehtonen Braun
Sat, Sept 1, 14:00
COLLECTIVE MEMORIES
May You Live in Interesting Times
Martyna Ratnik | Lithuania | 2023 | 4:04
Assembled from archival footage capturing the “interesting times” of a newly independent Lithuania
Ripple Effect
Niyaz Saghari | UK | 2023 | 9:00
The diver plunges into the sea (death), but also into life (eternity), where he will rediscover the primordial waters of life
This place is a message
Caitlin & Anj Webb-Ellis | UK | 2022 | 28:00
Positions children and young people as seers and prophets, blending documentary and fiction to reflect on humanity’s current state and envision possible posthuman futures
Timekeepers of the Anthropocene
Federico Cuatlacuatl | Mexico | 2022 | 11:14
The aliens arrived in their nautical ships from the past…they didn’t know they would arrive in the future…they still don’t know
WWW {The Whale Who Wasn’t}
Alessia Cecchet | USA | 2019 | 10:00
A sci-fi counter-narrative of subjugation and annihilation told from a non-human perspective
Sat, Sept 2, 17:00
OBSERVED ECOLOGIES
Exoskeletons
Mariana Castiñeiras | Hungary | 2022 | 17:49
A filmmaker who struggles with her fear of insects meets a neurologist with a peculiar obsession for beetles
EXPIRED
Yoni Bentovim | UK | 2023 | 8:30
Documents the ‘rubbish corner’ of a council estate in Central London every single day for an entire year
France
Philip Cartelli & Mariangela Ciccarello | Greece | 2022 | 6:00
The formal simplicity of the “hexagon” (the idealized shape of metropolitan France) is countered by convoluted drawings and twisted branches of a coastal environment
Guadiana in Four Movements
Pedro F Neto & Burak Korkmaz | Portugal | 2022 | 13:45
Explores the present and future of the estuary of the transboundary Guadiana River (Iberian Peninsula), with data sonification based on current climate models
Some Things We Tended
Marcy Saude | UK | 2023 | 10:00
Explores the future of food production in a changing climate through 16mm documentation of two sites in mid Wales: an automated research greenhouse and a small-scale organic market garden
Traction
Jenny Baines | UK | 2023 | 2:47
Features the artist in a tug-of-war with an off-screen adversary, who is only seen through their looming shadow
Sat, Sept 2, 19:30
SPECIAL FOCUS: JULIA PARKS
A quartet of new 16mm films resulting from Julia Park’s six month residency with Alchemy Film & Arts, interweaving the social, industrial and natural history along the Teviot and Tweed rivers in the Scottish Borders. Presented in partnership with Alchemy Film & Moving Images Festival.
The Wool Aliens
Julia Parks | UK | 2023 | 27:45
A journey into the historical and tactile entanglements between sheep’s wool, invasive plants and the River Tweed.
Preview excerpt:
Tell Me About The Burryman
Julia Parks | United Kingdom | 2023 | 09:31
An affectionate portrait of the Burryman ritual – a centuries-old folklore tradition in South Queensferry, in which a figure is garlanded with ‘nature’s Velcro’.
Preview excerpt:
Burnfoot Grows
Julia Parks | UK | 2023 | 9:01
A collaborative film portrait of Burnfoot Community Garden and its dedicated team of staff and volunteers.
Preview excerpt:
All Flesh Is Grass
Julia Parks | UK | 2023 | 09:37
Explores the ambiguous complexities and thorny contradictions found in the local area’s relationship with customs, land and animals.
Preview excerpt:
Sun, Sept 3, 11:00
SOCIAL SPACES
Forest Song
Karel Doing | UK | 2022 | 4:40
A spirited Saramaccan song highlights their rich and powerful way of being in the world
If Not Now
Jill Daniels | UK | 2023 | 15:00
The film explores the assertion that resistance to fascism in the past may be a catalyst for resistance today
INNESTI NERI E BIANCHI [White and Black Grafts]
Federica Foglia | Italy | 2022 | 7:00
Several orphan films are assembled in a hand-made collage to reflect upon the personal and cultural process of becoming a woman
Wind
Mike Hoolboom | Canada | 2023 | 9:41
A collage of wind-struck frames assembled using a (still-developing) motion picture algorithm that both gathered and assembled the footage
Selfish Road
Oreet Ashery | UK | 2022 | 30:48
Journeying through their homeland, Ashery observes how both senses of belonging have and continue to fuse with the vertiginous and winding flows of nation-building, infrastructure and land use
Sun, Sept 3, 14:00
RADICAL INSTINCTS
I’ll Be Back!
Hope Strickland | UK | 2022 | 10:54
Shifts across digital, 16mm and archival formats, interrupting conceptions of time in order to question the distances between myth, fabulation and machinations of power
Niebla REDUX
Paul Anthony Tarragó | UK | 2023 | 9:16
The fourth episode of ‘The Variations’, featuring: two more adverts, considerations of the future, a multiple projection spectacular in miniature, a riverine jaunt, and – in all honesty – quite a lot more…
ROARY
David Leister | UK | 2022 | 6:00
The MGM Lion is captured and looped in a never ending stroboscopic cycle of RGB colour fields, with its iconic roar gradually increasing in ferocity….A film with bite
Ten Thousand Years
Sam Meech | UK | 2023 | 8:05
The entity once known as weatherman Phil Connors has been trapped in Punxatawny for several millennia, experiencing the same day over and over again
The End of the World
Ali Aschman | UK | 2023 | 3:00
Draws a parallel between various threats of climate change and her own visceral and emotional experience of grieving after an immense and sudden loss
The Great Curdling
Jennet Thomas | UK | 2022 | 24:32
A darkly comic Folk-Sci-Fi Musical exploring the feeling that collective reality is at tipping point
Sun, Sept 3, 15:00
GLAISTER AWARD
Voted by the audience, the festival presents a film-maker with the Glaister Award. Named after the founder of Braziers, psychiatrist Norman Glaister, the award recognises a film which makes a positive contribution to social development and action in the world today.
The award winner receives homemade produce from the Braziers permaculture garden. The winning film is screened after the award ceremony. See previous winners here.
BIFF 2023 festival trailer / sting
Music: Otis Jordan
