Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival
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VOLUNTEERING OPPORTUNITIES 2011

If you would like to be involved in this dynamic new festival we have some places still available on our Volunteer Team. Interested and want to know more?
Please contact hannah@alchemyfilmfestival.org.uk.

2011 FESTIVAL

We're in the process of building a new website for 2011. The programme highlights will be announced here mid September. The festival will be held in Hawick from Friday 21st October to Sun 23rd October, at Tower Mill- Heart of Hawick, and various venues around the town.

2010 PROGRAMME HIGHLIGHTS:

THE EDGE OF DREAMING
1h13m
Amy Hardie / UK 2009 / 12A / Documentary, plus Q&A

Amy Hardy The Edge of Dreaming

Amy Hardie dreamed of a death, and it happened. When another dream then prophesied her own imminent demise, she was understandably concerned: did her subconscious know something she didn’t? A poetic, personal project, some nine years in the gestation, this film explores humanity’s relationship with dreams, death and destiny, via Hardie’s own scientific and emotional quest for answers. Best of Fest at this year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival and winner of the special ‘Mirror’ contest at Kiev International Film Festival. Filmed in the Scottish Borders.

Hymn to the road, a short film by Artist Catriona Taylor, will be shown before The Edge of Dreaming.
Sunday 12th September 2.30pm, £3


MOVING IMAGE SHORTS : SEEING LANDSCAPE
1h13m

Andrew Payne, Ruth Jones, Elaine Kordys, Matt Lloyd, Dee Shaw, Emily Candela, Natalie Taylor, Lynne Williams, Alastair Cook, Helen Grove-White, Hugh Watt, Polly Gould, Sean Vicary.

Sean Vicary Sea of Glass

Landscape – a place, a state of mind, an en-cultured territory, an imagined reality, a yearning, an illusion? Branches moving in silhouette, a lighthouse illuminated vigil, the deserted island village of Pollphail, a dusk journey to the sea, a woman’s tragic death on a hillside, a subterranean fantasy of the underworld, the visual poetics of a windfarm, a lone figure on a beach, the traced lines of a river’s movement. This selection of experimental films is from our open submission programme, reflecting diverse approaches to seeing and transforming landscape, mainly from Scottish and UK artist filmmakers.

View the full Seeing Landscape programme here.

Saturday 11th September 11am, £3


I KNOW WHERE I'M GOING and SPEAKING THE LAND / 59m plus Q&A
Ben Rivers, Dalziel & Scullion plus an audience Q&A with the artists.

A programme of two short films by two of the UK's leading artist filmmakers. Ben Rivers I Know Where I'm Going
I Know Where I’m Going continues Ben Rivers’ concerns with people on the fringes of society. Partly a homage to the Powell and Pressburger film of the same title, this film takes the form of a fragmented road trip through Britain to Mull. Down empty roads, off in the wilderness, a few lone stragglers. His first stop is geologist Jan Zalasiewicz, talking about the Earth in One-hundred million years time.
Dalziel & Scullion Speaking The Land
Speaking the Land is a series of three new short films by Dalziel + Scullion, featuring poems by Robin Lloyd-Jones, John Burnside and Jay Griffiths, written and filmed for three unique Borders landscapes. The films respond to the act of story telling, once deeply imbedded as a means to understand our locality, when the land itself became a place to store knowledge or wisdom of ways to live upon it.

Saturday 11th September 4.30pm, £3


MOVING IMAGE SHORTS : TRANSFORMING LANDSCAPE
1h24m

Janis Crystal Lipzin, Shambhavi Kaul, Rainer Gamsjäger, Steven Ball, Semiconductor, Richard Ashrowan, Emily Richardson, Tomonari Nishikawa, Elke Groen, Naomi Uman.

Rainer Gamsjager State of Flux

Landscape in transformation – the image as a transforming and transformational space, where time and representation are questioned, made uncertain, meanings augmented or shattered. Often involving processes of manual manipulation – in the darkroom, digitally and temporally, with film, video and still images, a multi-layered experience of global landscapes. A journey through the Australian desert, augmented images of vegetation, the crushed pixels of water movement, the salt fields of the Central Kutch in India, the Scottish Borderlands, a Ukrainian calendar, the Austrian Alps, a park in Bangkok, the sun’s trajectory, to the mist shrouded landscape of Orford Ness.

View the full Transforming Landscape programme here.

Sunday 12th September 12 noon, £3


MOVING IMAGE LIVE: -SCAPE
2hrs
Alastair Cook, Chris Dooks James Norton.

Alastair Cook -Scape

An evening of live moving image, set within Heart of Hawick’s lively Beanscene cafe/bar. Curated and presented by Edinburgh artist and filmmaker Alastair Cook, –scape is a filmic celebration of the sea, the land, the city. Drawing on the Alchemy Festival’s powerful theme of landscape, -scape deliberates on the skift, the scipe, the scaef: the human made cuts, built-forms and interventions in the land. This inaugural -scape programme concentrates on the idea that a landscape is a cultural image, a visual way of representing and structuring our surroundings. Alastair Cook has drawn together an exciting yet thoughtful series of films and will present them alongside two new -scape commissioned works from artists Chris Dooks and James Norton.

Saturday 11th September 9-11pm, Free


MOVING IMAGE INSTALLATION: ALCHEMIST
1 hr
Richard Ashrowan / UK 2010 / Installation

Richard Ashrowan Alchemist

Alchemist was produced by artist Richard Ashrowan in collaboration with performance artists Alastair MacLennan and Sandra Johnston. It explores the transformative qualities of the landscape through alchemy, situated in a sense of the uncanny, the seen, the felt and the imagined. Filmed in the Scottish Borders, the work explores an alchemical and pre-scientific sense of transformative engagement with landscape and the elements. The work draws on the the works of the 12th century Scottish alchemist, astrologer, mathematician and magician Michael Scot. Dual screen projection with two large scale black mirrors, one hour in duration as an installation.
Supported by a CABN/Creative Scotland Visual Artists Award.

Saturday and Sunday 11th and 12th September 10am-4.30pm, Free


FOLLOW THE MASTER
1h15m
Matt Hulse / UK 2009 / 12A / Documentary

Matt Hulse Follow the Master

In his eagerly awaited debut feature, Edinburgh-based filmmaker Matt Hulse takes you with him on an invigorating walk following the 100-mile South Downs Way in homage to his grandpa Eric (the titular Master) who died last year. Tag along on a wildly creative, Pythonesque road trip complete with ukeleles, air drumming and the world’s most adorable dog. One of the fastest selling films at last year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival.

Saturday 11th September 7.30pm, £3

2011 SUBMISSIONS

Submissions are now officially closed, but please do contact us if you think you might have something we should not miss. We cannot guarantee to review late submissions.

This year's Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival will be exploring landscape and the four elements: earth, air, fire and water, whether interpreted literally, metaphorically or catastrophically.

The deadline for submissions was 10 June 2011

ABOUT THE 2010 FESTIVAL

Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival brings a magical mix of screenings, special events and talks inspired by the theme of landscape in relation to transformation and identity. Held in the Scottish Borders town of Hawick, 2010 is our first year of what we hope will be an annual festival.

Heart of Hawick, a multi-award winning culture-led regeneration project, plays host to three thought provoking days of moving image shorts; films and documentaries; and special events and premieres by local, national and international artists and film-makers. Watch out for films throughout the town too, with screenings by Hawick Film & Video Group and the Little Theatre Film Club in a cosy 42-seat cinema as well as installations in unexpected and off-beat places.

Richard Ashrowan, curator of the artists’ film programme, says the festival itself is a kind of alchemy, a place where all manner of things might be mixed together, where one thing transmutes into another in a play of visual light and colour. Join us to find out !

Alchemy is funded by Regional Screen Scotland and is a partnership between Heart of Hawick, South of Scotland Creative Enterprise Initiative and Borders Arts Trust. Please visit our supporters page.

FULL PROGRAMME

Friday 10th September 2010

Saturday 11th September 2010

Sunday 12th September 2010

Download printed pdf programme

TICKETS

VisitScotland
Heart of Hawick – Tower Mill
Kirkstile
Hawick TD9 0AE
01450 360688 [Box Office] & 01450 373993 [Visitor Information Centre]

Tickets £3 per event unless otherwise stated. Limited number of Weekend Tickets available at £15 on first come, first served basis. Weekend tickets exclude VOMO [Trouble Sleeping], Hawick Film & Video Group and Little Theatre Film Club [The Kite Runner] screenings.
We regret Heart of Hawick cannot exchange or refund tickets.

Box Office : Opening Hours
Monday 1000 - 1730
Tuesday 1000 - 1815
Wednesday 1000 - 1730
Thursday 1000 - 1815
Friday 1000 - 1945
Saturday 1000 - 1945
Sunday 1200 - 1530