Submissions 2011

About the 2011 festival

Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival 2011 brings a magical mix of screenings, special events and talks inspired by the theme of landscape and the four elements – fire, earth, air and water. Held in the Scottish Borders town of Hawick in October, 2011 will be our second year.  The festival is a partnership between Borders Arts Trust, Heart of Hawick, and CABN (Creative Arts Business Network), with each partner bringing a commitment to developing audiences for high quality film and moving image. Our first year was a great success, attracting capacity audiences for many of the screenings, with a number of significant international artists both screened and in attendance. The festival is an ambitious and varied programme with feature films, youth and community screenings, and educational workshops.   The moving image arts strand of the programme is artist-focussed, putting creativity first in everything we do, and curated by Borders based artist Richard Ashrowan. This year we are lucky to offer some limited moving image artist residencies in the area, supported by the Creative Arts Business Network (CABN), while we also hope to expand the number of small scale artist installations in disused buildings within the town, to complement the main auditorium screenings of curated programmes of artists’ films.

Film and moving image work submissions

If you have work you would like to screen at Alchemy this year, please go to the film and moving image submission form. Priority will be given to films made in the last three years, though older films will be considered if there is a close thematic link. Short films of under 15 minutes duration will stand a much greater chance of selection. We are willing to consider feature length films only if they fit closely with our festival theme. In general, please do not submit your work if it does not fit with our theme this year - landscape and fire, earth, air and water. These elements can be interpreted individually, collectively, literally, metaphorically or psychologically, but a connection within the work should exist.

Residencies and moving image installation proposals

You can go straight to the online application form, though you might want to read this first…

This year we have a small number of two week residencies on offer for moving image artists wishing to create site specific work for this year’s festival. We anticipate the residencies will happen in July and August at two rural locations in the Borders. We are interested to receive applications from moving image artists (at any stage in their career) with strong ideas for the creation of new work in some way related to the theme of this year’s festival. We are currently investigating a number of alternative disused spaces in the local town which may be suitable for showing moving image installation based work, in additional to single channel films.

Each residency includes free accommodation for two weeks, plus an artists fee of £300. We regret we are unable to pay travel or any other expenses.

We are also interested to hear from artists with proposals for moving image installation pieces, who may or may not need a residency to develop and show their work.

Locations:

One residency is available at Heriot Toun, 8th to 21st Aug. The accommodation is a self catering studio space. The artist Pat Law lives on site.

Further residencies are available at Phenzhopehaugh, near Buccleuch / Ettrick. Dates are flexible. This residency is in more basic accommodation – a clean and tidy large mobile home (with water, toilet, heating and electricity), one and a half miles off-road, surrounded by thousands of acres of forestry and sheep grazed hills. There is a stone shed ‘The Generator Shed‘, sometimes used as a rural exhibition space, available during the residency as a basic studio/workspace. The location itself is both very remote and very historic, and would suit people looking to work within real isolation. The artist Richard Ashrowan lives on site.

Apply:

We are initially inviting expressions of interest. Please fill out this online application form if you would like to be considered.