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30 April — 3 May 2026 / Hawick

Embrace
the Strange

Schedule

Exhibition

Exhibitions Opening

Multiple artists

Thursday 30 April
17:00 – 18:30

Heart of Hawick, Heritage Hub, Borders Textile Towerhouse

Join us for a preview of our moving-image exhibitions, which are open daily from Friday 1 May to Sunday 3 May.

Screening

Feature

Waves Turn

Josephine Ahnelt

Thursday 30 April

19:00 – 21:00 / 73' + Q+A

Heart of Hawick

Josephine Ahnelt's debut feature, a quietly riveting 16mm portrait of five mothers in their first year of parenthood. UK premiere.

Event

Nightcap

Thursday 30 April

21:00 – 00:00

Heart of Hawick

A relaxed, unstructured gathering to mark the end of a festival day.

Screening

Shorts

A Zoo Must Never Be A Metaphor

Friday 1 May

10:00 - 11:30 / 68' + Q&A

Heart of Hawick

From the ancient to the incidental, eight films explore the rhythms, durations and architectures of impermanence.

Screening

Shorts

A Place That Can Never Be Reached

Friday 1 May

12:00 – 13:30 / 64' + Q&A

Heart of Hawick

Through mapping and metaphysics, sketches and surveillance, seven films ruminate on perception and interpretation.

Event

Play It Forward

Friday 1 May

12:30 – 14:30

Heritage Hub

A drop-in, hands-on 16mm workshop with Lydia Beilby editing and splicing a new restoration of the 1966 Hawick Pictorial.

Screening

Shorts

Time Folds In

Friday 1 May

14:30 – 16:00 / 65' + Q&A

Heart of Hawick

From racial segregation to wartime displacement, four films consider the complexities of returning.

Screening

Focus

Focus: Nada El-Omari

Friday 1 May

16:30 – 18:00 / 65' + Q&A

Heart of Hawick

In Nada El-Omari's work, diasporic identity is explored with an unwavering attention to archival text, image, sound.

Event

Festival Ceilidh

Friday 1 May

20:30 – 00:00

Town Hall

Another festival edition, another night of camaraderie, connection, and joy in comradeship. Kilts encouraged, all welcome!

Exhibition

Contretemps + No Title

Ghassan Salhab

Friday 1 May to Sunday 3 May
10:00 – 17:00

Borders Textile Towerhouse

Two frontline dispatches from Lebanon chart the precarities of protest and the devastation of Israeli violence.

Exhibition

How to Cook a Wasp

Jade Wong

Friday 1 May to Sunday 3 May
10:00 – 17:00

Heritage Hub

A diasporic Asian food worker community is observed through the lens of wasp hunting and seaweed foraging.

Exhibition

Milk Report

Conway and Young

Friday 1 May to Sunday 3 May
10:00 – 17:00

Heritage Hub

A playful treatise and performance piece on the thrills, trials and travails of reproductive labour.

Exhibition

Oor Ain Film Archive

Friday 1 May to Sunday 3 May
10:00 – 17:00

Heritage Hub

The launch of a new permanent mediatheque preserving social histories of the Scottish Borders through film.

Exhibition

Out Of Office

Kialy Tihngang

Friday 1 May to Sunday 3 May
10:00 – 17:00

Borders Textile Towerhouse

A critique of capitalism and its abundant shape-shifting capacity plays out as a darkly funny corporate satire.

Exhibition

Stomach, Thighs, and Ass

Matthew Lancit

Friday 1 May to Sunday 3 May
10:00 – 17:00

Room 205, Heart of Hawick

Survival as performance art, one insulin injection at a time, as the artist documents an epic of the everyday.

Screening

Shorts

I Am One, And Two

Saturday 2 May

10:00 – 11:30 / 66' + Q&A

Heart of Hawick

From the corporeal to the cosmic, the material to the spiritual, seven films explore mechanisms of endurance.

Screening

Shorts

Your Body Has Never Been Your Own

Saturday 2 May

12:00 – 13:30 / 65' + Q&A

Heart of Hawick

Six films situate struggle and survival within the strictures and structures of the state apparatus. 

Event

Play It Forward

Saturday 2 May

12:30 – 14:30

Heritage Hub

A drop-in, hands-on 16mm workshop with Lydia Beilby editing and splicing a new restoration of the 1966 Hawick Pictorial.

Screening

Feature

Angels Fill Me With Horror

Saturday 2 May

14:30 – 16:00 / 66' + Q&A

Heart of Hawick

Eight films survey myths and monsters, anxiety and trauma, in relation to land, place, identity and the seasons.

Screening

Focus

Focus: Malic Amalya

Saturday 2 May

16:30 – 18:00 / 62' + Q&A

Heart of Hawick

Malic Amalya’s essayistic, intersectional queercore work embodies a vividly analogue mode of anticapitalism.

Screening

Feature

An Incomplete Calendar

Sanaz Sohrabi

Saturday 2 May

20:00 – 21:45 / 78' + Q&A

Heart of Hawick

Sanaz Sohrabi investigates oil as the driving force of Palestinian liberation and Pan-Arab solidarity. UK premiere

Event

Nightcap

Saturday 2 May

22:00 – 01:00

Heart of Hawick

A relaxed, unstructured gathering to mark the end of a festival day.

Event

Exhibitions Q&A

Sunday 3 May

09:00 – 09:45 / 45'

Heart of Hawick

Artists in this year’s exhibitions programme discuss themes and methods key to their work.

Screening

Shorts

The Dreams Of Fishes

Sunday 3 May

10:00 – 11:30 / 64' + Q&A

Heart of Hawick

Amidst shrubs and marshlands, gardens and rivers, five films confront life and longing, existence and desire. 

Screening

Shorts

How Do We Communicate, How

Sunday 3 May

12:00 – 13:30 / 65' + Q&A

Heart of Hawick

Through dialogues and monologues, signs and gestures, seven films ponder the power and politics of language.

Event

Play It Forward

Sunday 3 May

13:45 – 14:30 / 45'

Heritage Hub

The 16mm premiere of a slice of Hawick heritage, spliced by you into a new work entirely.

Screening

Shorts

A Comrade Approaches

Sunday 3 May

14:30 – 16:00 / 65' + Q&A

Heart of Hawick

At mines and coalfields, across night shifts and bank heists, five films meditate on the textures and residues of labour.

Event

Play It Forward

Sunday 3 May

16:15 – 17:00 / 45'

Heritage Hub

The 16mm premiere of a slice of Hawick heritage, spliced by you into a new work entirely.

Screening

Performance

Stone and Mountain

Tetsuya Maruyama, Luke Fowler

Sunday 3 May

17:00 – 18:00 / 60'

Heart of Hawick

Tetsuya Maruyama joins forces with Luke Fowler for a spellbinding analogue rumination on contemporary mining activities in Brazil.

Event

Film Quiz

Sunday 3 May

20:00 – 22:00

Heart of Hawick

Join us for the weekend wind-down, another edition of our relaxed quiz. A whole lot of fun, prizes to be won, etcetera.

Event

Nightcap

Sunday 3 May

22:00 – 00:00

Heart of Hawick

A relaxed, unstructured gathering to mark the end of a festival day.