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Borderlines Film Festival Dates Announced for 2012
Contact: Clare Wilford PR 020 8699 5995 / 07545 756 462 [email protected] or [email protected]
Date: 14th December 2011
From Barn to Pub, Church Hall to Town Hall, Stately Home to Aircraft Hangar, the UK’s Biggest Rural Film Festival Celebrates 10 Years
10th BORDERLINES FILM FESTIVAL
Shropshire, Herefordshire and The Welsh Marches
24 February to 11 March
& May 2012 (dates TBC)
In total next year’s double helping of cinematic delights will encompass 260 screenings over 27 days in 42 venues, most of which are temporary cinemas. Venues as diverse as Hereford's state-of-the-art Courtyard, to historic buildings like Ludlow's Georgian Assembly Rooms, CAMRA's favourite parlour bar, The Sun Inn in Leintwardine, the National Trust's Berrington Hall, and the aircraft hangars at Shobdon Airfield, as well as numerous village and church halls, schools, film societies, and the back rooms of pubs dotted all over 2,000 square miles of Herefordshire, Shropshire and the Welsh Marches.
www.borderlinesfilmfestival.org
* 10th Anniversary - The UK’s largest rural film festival, Borderlines Film Festival, celebrates ten years of refreshing the rural parts others don’t reach, with a double slice of movie heaven in 2012, presenting for the first time a series of open-air and site specific screenings during May (dates TBC) to complement its traditional Winter programme (24 February – 11 March).
Borderlines is a national rural success story says Festival Producer Naomi Vera-Sanso: “We felt that our 10th Festival should be a little special! So we’ve decided to produce a double helping, two-part Festival, and take advantage of the better weather Spring has to offer by planning a series of special one-off open air events – something we’ve never been able to do before – to take place after the main Winter Festival in February/March.”
“We’re delighted that the Herefordshire LEADER programme have agreed to support our extra May screenings in the villages, and we are able to stage a series of spectacular site specific film events in places as diverse as the elegant grandeur of Berrington Hall and a WW2 hangar at the airfield at Shobdon in Herefordshire.”
* Gillam's Last Stand - For Festival Director David Gillam, it will be his last Borderlines Festival, as he will step down from programming responsibilities next year: “It’s been a terrific decade and I’ve seen the Festival grow from a few thousand in the early years to well over 14,000 tickets sold in 2011. Borderlines is now the biggest rural film festival in the UK, certainly it covers a wider area than any other and could well be the largest rural film festival in Europe. However we still remain unique in that the overwhelming majority of our venues are temporary cinemas, which allow us to bring movies to some of the most cinema deprived rural areas in the UK.”
“Reaching our tenth anniversary seemed as good a moment as any to bow out. I look forward to spending more time 'just watching the river flow' and perhaps one day sitting in a cinema to watch a film without the pressure of needing to judge whether it’s good enough for Borderlines!”
2012 Festival Highlights (full programme announced on 16 January):
* Special Guests – Festival guests from the last ten years have included: Gillies MacKinnon, Sophie Fiennes, Alex Cox, Stephen Frears, Terry Jones, Marc Evans, Patrick Keiller, Jo Brand and Beeban Kidron.
This year’s special guests to be confirmed.
* Special Events – Highlights for 2012 include: Behind the Scenes with The Archers; a Resistance guided walk with Nic Howe in the Olchon Valley where the film was shot; two outdoor screenings at Berrington Hall (11/12 May); The Cabinet of Dr Caligari with live soundtrack by Cipher, and a screening of Ealing classic Whisky Galore complete with whisky tasting in one of Britain’s few remaining parlour pubs.
* Film Screenings – New movies and themed programmes screening this year include: The Barley Mow, folk films from the BFI archive; the 10 best films of the last decade from Borderlines; a major Rural Film themed programme including: Tune for the Blood, a documentary following Herefordshire Young Farmers through a working year, and the award-winning French documentary, Think Global, Act Rural.
* In Memoriam - The 2012 Festival is dedicated to the memory of Peter Williamson, Chairman of Wyevale Nurseries, who died in Hereford in May. Peter was a long-time Borderlines board member, sponsor and one of the Festival’s strongest supporters. The annual Borderlines Ball was his brainchild and in 2011 he and his family initiated and funded the Festival's first film competition, Under Open Skies, celebrating amateur and professional films about Britain's natural world in memory of his father, Henry Williamson, founder of Wyevale Garden Centres and a keen amateur film-maker.
Notes to Editors:
1. Festival Box Office/Ticket Information - The first part of the Borderlines Film Festival programme will be published online and tickets on sale from 16 January 2012.
Full details of the second part of the Festival in May will be available from 5 March 2012.
Tickets will be available via the Festival Box Office at The Courtyard, Hereford: 01432 340555 or online at www.borderlinesfilmfestival.org
(Tickets can still be purchased from individual venues and on the door)
The full list of locations (with box office numbers) participating in the Feb/March Borderlines Film Festival next year are: Aston-on-Clun 01588 660545; Bedstone and Hopton Castle Village Hall 01547 530282; Bishops Castle, SpArC 01588 630321 and Bishops Castle Film Society 01588 680445 at The Three Tuns; Bodenham 01568 797451; Bosbury 01531 640415; Brilley 01544 327227; Bromyard, Conquest Theatre 01885 488 575; Church Stretton School 01694 724330; Dilwyn 01544 318633; Dorstone 01981 550451; Ewyas Harold 01981 240 565; Cawley Hall, Eye, 01568 615836; Garway 01600 750 461; Hereford The Courtyard 01432 340555 and Hereford WRVS Hall (on door only); Kington, The Burton Hotel TBC 01544 230597; Ledbury Market Theatre 01531 633345; Leintwardine Community Centre 07973 746223 and The Sun Inn; Leominster, Lion Ballroom 01568 611588 TBC and The Playhouse 01568 612583; Ludlow Assembly Rooms 01584 878141; Market Drayton, Festival Drayton Centre 01630 654444 TBC; Michaelchurch Escley 01981 510696; Moccas 07776 121956; Oswestry, Attfield Theatre and other venues TBC; Presteigne Film Society, The Assembly Rooms, 01544 260577; Pudleston 01568 750630; Ross-on-Wye, St Mary’s Church Hall 01989 720341; Tarrington 01432 890720; Wem Town Hall 01939 237075, and Whitchurch, The Talbot Theatre 01948 660660.
2. Festival Funders - Borderlines Film Festival is funded by: The British Film Institute through the National Lottery, Herefordshire Council, Hereford City Council, Shropshire Council, Shropshire Screen (through the BFI Rural Cinema Pilot), and part funding from the European Union (EAFRD) and Defra (through the VITAL Herefordshire LEADER programme).
3. Festival Background - Borderlines Film Festival was established in 2003 as part of an Advantage West Midlands Creative Industries project to develop cinema audiences and to support regional and local film production in the rurally isolated counties of Herefordshire and Shropshire. Match funding was provided by the regional screen agency Screen WM.
By 2008 Borderlines became the largest film festival in the Midlands, as attendance grew from 4,972 in 2003 to 7,326 by 2005, to 14,358 in 2011, and is now one of the most well attended film festivals in the UK, bigger than many of its longer established metropolitan rivals.
ENDS