The Berwick New Cinema Award was presented to Igwe at the closing Screening of the 15th Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival on Sunday 22 September by the Berwick New Cinema Competition jurors: Callum Hill (winner of the 2018 Berwick New Cinema Award); Hyun Jin Cho (film curator, Korean Cultural Centre UK); and Julian Ross (programmer, Locarno Film Festival & International Film Festival Rotterdam).
The Jury stated that Onyeka Igwe’s film ‘the names have changed, including my own and truths have been altered’ “is committed to being part of a conversation that has no clear answers and where many questions remain. At once tender and outspoken, it dives deep into the entanglements of family and history and dares to share the knots and frustrations you face when untangling them. With intimacy and rigour, the archive is activated.”
BFMAF Programming Fellow Tendai John Mutambu wrote that, in telling a story of her grandfather and of an encounter with Nigeria, Onyeka Igwe “throws the ordinary and the everyday within the archive into relief by daring to write and re-write the stories of diasporic African life against the grain of colonial history’s master narratives using a variety of forms”. the names have changed, including my own and truths have been altered was shown as a World Festival Premiere after a World Premiere screening event at Jerwood Arts (London) in early September.
Onyeka Igwe is an artist and researcher working between cinema and installation. She was born and is based in London, UK. Her video works have been shown at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (London); LUX; Berlin Biennale; London Film Festival; International Film Festival Rotterdam; Essay Film Festival; and Smithsonian African American Film Festival. She joins past Berwick New Cinema Award winners Callum Hill (2018), Sky Hopinka (2017), Camilo Restrepo (2016) and Tamara Henderson & Julia Feyrer (2015).
The 2019 Berwick New Cinema Competition screened 23 works by a total of 27 artists across five screening programmes. This year’s competition was researched and selected by Festival Director Peter Taylor, Associate Programmers Letitia Calin and Herb Shellenberger, Programme Coordinator Hamish Young and 2019 Programming Fellow Tendai John Mutambu. The Berwick New Cinema Competition is kindly supported by Berwick Town Council.
The 15th Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival took place 19–22 September 2019 in Berwick-upon-Tweed, UK. Press reports and photo/video documentation of this year’s festival will follow over the coming weeks on www.bfmaf.org.
The 16th Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival will take place 10–13 September, 2020.
