KNIGHTON Community Centre and Presteigne Screen at the Assembly Rooms and Sidney Nolan Trust Centre, will be three of the venues for the 2020 Borderlines Film Festival which will run from February 28 to March 15.

The festival comes of age with its 18th consecutive year as one of the largest, best-attended film festivals nationally.

It will take place over 17 days in 30 locations across three counties of the Welsh Marches: Herefordshire, Shropshire and Powys, as well as Malvern, in Worcestershire, bringing films and related events to venues of different size and character, from multi-disciplinary arts centres, theatres and assembly rooms, to village halls, community cinemas, a church, a pub and a cluster of pop-ups.

In this sparsely-populated area of the country, the Festival attracted a record 21,678 attendances for its 2019 edition.

A total of 280 screenings, more than ever before, are planned for 2020. A total of 80 features and around 30 shorts will make up the programme. These films will be supplemented by guest speakers, exhibitions and additional moving image events.

The Opening Gala screening will be at The Courtyard theatre, in Hereford, on Friday, February 28.

After a highly successful debut at the last festival, Open Screen returns to Hereford’s Left Bank, with filmmakers from Herefordshire, Shropshire, Worcestershire and Powys showing and talking about their recent work with their peers and a public audience.

The festival called for films from filmmakers in the four counties. Following Open Screen’s successful inauguration in March, Borderlines offer short screening slots of 15-minutes maximum to filmmakers to show a short film or a clip of a longer film, and then an additional five minutes to introduce it and answer questions from the audience.

Other venues that will be involved will include The Hive at Shrewsbury, Kinkokulture Cinema at Oswestry; Bedstone and Hopton Castle Village Hall; Booth’s Bookshop Cinema at Hay on Wye; and Ludlow Assembly Rooms.

County Times:

A strand of films within the Festival, with striking black and white cinematography, focuses on The Sea. Robert Eggers’ “The Lighthouse” is a full force two-hander with Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson as a pair of lighthouse keepers on a long solitary watch off the coast of New England.

This is complemented by British indie sensation “Bait”, shot on 16mm film by filmmaker Mark Jenkin. It takes place in a Cornish fishing village where traditional ways of life and community confront opportunist, modern values head on.