Organisation: Cinema Golau
Cinema Golau, The Windrush Caribbean Festival and community partners are working together to celebrate Windrush Day, educating communities on the contributions made by the Windrush Caribbean community in Wales and UK wide.
Over three days at The Riverfront in Newport, the film festival will offer affordable film screenings, workshops and panel discussions, allowing the venue to reconnect with audiences following Covid restrictions and re-establish links within the film industry.
Organisation: Hijinx
Hijinx Unity Festival is an international inclusive arts festival, running every 2 years since 2008. This year, for the first time, a film festival will run alongside, at Chapter Cardiff, Pontio in Bangor and Ffwrnes in Llanelli. Showcasing inclusive work made by and with learning disabled and/or autistic people, it will be made up of features and shorts of all types, panel discussions and Q&As both in person and over Zoom.
Organisation: Watch-Africa CIC
Watch-Africa will deliver a programme of 4 film screenings in Wales (between April – September 2022) that will include discussions and workshops as part of a film exchange project between East Africa + Wales.
Organisation: Watch-Africa CIC
The 9th edition of the Watch-Africa Film Festival will look at what connects the rest of the World to the African continent, how to create awareness and understanding of different ways of living and connecting with others. The festival will explore worldwide themes of diversity and inclusion across language, identity and belonging through a programme of films and activities. Specifically, Watch-Africa will explore Ujamaa, a Swahili word meaning collectiveness and consider what inclusion looks like for rural African communities – how they connect to the global movements such as Black Lives Matter and SARS.
Organisation: Gentle / Radical
After two years of Covid absence from delivering community screenings, Gentle Radical will reconnect with neighbourhood audiences and find out their needs, through a series of Riverside based pop-up screenings which will act as R&D for a new phase of the Gentle/Radical Film Club. They will trial a range of film genres as well as themes/issues with local audiences, marketed via direct local outreach, door-knocking, flyering single individual streets and organising local gatherings.
Organisation: Off Y Grid
Off Y Grid will offer a programme of films and events across six OYG venues: Cellb, Galeri, Neuadd Dwyfor, Neuadd Ogwen, Pontio and TAPE (with potential collaboration with a 7th – Dragon Barmouth) between April and December 2022. In addition to general marketing of the venue programmes, event plans include: Welsh made films including special events around Gwledd and The Welshman, a series of films by award winning female filmmakers such as Jane Campion and Kelly Reichardt, Pride celebration and a programme of films to promote World Mental Health Day.
Organisation: Cellb
The idea for this project started as a way to show World films in Blaenau Ffestiniog, and has now grown to include independent films, Welsh-made films, documentary, and other underrepresented types of film. Cellb will develop the screenings into events, with food and drinks being served, and Q&A sessions and discussion groups.
Organisation: Kotatsu Animation Film Festival
The Kotatsu Japanese Animation Festival will screen a selection of films at Chapter Cardiff, Aberystwyth Arts Centre and Pontio Bangor TBC), along with online Zoom workshops and Q&A sessions. This year, they are introducing a Manga Comic Café (free Japanese comic reading area) at each venue and in local cafés – to promote Japanese culture alongside the festival.
Organisation: Birds Eye View
Building on their initial relationship with Chapter and a number of community screens in the capital, Birds Eye View will develop Reclaim the Frame (RtF) in Wales, with the support of a Cardiff-based Impact Producer, to bring more film events and build a greater community of audiences for films by women and non-binary filmmakers in Cardiff. RtF titles will be screened with live events and conversations from Q&As, to panel discussions and workshops.
Organisation: Dragon Theatre
Barmouth is a small sea side town which welcomes tourists year-round, particularly during the summer. Through a programme of Welsh film, residents and visitors alike will discover different perspectives of Wales on screen. Shorts, features and special events with talent will introduce audiences to the creative process of filmmaking, Welsh culture and enable the community to reconnect following Covid-19.
Organisation: Magic Lantern
Magic Lantern will ‘pick up the threads’ of positivity emerging post-Covid. Through audience research, they will engage with younger audiences and consolidate programming via young crew, inviting more young people to attend their Made in Wales film screenings, monthly Film Club films plus monthly ‘Mor a Mynydd’ films around outdoor activities and a special archive horror screening with live music.
Organisation: Memo Arts Centre
Cine Memo screens diverse British, Welsh, international and independent films alongside blockbuster titles, offering affordable, accessible, and relaxed cinema representative of the wider community. The programme encourages cinema goers to re-engage in the big screen’ cinema experience and participatory events. MAC recognises the importance of its cinema role in helping the community to heal post Covid, to recover and rebuild from the overwhelming impact on their economic, societal, health and well-being. Events range from curriculum themed screenings with schools, to baby friendly, sing-a-longs, weekend family films and activities to support parents, guardians, carers, disabled and neuro-divergent audiences.
Organisation: WOW Film Festival
A Wales-wide tour of 15 screenings with a focus on indigenous people, their languages and wider cultures, including how the protection of their natural environments offers us a vital lesson for the future. The tour includes films from India, Asia, South America, Africa and will take place around International Womens’ Day. In Newport and Swansea, the WOW Film Club will reach out to BIPOC women, offering daytime screenings and offers for the wider tour. The tour will also be offered to film societies for special event screenings.
Organisation: Cardiff Animation Festival
In 2022, Cardiff Animation Festival will bring independent animated films, from across the world to Wales at Chapter, online and to Welsh venues through a touring programme of Welsh animations and the Best of CAF22. There will be programmes for young audiences at their Cardiff Animation Nights and hybrid CAN Kids events, a programme of shorts about climate emergency, spooky horror shorts for Halloween and Different Voices – a programme of shorts by neuro-divergent animators.
Organisation: Theatr Gwaun
Theatr Gwaun attracts audiences across Pembrokeshire to see arthouse and non-mainstream film. Their resident Fishguard Film Society will offer regular international screenings alongside their main programme of British and independent film, which is supported by their Community Film Panel. Audiences will also be able to discover films that portray and celebrate Wales and Welsh culture, connect with local filmmakers and special events. For young audiences there is an Saturday Morning Kids Club and POINT Presents initiatives, where young creatives choose the films.
Organisation: Aberystwyth Arts Centre
Abertoir International Horror Festival promotes and celebrates the history of the horror genre through unreleased new films, cult classics, silent film with live accompaniment, talks, presentations, short films and other special events.
In 2022 audiences can expect feature films from at least 15 countries, presented in person at Aberystwyth Arts Centre and online. The 100th anniversary of the first Vampire film will feature as a festival theme, along with a Christopher Lee centenary, the actor best known for playing Dracula. There are also plans to screen Welsh horror, special articles, daily newsletters and explorations of horror in gaming. Working with Matchbox, films will be subtitled for hard of hearing audiences, ensuring that the festival is accessible.
Organisation: IRIS Prize Festival
Iris Prize aim to increase audiences for LGBT+ stories. The ‘Best of Iris 2022’ takes a selection of LGBT+ short films (made in the past 18 months) to make them available to cinemas across Wales and the UK. The films were classified by the BBFC and made available for free to exhibitors, enabling cinemas to reach out to new audiences sustainably.
