Danc­ing and dif­fer­ent ways of see­ing at Alche­my Film and Mov­ing Image Festival

“As an exper­i­men­tal film fes­ti­val, we’re all about the ten­sion between struc­ture-” Alche­my Film and Arts co-direc­tor Michael Pat­ti­son announced on stage, paus­ing, “-and chaos.” Laugh­ter filled the room; gath­ered in the town hall of Haw­ick, a Scot­tish Bor­ders town just about equidis­tant from Edin­burgh to the north and New­cas­tle to the south, we were eager­ly wait­ing for the festival’s ceilidh to begin. I’ve lived in Scot­land for near­ly six years but had yet to attend my first ceilidh (shock, hor­ror!), so all I knew was 1) be pre­pared for lots of shout­ed instruc­tions. 2) it’s going to get faster and faster. 3) Your feet are going to hurt a lot afterwards.

What bet­ter place to address the ceilidh-shaped gap on my ​‘liv­ing in Scot­land’ CV than the four­teenth edi­tion of Alche­my Film and Mov­ing Image Fes­ti­val? In a room with a smat­ter­ing of well-prac­tised locals, the major­i­ty of folk were film­mak­ers and artists hail­ing from all over the world. A film­mak­er from the Nether­lands, mes­sag­ing a friend, nudged me to ask, ​“How do you spell ​‘ceilidh’?” Half an hour lat­er, return­ing daz­zled from the dance floor, she said, ​“I think I need to start this in the Nether­lands.” Stamp­ing, shout­ing, swap­ping part­ners, look­ing very con­fused, and look­ing very proud (in the rare instance where I got the steps right), I linked arms and spun with film­mak­ers whose work I’d just seen and loved and film­mak­ers whose work would blow me away the very next day, while yet anoth­er film­mak­er took a video of us on my phone – land­scape, like a dad.

The next morn­ing, after the ceilidh had ossi­fied my legs into bricks, I hob­bled up the stairs of Heart of Hawick’s cin­e­ma once again, feel­ing noth­ing short of over­joyed. Alche­my is one of the most inter­na­tion­al­ly acclaimed exper­i­men­tal film and mov­ing image fes­ti­vals in Europe, and expe­ri­enc­ing it in per­son, you soon under­stand why. It is tru­ly a filmmaker’s fes­ti­val – not at all in an exclu­sion­ary sense, but in the sense that an over­flow­ing and com­mu­nal­ly nour­ished love for the medi­um is pal­pa­ble every­where you look: in the film­mak­ers who were just on stage for Q&As becom­ing enrap­tured audi­ences for the next screen­ing; in how the festival’s vibrant­ly inter­na­tion­al pro­gram­ming and deep embed­ded­ness in the land­scape of Haw­ick enrich each oth­er mutu­al­ly; in the beau­ti­ful­ly curat­ed dia­logue between the short films inhab­it­ing the screen. Intro­duc­tions to screen­ings were brief, allow­ing the cura­to­r­i­al mag­ic of each programme’s thought­ful, dynam­ic jux­ta­po­si­tion to speak for itself.

Though I tru­ly left every screen­ing feel­ing elec­tri­fied, per­haps my favourite pro­gramme was ​‘Lands of Make Believe’. These films inter­ro­gat­ed the abstrac­tion, vio­lence, and era­sure enact­ed by mythol­o­gy: from the Florid­i­an, humid tel­e­van­ge­lism of Sarah Ballard’s Heat Spells or the re-nar­ra­tion of BP’s colo­nial exploita­tion of Iran in Nari­man Massoumi’s Pour­ing Water on Trou­bled Oil, to the Greek nymph Daphne’s sub­li­ma­tion into a lau­rel tree in Catri­ona Gallagher’s Daphne was a tor­so end­ing in leaves. Shot on 16mm and processed in a solu­tion made from bay leaves, Daphne’s meta­mor­pho­sis imbibed into this film’s very chemistry.

With about four or five pro­grammes a day, Alchemy’s sched­ule is full, but not over­whelm­ing. Gaps between screen­ings lend them­selves to the enjoy­ment of a deli­cious mixed mezze plate and pita bread at Dam­as­cus Drum, the gor­geous sec­ond­hand book­shop café just around the cor­ner, or a gan­der through Hawick’s char­i­ty-shop-filled high street, rumoured to be blessed by the knitwear gods (though I sad­ly came away emp­ty-hand­ed). You can even take a stroll up the hills to give some local hors­es a friend­ly rub on the nose. I can­not stress enough how enriched a film fes­ti­val is by its prox­im­i­ty to non-human kin and beau­ti­ful green space.

What I adored even more than the hors­es, how­ev­er, was the time to enjoy Alchemy’s eight mov­ing-image exhi­bi­tions, all locat­ed with­in a minute or two’s walk­ing dis­tance of the main fes­ti­val venue, if not just upstairs from the cin­e­ma: which is where I fell in love with Lilan Yang’s Every­thing Comes Full Cir­cle, a 16mm Bolex film revis­it­ing the land­scapes and iconog­ra­phy of Wim Wen­ders’ Paris, Texas. In front of a plex­i­glass screen sus­pend­ed in mid-air like an appari­tion or some kind of por­tal, we sat on the floor: gen­tly cocooned in the light of the film, its ten­der score, and the sound of the pro­jec­tor. Yang’s film, inkjet-print­ed onto trans­par­ent film so that the image slow­ly, per­ma­nent­ly dete­ri­o­rates with every loop of the pro­jec­tion, felt like a phys­i­cal embod­i­ment of both the imper­ma­nence of rec­ol­lec­tion and the emo­tion­al longevi­ty of mem­o­ry. It was one of the most beau­ti­ful films I’ve ever seen.

At Alche­my, films spanned worlds, approach­es, and forms. An 86-sec­ond-long, heavy met­al-sound­tracked col­lage of ana­logue reels of trans pornog­ra­phy (film­mak­er Autojektor’s CLOS­ET WITCH) sat hap­pi­ly along­side a qui­et and reflec­tive doc­u­men­ta­tion of one of Livingston’s first coun­cil hous­ing estates being slow­ly demol­ished (Rachel McBrinn’s Are you going my way?). A short film pro­gramme is by nature a dia­log­i­cal one since films are placed in the most prox­i­mate con­ver­sa­tion with each oth­er there can be. But at Alche­my, there was some­thing unique­ly expan­sive about this explic­it acknowl­edge­ment, nur­tured fur­ther by each post-screen­ing Q&A, of the com­mon­al­i­ty between such incred­i­bly dif­fer­ent works of film­mak­ing: where all are need­ed, all are wel­come, all seek truth in the bel­ly of the mov­ing image, all look towards the same sun on earth.

This year, the festival’s focus artist was Pales­tin­ian film­mak­er Noor Abed, whose tril­o­gy of works at the fes­ti­val weaved, mes­mer­ic, between folk­lore, per­for­mance, and doc­u­men­tary – forg­ing archives of resis­tance, rit­u­al, and refusal, and con­test­ing the vio­lent régime of era­sure and dis­pos­ses­sion that puls­es eeri­ly just out of frame. We should not live in a world where Alche­my is one of the few out­ly­ing film fes­ti­vals to stand vocal­ly in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the Pales­tin­ian peo­ple and carve out space to cel­e­brate Pales­tin­ian artists this year, but nev­er­the­less, we do; and so the oppor­tu­ni­ty to watch Abed’s beau­ti­ful­ly haunt­ing films thus felt even more vital. Alchemy’s co-direc­tors described this year’s pro­gramme as ​“crit­i­cal films, dis­rup­tive acts: inter­ven­tions … made in a spir­it of spec­u­la­tion, gen­eros­i­ty and resistance.”

As the world reels from mul­ti­ple crises, not least Israel’s ongo­ing geno­cide of Pales­tini­ans after more than 75 years of apartheid and occu­pa­tion, to be crit­i­cal and dis­rup­tive is an act of care, and one that the exper­i­men­tal film is well-poised to under­take – a tem­po­ral, emo­tion­al inter­rup­tion that demands us to remem­ber we can, and must, stop the killing machine. The films we watched all fun­da­men­tal­ly demand­ed us to chal­lenge what has been nor­malised, to estrange our­selves from the sta­tus quo in one way or anoth­er, to col­lec­tive­ly think back to his­to­ry, for­ward to hope, and through the ​“quag­mire of the present”, to bor­row José Este­ban Muñoz’s peren­ni­al­ly rel­e­vant words.

I found myself lin­ger­ing on the title of the fes­ti­val, ​‘alche­my’, and just how apt it felt: some unlike­ly col­li­sion and exchange of breath, sub­stance, move­ment, and ener­gy that brings forth the new and unex­pect­ed, nam­ing the unname­able. The alche­my of audi­ences break­ing into applause every sin­gle time a mem­ber of the team intro­duced the fes­ti­val by name before a screen­ing; the alche­my of such an inim­itably beau­ti­ful and fierce­ly car­ing film fes­ti­val that, ​“it makes you want to become an exper­i­men­tal film­mak­er just so you get the chance to attend”, to quote film­mak­er Auto­jek­tor; the alche­my between chaos and struc­ture, an invi­ta­tion to make chaos so that oppres­sive struc­tures may col­lapse. As our shut­tle bus pulled away on the final morn­ing, and the won­der­ful mem­bers of the fes­ti­val team sang a Haw­ick song to us as we waved good­bye, I think I caught a glimpse of some­thing invalu­able that week­end at Alche­my: that anoth­er world is pos­si­ble, in some ways already here and being imag­ined, and that togeth­er, we can and must bring it to life.