Last night the doors opened at Norwich Theatre Stage Two, welcoming the UEA Green Film Festival 2023. This year, the four-day event will be running from 27 to 30 April 2023.
The UEA Green Film Festival has been running for several years. The event celebrates environmental films surrounding contemporary issues, alongside many discussions surrounding activism about climate and environmental change.
This year Norwich Theatre is partnering on the festival as part of its Creative Matters: Climate Stories season.
The first film, Cow, by Andrea Arnold, was screened last night. Melanie Williams, Film professor at UEA, introduced the film. “Andrea Arnold is a really important contemporary woman filmmaker working in Britain, but also in Hollywood. And this is a really interesting film of hers. It’s her first documentary and it’s all about an animal rather than the usual kind of human stories that she tells,” she said.
Throughout the festival, there will be a multitude of other films, as well as Q&As, introductions from film makers, talks and workshops; all surrounding the theme of the environment.
Melanie Williams, UEA Film Professor said: “I think the festival is really important because it provides a really interesting focus for a whole range of films that engage with different issues to do with the environment. It enables people to gather together and watch some interesting things that they might not otherwise have watched, and think about some of the issues and the debates involved.”
UEA associate professor, Karina Aveyard, is festival director and lead organiser of the event this year. She hopes that the UEA funded event will engage the wider community in Norwich and in the region. She wants to, “create spaces for community and connection, and for people to be affected by [climate] and interested to learn more, and not feeling alone in their concerns about the environment and the future.”
The festival will be moving across Norwich every day. Tonight, it will be held at the Castle, then on Saturday at the UEA Enterprise Centre, and Sunday at Cinema City. Tickets are free to book online.
By Cameron Noble