Bermuda International Film Festival

We offer four prizes: Mary-Jean Mitchell Green Award for Best Narrative Feature, Best Documentary Feature and the M3 Wireless Bermuda Shorts Award for Best Short. Our filmgoers vote for the Bacardi Limited Audience Choice Award. We screen features, documentaries and shorts in competition. We also screen in the following categories: World Cinema Showcase, Opening Night and Closing Night, BIFF Kids children's films presented in partnership with Butterfield Bank, a Sidebar highlighting modern cinema from a leading filmmaking country, Special Presentations, Midnight Madness films, and a Short Series. We have screened films at the Liberty and Little theatres in Hamilton since the first festival was held in 1997. In 2002, we screened films at Southside Cinema for the first time. In 2007, we will be at four theatres for the fourth year, having added the Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute theatre. Capacity at the theatres is 270 (Liberty), 162 (Little), 425 (Southside) and 148 (BUEI). We have grown from 22 films in our first year to 28 for two years running before screening 49 films in 2001, 55 in 2002 and 72 in 2003, 70 in 2004 and 2005, 74 in 2006 and 85 in 2007. Our International Advisory Board, set up in 2001, includes Tom Bernard (Co-President and Co-Founder, Sony Pictures Classics), David Poland (thehotbutton.com), moviecitynews.com), Timothy Burrill (Executive Producer, The Pianist and former President, British Academy of Film and Television Arts), Victor Loewy (Chairman, Motion Picture Distribution, Alliance Atlantis), and Valerie Van Galder (President, Domestic Distribution, Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group). Carol Marshall is our U.S. Public Relations Representative. Our Bermuda Film Academy program invites students from six senior secondary schools, and Bermuda College, to a free film screening followed by a Q and A discussion with the film's director. Our Chats With… seminars take place at lunchtimes at the BIFF Front Room, # 6 Passenger Terminal, Front Street, Hamilton. All are invited. BIFF is a registered charity. We have a full-time director, a three-days-a week deputy director - and many, many hardworking volunteers who play a huge role in the success of our festival. Our festival receives funding through corporate sponsorships, in-kind gifts and via fundraising events and ticket and merchandise sales. We are a Qualifying Festival for the Short Film Academy Award®. Aside from our March festival, we also hold the BIFF Kids Children's Film Festival in October, a monthly Film Series throughout the year, and eight weeks of Summer Film Production Camps during the summer for kids 7-16. Our BIFF Kids festival includes a School Screening Series that annually sees more than 700 students from nursery, primary, middle and secondary schools in Bermuda enjoy a film screening at the Liberty Theatre.