Introducing our Women X 2021 Venue!
We are super excited to share with you our venue for the second edition of Women X Film Festival. We are running a hybrid festival this year, and our in-person home will be ARC - Stockton Arts Centre, a beautiful cinema and arts venue based in Stockton on Tees in the North East. We are delighted to be working with the team at ARC to bring you an inclusive, inspiring, and uplifting event where all are welcome and you can catch our carefully curated programme, featuring short film strands, panels, workshops and more!
ARC - STOCKTON ARTS CENTRE
First off, a little about the venue itself. ARC focuses on bringing various art forms and cultural activities to their local community, appealing to both familiar and new audiences. They collaborate with various artists and organisations, particularly local ones, who bring fresh and relevant work to showcase. It’s the perfect place to host our festival, as we want to bring celebration of women and non binary creatives in film to the North East, where our founder, Caris Rianne, and multiple members of our team are based. “A key passion of mine and a mission for Rianne Pictures is the increase the opportunities in film outside of London, where many young people feel they need to move to in order to feel part of the industry. I can’t wait to host our festival for an audience that normally would have to travel far and at a cost in order to feel part of the experience” our founder and festival Caris Rianne said when asked about the venue choice, she added “The team at ARC have been so welcoming and it’s so heartwarming to be working with a team who cares deeply about our core values and shares our passion to spotlight these filmmakers and their brilliant films.”
OUR FESTIVAL EXPERIENCE
We aim to be inclusive and accessible with our festival, which is why we will have gender neutral bathrooms, a relaxed lounge area for attendees and frequent breaks between all screenings and events. Ensuring no events or screenings overlap also means you don’t have to miss out on anything if you don’t want to and helps the feeling of overwhelm and burnout that can happen to so many of us when attending festivals. We want the experience of attending Women X to be exciting of course, but also not so hectic that you are exhausted after half a day! One of our main focuses is, and will always be, creating and sustaining a safe space for all, where you can feel comfortable. There is also wheelchair access throughout the venue and we’ll be able to accommodate to those who would benefit from captions in our screenings.
There will always be team members around to help you out or answer any questions you may have during the festival - even if you just want a little chat with a friendly face. We want this to be a stress free experience for all of our festival goers, so that you can focus on what you want to do - watching amazing short films by women and non binary creatives, checking out our panels, getting stuck into the workshops, or connecting and chatting with fellow film fans and creatives.
WHAT WILL BE ON?
Some events are still being finalised, but we will be bringing back the much loved Work Well Feel Well panel (Work Well Feel Well 2? Work Weller Feel Weller? Don’t worry, we won’t really name it any of these…), as well as our ‘In Conversation’ talks with members of the industry. Plus, for fans of Caris and Neha’s wonderful rapport on Not Having it All, we will be hosting a couple of exclusive live podcast episodes - you can finally put faces to those oh so familiar voices! You can view the full selection of films here and start marking down your most anticipated watches before our full schedule drops!
Tickets are now available for both the venue and our digital platform which you can grab here and you can view further information on the venue’s website here.
If you have any questions about the venue or the festival, feel free to contact us by email we’ll be happy to help with travel and accommodation guidance and what to do in the local area. - info@riannepictures.com.
