Reggae Film Festival to Feature Wide Array of Activities

A “Make a Film in 24 Hours” competition will be one of a number of special activities at the second annual Reggae Film Festival (RFF) scheduled for February 23 – 27, 2009 at Emancipation Park in Kingston.
In an interview with JIS News, one of the chief organisers, Ministry of Information, Culture, Youth and Sports (MICYS) consultant, Barbara Blake Hannah, explained that “we are going to run a “Make a Film in 24 Hours” competition and we are going to invite both amateurs and professionals to participate. They will begin at 6:00 one morning and at 6:00 the next morning they will hand in a completed film of any length, any subject and in fact people may use their cell phones to make the film”.
Another area that will come in for special attention is the often neglected script writing.
“We plan to have a one day script writing film seminar. We have had a lot of seminars on film making, different aspects such as camera and production but very few on script writing and so we are going to have one at RFF 2009”.
Additionally, Ms. Hannah told JIS News that there would also be an awards ceremony and that “these are some of the few innovations and there will be more as additional entities and sponsors come on board”.
In the meantime, she is calling for more sponsorship given the international appeal of the festival and the international interest that it has generated since the first staging in February 2008.
“I think what we really need is complete sponsorship. We have partial sponsorship and we are looking to complete the sponsorship roll out. We have had a lot of international interest in the RFF and in fact it’s appropriate because it’s from international film makers that we have gotten most of our films,” she emphasises.
Continuing on the topic of sponsorship, Ms. Hannah highlighted the fact a European company has been secured for promotion. “Propeller TV will broadcast our trailers and promotional videos online to 18 million viewers across Europe”.
Persons who want to register to have their films shown at the RFF should “go to the film festival website www.jamaicafilmacademy.org, which hosts the RFF and you can download an entry form right there, make a DVD copy of the film and send it to us,” Ms. Hannah said.
RFF 2009 is being organised by the Jamaica Film Academy (JFA), through the MICYS and under the direction of Ms. Hannah and British film archivist, Peter Gittins.