A teaser for a very special event coming to Freetown very soon... more info to follow
Visual Anthropology in Sierra Leone
A teaser for a very special event coming to Freetown very soon... more info to follow
I'm very excited to announce that Shooting Freetown has made the shortlist for the Student Award in the One World Media Awards 2012!
The One World Media Awards is one of the foremost Awards events in the UK. It rewards the most outstanding media coverage of the developing world, and recognises the unique role of journalists and filmmakers in bridging the divide between different societies and raising awareness of vital development issues.
Click here to see the other entries that will move on to the second round of judging, which will take place in March. Three nominations for each category will be announced in mid-March.
The awards ceremony will be held on Tuesday 8th May at Kings Place in London.
To get an understanding of issues One World Media is trying to tackle, take a look at this short clip by The Institute of Development Studies (IDS), featuring Jon Snow (Channel 4 News and Patron of One World Media)
I've got my fingers crossed for this one, come back in March to find out if I make it through to the official nominations and get to shake hands with Jon Snow in May!
Shooting Freetown has been selected for the Student Films section of the Days of Ethnographic Film festival in Ljubljana, Slovenia.
It will be screened at 8pm, Tuesday March 13th 2012 at the Slovene Ethnographic Museum.
Also showing on the programme will be two other Granada Centre films - Saliendo Adelante (Moving Forward) by Ben Cheetham and Tender Kisses are Hard to Find by Ines Ponte. Congratulations!
The full programme can be found here.
Here's a gem of a video put together by Anni Lyngskaer and Trine Berg.
Taking the sounds of everyday life in Sierra Leone and mixing them into a music track, we see women of all ages (From 0-75) dancing to a Salone riddim! Warning: it's infectious, I bet you watch it more than once!
Lyngskaer and Berg are also involved in a participatory video programme in Kono (In the east of Sierra Leone) called This Is My Story. They worked with a group of female tailors who were trained to produce a series of short documentaries on issues that mattered to them.
Great work ladies, the more self-stories coming out of Sierra Leone the better, especially from the women of the country.
This is just a quick post to highlight some of the great work being done by Idriss Kpange and team at Concept Multimedia in Freetown.
I spent a fair bit of time last summer hanging out and shooting at the Concept Studio at King Tom Bridge. This is where Concept produced a video for Paps' song Freetown Girls (I'll be doing a more detailed post on this soon).
Here's the latest video from Concept for the artist Ma B, who along with Paps is a member of the Def Unit crew. Keep your eyes peeled for Paps' appearance in the video!
The latest video by Sierra Leone's hottest artist, Ma B. The song speaks about forgetting life's problems, "dusting yourself" and moving on with life.
Video was shot on location in Murray Town, Freetown (Ma B's "hood") and involved people from the community.
Mr Kpange, alongside his partner Sabrina Mahtani of Advocaid, is also behind Opin Yu Yi (Krio for Open Your Eyes), Sierra Leone's first human rights film festival.
It will be taking place later this month in a selection of venues across the city, from the British Council to the Kroo Bay community field. They will be showing a selection of fantastic documentaries highlighting human rights issues, including two recent US co-productions: War Don Don and Fambul Tok, as well as Lost Freetown which Kpange himself was involved in.
I'd really like to commend them on their excellent work and I wish I could be there to support the festival in person - maybe next year!
UPDATE: Full programme announced
At the end of last month I had the pleasure to attend the 3rd annual Antropofest, a film festival specialising in documentaries of anthropological interest, particular those made by students. It is a small, independently organised festival and it took place over the 27-28th January in Prague, capital city of the Czech Republic.
This was the first festival screening of Shooting Freetown and thus the first chance for me to attended a festival in person. The weather was rather nippy but Prague was looking lovely in the winter sun!
My host for the weekend, Adam (Also one of the festival organisors) lived in a flat in the centre of the picturesque Old Town area of the city. This made exploring the historic streets, sampling the splendid cafes and hopping between the beer houses all the easier!
The venue for the festival was Dobeska, a wonderful community theatre a short tram ride from the city centre. The media attention the organisors managed to attract for such a small festival was impressive. Adam had been making plenty of appearances on radio and local television to publicise the event. On the first day of the festival even the Czech national TV news turned up and I was asked to talk about my film on camera (See earlier post), which was an unexpected bonus!
Shooting Freetown was screened on the Saturday evening to a full house of about 150 people and was followed by a Q&A with the audience. The film seemed to be well received, people were curious about what the people in the film were up to now and the effect of the copyright law on their lives. Then, as a very nice touch, I was presented with a personalised bottle of czech cider (friends of the organisers have their own press)!
The whole experience at Antropofest was fantastic. The festival provides a perfect platform for those new to the film festival experience, a friendly, intimate family feel with an attentive audience. Despite humble resources, Adam, Stepanka and the other organisors managed to pull off a professional sheen to the event without it ever seeming overly formal. Not to mention a great party on the Saturday night!
Film highlights of the festival included What Keeps Them Going by Fedor Ikelaar, a film exploring the motivations and experiences of long distance truckers and Tender Kisses Are Hard To Find by fellow Granada Centre student Ines Ponte, which proved a definite hit with the Saturday crowd!
This screening of Shooting Freetown was also the first to be dedicated to the memory of Adama Kpana. Adama was the wife of Alfred Kpana (KP) and mother of FS. She appears briefly in Shooting Freetown speaking proudly about her daughter. Tragically she passed away early in January due to birthing complications. Sadly this remains a major issue for lots of women in Sierra Leone and I hope to speak about this more on the blog as well as making some connections with people working to fight this problem in the country.
Thanks for reading, more of this after the next festival!
.Another thank you to Antropofest and Tomas Zelezny for some of the above pictures
Shooting Freetown has been chosen as a finalist for the fifth annual Africa World Documentary Film Festival.
The festival is sponsored by the E. Desmond Lee Professorship in African/African American Studies, Center for International Studies, University of Missouri-St. Louis. The AWDFF has as its objective the promotion of knowledge and culture of the people of Africa, in a Pan-African context.
It is held in multiple global locations throughout the first half of 2012.
UPDATE: Shooting Freetown has been confirmed at the following locations
University of the West Indies
E.B.C.C.I. Cinemateque
Cave Hill, Barbados
University of Kansas
Spencer Museum of Art
Lawrence, KS, USA
Obafemi Awolowo University
Ile-Ife, Nigeria
May 1-6
I'm really glad to add screenings in North America, the Caribbean and Africa to Shooting Freetown's list!
