Shooting Freetown

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).

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Click here to download:

dust-yu-sef-and-opin-yu-yi-nzHAegiysefdqDgwleop.zip (9.78 MB)

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!

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Click here to download:

festival-report-antropofest-2012-etauEzfsBczrAAlmkFke.zip (3.2 MB)

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! 

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Click here to download:

festival-report-antropofest-2012-dHJAmmFgDobwlarCAuBC.zip (2.46 MB)

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!

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Click here to download:

festival-report-antropofest-2012-rinjtspooDwJkBvsgAdf.zip (2.02 MB)

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)!

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Click here to download:

festival-report-antropofest-2012-aIBAqaqwnwfxhghCBynj.zip (643 KB)

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

• 10th March

University of the West Indies

E.B.C.C.I. Cinemateque

Cave Hill, Barbados

• 26th April

University of Kansas

Spencer Museum of Art

Lawrence, KS, USA

• 6th May

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!

I just got back from Antropofest in Prague, which I'll say more about in another post, but in the mean time here's a feature on the 12 o'clock news from Saturday 28th January on CT24 (The equivalent of the BBC News Channel in Czech Republic, broadcast nationally).

It might be a good idea to have Google Translate handy on your browser!

Watch it here (the second video)

If your Czech is a little rusty, it talks about Antropofest and the selected films, including a certain Shooting Freetown and an interview with someone with a suspiciously good Czech accent...

I'd have to say that's the biggest exposure for the film yet and quite a coup for a small festival like Antropofest! Thanks to Adam and Stepanka for arranging that, more on Antropofest very shortly...

Shooting Freetown has received its first online review from Africa Is a Country, a terrific blog which dubs itself as -

The media blog that is not about famine, Bono, or Barack Obama. For that, go to Newsweek.

It is essential reading for anyone thirsting for alternative and insightful coverage of the African continent and has fast become a personal favourite.

The review was written by Boima Tucker aka Chief Boima, a Sierra Leonean-American musician and writer who was in Freetown at the time my film was being made. He focuses primarily on the piracy issue and gives a thought provoking critique of how he thinks I could have better addressed this in the film.

I will be responding to the issues raised in the review when Im back in the UK through the comments on the blog entry, so feel free to join in the discussion.

You can read the review here.

I have also made Shooting Freetown available to watch online for the readers of Africa Is a Country for the next two weeks, so take a look if you havent already!

Im currently in Prague screening Shooting Freetown at Antropofest, but Ill be back soon with a report on the festival.

Until then!

It's turning out to be a great month for festival news: Shooting Freetown will be screened at the Göttingen International Ethnographic Film Festival, Germany.

The festival takes place from May 9-13, 2012 in the Paulinerkirche (below) in the city of Göttingen, Lower Saxony.

The film will compete in the Student Competition on May 9th and was chosen from 155 films submitted this year. I'll be attending the festival in person to take part in discussions.

Very much looking forward to visiting Germany again!

My second festival announcement of the year: Shooting Freetown will be screened at the very first African Film Festival Australia, which will tour the country during 2012.

The film will be screened in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide in the African Shorts programme on the Saturday in each city, alongside short films from the USA, Kenya, South Africa and Namibia.

The African Film Festival Australia will screen for
the first time in Australia this year bringing a variety of films from
the African continent and diaspora to Australia. Australia has a
growing African population and as you can imagine interest in African
culture is always increasing. The Festival is screening in the various
capital cities throughout the year starting from April and ending in
October.

The festival is currently revamping its website and will be making a full announcement mid-February.

Call back to this blog post which I will update when more information becomes available.

It's really exciting to be part of this new festival, I hope it's a great success!