You might have noticed that Sierra Leone has been cropping up in the news again lately. The verdict on the trial of former Liberian president Charles Taylor by the Special Court for Sierra Leone has been dominating the headlines worldwide.

photo from The Guardian

The day after this trial, a much less publicised event was the country's 51st Independence Day celebrations. Although the world's press and leaders were fixated on the Taylor verdict, I dare say Sierra Leoneans themselves were more preoccupied with the plans for the parties at the weekend! These costly, internationally orchestrated trials have little direct impact on people's lives, unlike the community based reconciliation programmes such as Fambul Tok. Sierra Leone, unlike global journalists, has her eyes not so aimed on the past as towards the future, specificially the general election taking part later this year, a crucial next step for Salone's progress.

The BBC World Service programme World Have Your Say has been reporting from Freetown recently. This short film is an insightful and balanced piece on some of the discussions surrounding the responsibility of Western journalists reporting on Sierra Leone and the developing world in general. Perhaps this is too little too late, there has been so much discussion lately on such topics, but when are institutions like the BBC really going to commit to a change of approach? I'd like to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

A few more pieces of news....

A bit of news from WeOwnTV - Arthur Pratt's They Resisted (the film he is making at the start of Shooting Freetown) managed to pick up a gong at the Sierra Leone International Film Festival in March - Best Short Film! A big congratulations to all the team in Freetown, you'll be able to see an exclusive snippet of the film up on this blog very soon...

I'd like to send out a slightly belated very happy birthday to Mr Banker White, founder and Director of WeOwnTV, which is continuing to do great work in getting young people in Freetown engaged in film-making, getting Salone stories out there to the world.

For his birthday wish, Banker has decided that instead of gifts he would like people to contribute towards helping Michaella Sallu and the rest of the ladies at WeOwnTV's Women's Producing Initiative. By donating an amount, however small, you can help the WeOwnTV ladies to get their own dedicated (and pink!) camera to raise awareness of women's issues in Freetown and beyond. I really urge to you help them reach this target, of course I'll report back on how they get on, but here's a message from the girls themselves....

Click here to help!

Paps, like many Sierra Leoneans, is keen to make sure that the country stays united and peaceful in the build up to the general election later this year. This is why Street Talent Productions is arranging a series of events in his local area (Spur Road, Freetown) for community cohesian and youth engagement. I hope it all goes well and congratualtion to the Street Talent Boy for an excellent initative!

I also recently heard that Lady FSK had her album launch in Freetown, supported by the Visual Arts Studio, which managed to pull in a crowd of over 1000 people! She's surely destined for great things. I'll put up some photos when I get them.

If you follow me on Facebook or Twitter, you'll probably already know that this is a big week for Shooting Freetown. I'm currently writing from London, where I'm being graciously hosted by my friend Martin (Who you might recall appears in Shooting Freetown calling Paps with some news!). Tomorrow evening is the One World Media Awards (fingers crossed!) then I'm off to Germany the next day for the Gottingen IEFF, when Shooting Freetown is competing in the Student Competition. I'll also be presenting a paper - Shooting Freetown: Shared anthropology & collaborative media in urban Sierra Leone - at the Gottingen Symposium, so I'll let you know how it all goes!

Aaaaaaaaaaand finally, for those in Manchester: the Open Media Society at the University of Manchester Student Union will be hosting their final screening of the year featuring a selection of films by Granada Centre students. Shooting Freetown will be shown alongside Leaving London Behind by Tom Turner and The Caravan of Solace by Carolina Corral. More info here.

Thanks for reading - call back soon!

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Shooting Freetown has made the selection for Reykjavik Shorts & Docs Festival 2012 which will be taking place at the Bío Paradís cinema in Iceland's capital city, 6th-9th May.

Shooting Freetown will be screened on the final night of the festival, Wednesday 9th May on Screen B at Bío Paradís between 8-10pm. It has been entered into the Best Newcomer Documentary competition, so fingers crossed!

It's a real shame I can't make it along to this, sadly it clashes with both the One World Media Awards and the Gottingen IEF Festival, but my good friend Mr Ben Cheetham will be attending to show his film Saliendo Adelante (Moving Forward), so I'm sure I'll hear all about it!

You can find the programme here.

and the schedule here.

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AfrikPlay – Filmes à Conversa is a new project presenting films focused on contemporary Africa, organized by Network Centre for Anthropology Research and African Studies Centre at ISCTE - Lisbon University Institute in Portugal's capital. It aims to provide an open space for debate and reflection around films presenting an innovative look on Africa.

"The growth of cinematographic productions about Africa has highlighted a number of films that set themselves apart from classical documentary concepts, either in their subjects of interest and chosen aesthetic language, approaching other artistic fields and merging reality with fiction. Some questions arouse our interest: what is the relationship between ‘yesterday’s images and the ones these new generations choose to see in Africa? How these fresh revelations defy our understanding of such a vast and complex continent?"

Shooting Freetown will be screened on the session 30th May alongside another documentary centred on creativity in Africa, Stocktown X South Africa by Teddy Goitom.

The screening will be followed by a discussion by guest speaker, anthropologist Lorenzo Bordonaro (CRIA – ISCTE-IUL).

The first of the screening sessions features the incredible Fambul Tok by Sara Terry, which looks at community reconciliation following the war in Sierra Leone. It's a really powerful film and I'm sure it will inspire some interesting discussions.

All the sessions are free and open to the public, you can find more on the Facebook Page. Good luck to Pedro and everyone else in Lisbon, I look forward to hearing about it!

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This weekend saw the very first Manchester Film Festival at the Zion Arts Centre, an event organised by Manchester students to celebrate short and student films from the city and further afield. I'm extremely happy to announce that Shooting Freetown received its first ever award, taking home the trophy for Best Film in the Student Short Documentary category.

This is an award that means an awful lot, not only for it coming from my home city but also considering the strength of the competition I was up against in the category.

This proved to be the perfect ending to a great weekend, where we saw a variety of inspirational films and heard seasoned professionals from within the film industry impart some of their knowledge and advice!

Thanks to Andrew Oldbury and everyone involved in organising and running the festival, it was a great success and I'm certain it's the first of many more to come.

See the full gallery on Posterous

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After a "home screening" in Freetown this weekend, Shooting Freetown will have yet another in Manchester later this month at the inaugural Manchester Film Festival. This new festival, focussing on shorts and student films, will be held 13th-15th April 2012 at the Zion Arts Centre. The festival features a range of events: workshops, masterclasses, Q&As and screenings of BAFTA nominated films as well as work from the wealth of student talent from Greater Manchester.

Shooting Freetown will be shown as part of the Student Short Documentary category on Sunday 15th April between 3 and 5pm. There are a number of other Granada Centre documentaries on offer, including the first festival screening of the fantastic Leaving London Behind by my fellow MAVA Tom Turner. The awards presentation will follow until 6:30.

The Opening Gala on Friday April 13th will feature a film retrospective by multi-BAFTA winner and fellow Granada Centre alumnus Gavin Searle. He'll be showing a selection from his impressive catalogue of work in documentary film and television, which includes the highly acclaimed BBC series Welcome To Lagos.

Gavin has been a great inspiration to me and had very complimentary and encouraging words to say about Shooting Freetown at my graduation screening, so I'm very much looking forward to this as well as all the other things in store over the weekend.

I hope to see lots of Manchester people there supporting this fantastic new cultural event. The (incredibly good value) tickets can be purchased here - get them soon to avoid disappointment!

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I am extremely pleased to announce that Shooting Freetown has been selected to be screened at the very first Sierra Leone International Film Festival, which takes place in a variety of locations across Freetown from March 29th to April 3rd 2012.

Shooting Freetown will be screened on Friday 30th March at 4pm in the Ministry of Tourism.

This is a really exciting development for creativity in the city and I hope it continues as a platform for local talent within Sierra Leone. Along with the first Opin Yu Yi Festival last month it seems that Freetown is really starting to develop a healthy festival calendar, lets hope it keeps on growing!

It also gives me great pleasure to have the film screened at a festival co-organised by my friend Arthur and the rest of the WeOwnTV team. The festival also features screenings of films made by KP and Janneh at The Visual Arts Studio - Deadly Misfortune and Dark Side of Life.

The full programme can be found below:

Good luck to everyone in Freetown involved in the festival, I'm sure it'll be a tremendous success and I hope I can be there in person next year!

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Shooting Freetown has been selected for screening at Contro-Sguardi 2012: an international anthropological multi-media festival held 22nd-24th June in Perugia, Italy.

This year the festival aims to explore "A Culture of Work" through documentaries, photographic exhibitions and video art. Shooting Freetown will be screened in the main Video Section of the festival alongside 26 others.

I'm glad to see Fedor Ikelaar's documentary What Keeps Them Going on the list, a highlight from Antropofest 2012, as well as a number of other films by Granada Centre alumni. I hope to make it along to this one in person, we'll see a little closer to the time, although Italy in June is rather tempting!

The venue for the festival is C.E.R.P., Rocca Paolina Exhibition Centre. See the full selection here.

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You might recall that Shooting Freetown recently made One World Media's shortlist for their Student Award.

Well I'm proud to announce that the film has been nominated by a jury panel of media professionals as one of the three finalists!

I will be attending the awards ceremony which will be hosted by Jon Snow, taking place at on Tuesday 8^th May at Kings Place, London.

This is a really exciting moment for me, this recognition is beyond what I could have expected when I was out there in Freetown last summer making the film. I'm so pleased the stories of Arthur, KP and Paps will reach a wider audience and I hope it contributes to a different kind of understanding of life in Sierra Leone.

The full list of nominees can be found here.

Wish me luck!

If you want to find out a bit more about One World Media and the work they do, I'll hand you over to Mr. Snow...

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After a memorable screening in Prague in January (and mention on Czech national news!), Antropofest has selected Shooting Freetown for its touring Echoes of Antropofest 2012 screenings, in association with Antropoweb. The first confirmed screening will take place in Pilsen on 20th and 21st March.

It will take place in the University of West Bohemia, Faculty of Arts, room 319. Entry is free.

The other films selected are fellow Granada Centre productions Saliendo Adelante and Memories for Sale as well as feature doc Firekeepers.

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A teaser for a very special event coming to Freetown very soon... more info to follow

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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!

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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.

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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.

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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).

See the full gallery on Posterous

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

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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!

See the full gallery on Posterous

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! 

See the full gallery on Posterous

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!

See the full gallery on Posterous

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)!

See the full gallery on Posterous

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

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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!

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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...

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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!

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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!

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