Shooting Freetown

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!

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.

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.

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

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.

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!

(download)

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! 

(download)

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!

(download)

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)!

(download)

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...

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!

UPDATED (24/2):

Shooting Freetown will be screened at the very first African Film Festival Australia, which will tour the country during 2012.

Sydney and Melbourne are where the festival will begin in April and Shooting Freetown is one of only 9 films selected for these screenings!

The film will be screened in cities across Australia as part of the African Shorts programme.

Africa Shorts at African Film Festival Australia

Saturday the 7th April, 4.20pm

Dendy Circular Quay

Sydney

 

Saturday the 14th April, 12pm

Red Bennies

Melbourne

I noticed that Shooting Freetown is in good company on the Africa Shorts selection: of the five films being screened, four have connections to Sierra Leone.

There's the animation Money Tree by Hawanatu Bangura plus two films by Sierra Leonean-American film-maker Nikyatu Jusu including Black Swan Theory.

See Nikyatu's Vimeo to watch Say Grace Before Drowning and see more of her work.

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

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