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
