Jamaica Film Academy Call For Entries

The Jamaica Film Academy has put out an international Call for Entries in the 2012 Jamaica Reggae Film Festival it organizes annually, to be held April 2012 in Kingston, Jamaica. In a preview event, the Jamaica Film Academy will host a one-night screening of the “Best of the Reggae Film Festival” feature, documentary, short and animated films in Reggae Month, February 2010.

In keeping with the format initiated at the event’s February 2008 beginning, the 2012 Reggae Film Festival will showcase films in which aspects of Jamaica’s Reggae music culture are displayed, documented and memorialized in feature, documentary and short films, animation and music videos.  The 2012 Festival will once again feature the Make A Film In 24 Hours competition sponsored by RBC Bank – Jamaica, that in 2011 saw 15 film crews competing to shoot a 5-minute film on a selected theme in just 24 hours for cash prizes and awards.

In keeping with the Jamaica Film Academy objective to increase and improve the output of Jamaican film making, the annual Make A Film In 24 Hours competition has inspired and produced new Jamaican film making talent, while the Festival has discovered a surprising wealth of Jamaican talent in digital animation. The acknowledged expertise and innovation of Jamaican music video makers exposing the talents of Jamaica’s powerful musical artists, provides another area highlighted by the Reggae Film Festival.

In a new outgrowth of the event’s programme, in  2012 the Reggae Film Festival will in 2011 introduce an International Programme of films outside the reggae genre, so as to enable the programme to include entries already received from Africa, the USA and the Middle East including an entry from Iran.

In five years the Reggae Film Festival has showcased more than 200 films highlighting reggae culture made by Jamaicans, as well as global reggae researchers and fans from the Caribbean, UK, USA, Canada, Europe, Japan, and Africa. The focus of many documentaries on the history of Jamaican music and music makers, has given the Jamaica Film Academy an archive of historical material on the genre genre that preserves on film the oral memories of a culture that that emerged from the Rastafari movement and spread to and been honored by the world.

Annual Awards are presented in several categories and and the international interest in the unique music and culture of Jamaica has given prize-winning films further international awards and distribution. Further information and Entry Forms can be found on the JFA website: www.jamaicafilm academy.org.