Film Festival relaunches 24-hour competition

The Jamaica Film Academy will again have a Make a Film in 24 Hours competition at this year's Reggae Film Festival.

RBTT Bank Jamaica Limited and its parent company, Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) will lend their corporate support to the special programme this year.

This is the second staging of the competition in which the producers of the Reggae Film Festival invite Jamaica-based film makers, professionals or amateurs, to use film, video or cellphone cameras to make a five-minute film in 24 hours. The competition will see teams and individuals commencing their film on Monday, May 23 and handing in the finished film on Tuesday morning, May 24.

Entries will be shown nightly during the Reggae Film Festival.

A prize of $50,000 will be awarded by RBC/RBTT to the competition winner, and prizes of Jamaican vacations and film school scholarships are among the incentives to enter the competition.

emerging artists

This key sponsorship supports the objectives of the RBC Emerging Artist programme in which the company seeks to inspire development of the arts, particularly for emerging artists in the Caribbean and Canada.

RBC/RBTT already sponsors the Trinidad & Tobago Film Festival and the Toronto International Film Festival, so the bank considered the Reggae Film Festival a "perfect fit" in terms of the potential benefits to the bank's business, corporate brand visibility and employee engagement plans.

To ensure that no pre-filming takes place before the competition begins, entrants are informed one hour before the competition starts of a theme and/or element that must be incorporated in their film. Films must be five minutes long, submitted in mini-DV, DVD or DATA-mpeg and contain no explicit sexual, violent or illegal images.

Ten films will be selected for final awards using a judging criteria of 25 per cent for story, 40 per cent for directing, editing and cinematography, 20 per cent for production values and 15 per cent for acting/presenter.

Films will be shown at the Reggae Film Festival on each night's programme and become part of the travelling showcase 'The Best of the Reggae Film Festival' to be presented in Jamaica and internationally.

For more info go to: reggaefilmfestival@gmail.com