Film-makers make much with little

The Jamaica Film Academy, in a summary of its five-year existence, highlights the enormous body of work being done by independent Jamaican film makers who escape official notice because they work without financial input or big-budget promotion.

Since its start in 2008, the Reggae Film Festival has showcased the work of several of these films in the CINE JAMAICA category of shorts, features and animation.

As such, the Jamaica Film Academy has seen the emergence of several new Jamaican film makers, encouraged by the chance to have their work shown in Jamaica and around the world in the several international venues that have showcased the festival's best films.

The Reggae Film Festival's Make A Film In 24 Hours competition started in 2010 to develop the local industry by enticing film makers to win a cash prize for a 5-minute film made in just one day. Some winners included Craig 'Amaziyah the Great' Kirkland, Vanessa Phillips and Christopher Byfield, whose half-hour feature Red, Amber, Green made one year later has won three international film awards.

Other new film makers discovered and showcased by this programme include Basil Jones Jr, Mezan Ayoka, Kevin Chin, Michael McCallum and members of the BliP Collective.

Film makers are moving out of the confines of five minutes and into half-hour short films. In 2011 Wayne Benjamin of Fabrikated Projex screened The Croft, the first half-hour of a hoped-for Jamaican horror TV series. In 2012 he entered 6 AM, a Jamaican take on the Faustian story of a choice between good and evil.

Talented creators

Both this and Red, Amber, Green were included in the Best of the Reggae Film Festival programmes that have been screened outside Jamaica in the past three years at the Rototom Reggae Sunsplash festival in Bencassim, Spain, and at venues in Birmingham and Kent, in the United Kingdom (plans for a London presentation of three days of films during the Olympics fell through).

The field of animation has produced some extremely talented creators. Reinardo 'Mental' Chung, whose Bad Influence first brought him to public attention in 2011, and led to his now-famous Dutty Bwoy five-minute dancehall comedies, a YouTube sensation. He has good company with Coretta Singer, whose Kina Sky was a finalist in a 2010 Nickeloden TV competition; Alison Latchman of Cabbie Chronicles and US-based Samuel Stewart of Jerk Chicken, all of whom have shown their work at the Reggae Film Festival.

There is much interest in animation among young Jamaican film makers these days, with new works in production by Stephen 'BigBomb' Williamson and scriptwriter/director Kevin Jackson, leader of the Jamaican Film Industry Facebook page where these young film makers gather to display and discuss their work.

Not deterred by the lack of big budgets, several pioneering young film makers have ventured into feature films.

Using simple cameras, these film makers are editing their work on their personal computers to offer watchable urban dramas with gritty stories.

Among these are Kurt Fuller whose 2010 feature Concrete Jungle - Kingston 12 about crime in the ghetto was so popular, it has been pirated all over the Caribbean diaspora communities of the United States, the United Kingdom and the Caribbean. In 2012, Karrett Barclay entered two feature films in the Reggae Film Festvial; Mistake, a ghetto crime drama and Caught With My Own Eyes, a love story.

Knowing how small the returns are, especially after piracy, it is commendable that these films have been made.

These films and film makers show that there is a thriving Jamaican industry, whose workers and products are not counted by the official film agency that assists and promotes films made in the traditional way.

Lack of funding sources has not deterred these film makers from practising their art and they have produced a body of work that will continue to grow as long as the creative spirit beats in the heart of all Jamaican would-be film makers.