Film Festival a success for making key connections

Jennifer Smith-Bent, Co-Founder & Co-Director of the Barbados Independent Film Festival is pleased with how the programme came together for the Festival.

The Barbados Advocate spoke to Smith-Bent after the festival which took place from January 9-14, 2018, she indicated, “I was pleased with how our programme came together. We had excellent local filmmakers, regional and international film makers. I was also pleased with our workshops; one of the important aspects of the film festival is also the educational aspect for our budding filmmakers, and there were great discussions and learning experiences. I would have
expected every aspiring film maker to make themselves available for the workshops to expand on their skill set.

“We had great audience participation because we had a diverse selection of films. This year we had quite a few sold out events and a lot of that is a reflection of being able to promote the festival a bit better and it is in its second year, so it is now growing and we will keep pushing that awareness so that it becomes a must on the calendar. I think every year we fine tune the festival and we get more volunteers on board. We believe that we will be able to grow the festival. This year we had a collaboration grant funded by the Barbados Tourist Product Authority and we now have two wonderful films about Barbados. Film is important to also tell those Barbadian stories.”

Smith–Bent revealed, “There are international filmmakers who have showed interest in coming back to Barbados to film, which is great for the country. There was a great exchange between local filmmakers and international. We also had an agent here from the UK who represents the top talent in Independent Film Makers coming out of Europe and he really enjoyed meeting the filmmakers here and he hopes that he can work with them to get them to the next level, those are the connections that will benefit local film makers .

“Many countries have tax incentives in America to bring production to their location to do film and the benefit is that they rely on local employment – that is not quite how it is structured here at the moment. There is a tax incentive for Barbadians in the cultural industries which is a wonderful first step, but as far as the filmmaking community, they need to identify what the local audiences want to see or to create film that can be distributed internationally. In 2019, we may want to do more weekend programming, maybe expand over two weekends so that more persons can see the films. We do like the mix of films we had but we are still closing up this film festival, then we will make plans for 2019.” (NB)