The four-day Freetong Film Festival (December 15-18) organized at the Hotel Barmoi in Freetown ended on Sunday with three awards, best short film, best feature film, and best documentary film presented by the BAANA Media team.
The best short film award went to Adisa Baba Septuri, an award-winning director, producer, and philanthropist, who tells a story about the obsession with beauty among young people in Sierra Leone, especially women and girls aiming to gain popularity on social media such as Facebook, Instagram and attracting societal recognition. The movie, titled “iFine”, means I am beautiful in the Krio local dialect. It highlights health issues including skin cancer associated with skin bleaching.
The best feature film titled “Table Talk: Know someone?” highlighted the damages caused by domestic violence against women in Africa particularly West Africa. The film paints a picture of a society where women “have no say” and are silenced on these matters.
Finally, the best documentary film, interviews Sierra Leoneans from all walks of life, including the President, the Vice President, women, and girls to express their opinion and perception about the past, present, and future of the country. The documentary titled “Sierra Leone at 60” was done by Sade Beckley-Lines, a multimedia journalist with 10 years of experience in the UK and Sierra Leone. Her documentary suggests that there are far more things that unite Sierra Leoneans than things that divide us.
Moreover, BAANA Media LLC, the company that organized the film festival, held several workshops for Sierra Leone filmmakers on various skills including production, special effects, and editing. BAANA Media’s CEO, Dr J. Bankole Thompson told reporters in a press conference on the opening day that the festival is part of his company’s effort to promote the film industry in Sierra Leone through collaboration amongst stakeholders, including investors and filmmakers.
Sanusi Research & Consulting, one of the sponsors of the festival, used an innovative and efficient way to collect feedback from the audience. The audience voted for the best short film, best documentary film, and best feature film, using Fractal Grid (a visual learning system invented by Sierra Leonean Dr Rod King) ballot papers (see attached Fractal Grid photo). The Fractal Grid ballot papers were perforated so voters could easily remove the box they chose. In this case, voters had to choose one box among four boxes, very good, good, not so good, and not at all good, for each film that they watched.
This way of voting or conducting surveys is cheap and suitable for people in Sierra Leone where access to internet connection and other technical means of communication is limited and the English reading literacy rate is low so choices could be presented as photos or symbols. OTG/24/12/2022