With the exception of an alluring red carpet, its' safe to say that BUFF has pretty much rolled out everything else in its power to deliver this year's annual showcase of British urban filmmaking of which, at the time of writing has been 1 week removed.
A showcase is of course nothing without the undoubted stars of the show - the filmmakers. It has been a blast this year with 3 UK premieres ("Sparkle", "12" and "Melvin"), 2 venues packed out to the r...
The much maligned profile of Black British actresses has been well documented on this blog over the past 18 months and most recently in the London Evening Standard with the forthcoming feel-good flick ‘Fast Girls’ and the supposed significance of Leonora Crichlow playing the lead role in a British film. On such matters is primarily where Twitter comes into its own as a live news editor run by the public. It doesn’t take long before feedback is immediate and corrected (many thanks to @ECF...
At the time of publication, it was recently announced that ifeatures2, Britain’s low-budget, feature film-making initiative, has just reopened for submissions. Creative England, the BFI Film Fund and BBC Films are joining forces to support the development and production of three full-length features, all to be set within the English regions. Each film will be produced on a budget of £350,000 and the BBC is also pre-buying UK Free TV rights to the completed films. It’s open to writer, direct...
From Top Boy to Wuthering Heights, the much vaunted and much celebrated prominence of cultural diversity in British film and TV shows no signs of abating and continues to rouse and excite cinema buffs both here and abroad. In a month which has already seen Sket, Demons Never Die & Death in Paradise entertain the masses, there is much to take in – including yet more awards for David is Dying; introducing the newest member of the BUFF board, journalist and filmmaker Jessie Grace Mellor; an...
“Charles Thompson is a Godsend. I’m fortunate to have started out in media under the tutelage of Charles almost a decade ago now. I was there when Screen Nation was in its infancy and I’m privileged to still be a part of it all albeit as a supporter of this year’s event where another of my mentors (Menelik Shabazz) will be rightly honoured also. I have a lot of time for Charles who in turn has shown a lot of time for me and for so many people in the film industry who would’ve taken g...
Who would be a media mogul ey? The last few weeks and months has seen the likes of Simon Cowell and Rupert Murdoch become the story for the wrong reasons. For months, the press were told who was in and who was out in the game of musical chairs regarding this year’s X Factor judges. Eventually we said goodbye to Danni Minogue and Cheryl Cole and hello to Kelly Rowland and Tulisa Contostavlos (Peter Dickson, the voice of X-Factor will certainly have his hands full announcing her name in full e...
Online, on-air and in person, this is BUFF. And so said the voice of BUFF which greeted the masses of online followers with the May 31 announcement of this year’s opening feature. And though the dulcet tones of Ewan Allinson and DJ Elayne Smith will continue to form a cornerstone of the BUFF movement, things are going to be a little bit different round here. From September, the 2011 British Urban Film Festival will be coming at ya with a whole new look which means, finally, that the buffest fi...
For many people, British urban cinema came into its’ own with the premiere of ‘Adulthood’ on June the 20th 2009. 2 years on, the genre has now spawned its’ first spoof with the cheekily titled Anuvahood. It was at the Adulthood premiere when BUFF first caught up with messyrs Aml Ameen & Kamara Bacchus. It wasn’t your standard red carpet interview. Such is the beauty of the English language that a word can mean so many things to so many people – let’s just say the word BUFF wa...
Some people call it a newsletter, most delete it from their inbox, others try to emulate it, and for the rest of you – well, going online isn’t quite the same until you’ve received it... its’ the BUFF Blog!!!
Until recently, most BUFF blogs were written by the BUFF ghostwriter. In the 2 years since the advent of the UK’s 1st ever film festival monthly blog, a variety of voices from the world of film and TV have been invited to offer their own unique voice on the industry by whi...
This month’s blog is guest written by Janice Charles, newly appointed social media strategist for BUFF Enterprises.
Well first of all, I don’t want to be seen as a guest because I actually work for BUFF Enterprises. I was actually given permission to hijack Emmanuel’s email accounts and write whatever I liked which in my opinion would continue to get the word out regarding BUFF. Now we all know that Emmanuel could speak for England when it comes to BUFF so I actually offered to pu...
At the time of going to press, a woman in China has sued a cinema and the distributors of the movie ‘Aftershock’ for wasting her time with adverts. According to the Xinhua news agency, Chen Xiaomei claims the Polybona International Cinema and film distributors Huayi Brothers Media Corporation should have told her of the length of the pre-movie commercials. Chen, a lawyer, accused the Xian-based picturehouse and the distributors of violating her freedom of choice and wasting her time. The cla...
If it feels like the frequency of buff blogs are being stepped up, the signs are that the festival is getting nearer. This year’s event marks the 5th annual gathering of filmmakers, the media and the general public to the British Urban Film Festival, now widely accepted as the first stop for urban films. As the late Michael Jackson quotes in one of his songs ‘it don’t matter if you’re black or white’, the festival acts as a tool to highlight, to showcase and to champion the growth of...
This time 5 years ago, Noel Clarke was playing Billie Piper’s screen boyfriend in Doctor Who. Since then, our man Noel not only starred in ‘Kidulthood’ (recently screened again on BBC3), he went onto write and direct its’ sequel, ‘Adulthood’ – collecting a Bafta along the way. He has since starred in ‘Heartless’ and ‘Centurion’. He also starred in ‘Doghouse’ with Stephen Graham, Danny Dyer and Terry Stone, and has just released ‘4,3,2,1’ – considered by some to ...
Buff Enterprises has launched its’ biggest ever call for submissions for British Urban Film Festival 2010 – bringing together independent filmmakers from across the nation, to submit their own films. Buff Enterprises launched in July 2005 with the aim of providing a healthy alternative to the showcasing of urban independent cinema in the UK. Since then there has been a concerted effort by the UK film industry to address this imbalance in the cinema landscape both on and off screen. As a resu...
With the election imminent, it is widely assumed that out of the 650 odd MP’s who represent their various constituencies up and down the UK, half of them will have to find new employment after the electorate have had their say. There will be a fair few MP’s doing their utmost to hold on to their jobs, those who are not tainted by the expenses affair to name but 1 plague on all the MP’s houses (in some cases, literally). And whilst issues such as housing, immigration, jobs and the economy...
British urban film is a new genre and everyone’s excited by what’s happening in urban music. It’s been a great year and there’s that same sense of excitement in film – it’s our time. And whilst one is always looking for that opportunity to blow its’ own trumpet, those opening remarks were quoted by Mo Ali, the director of recently released Shank, the futuristic drama starring Adam Deacon (Adulthood), Ashley Thomas (aka Bashy) and Kaya Scodelario (Skins). Recent Buff blogcasts have ...
The phrase ‘joined at the hip’ springs to mind immediately when it comes to the argument that winners at the Golden Globes then go on to double up at the Baftas before claiming the hat-trick at the Oscars…suffice to say that only 1 person achieved the hat-trick on a what turned out to be yet another watershed Oscars…
70 years ago, Hattie McDaniel made history by becoming the 1st black actress to win an academy award for her role in ‘Gone With The Wind’ – 70 years on, an...
Film buffs will continue to be spoiled in 2010 as the awards season continues in full swing with the long awaited release of ‘Precious’ at the end of January. Produced by Tyler Perry and Oprah Winfrey, Precious (Based on the novel 'Push’ by Sapphire) is set in Harlem in 1987 and is the powerful and disturbing story of an obese teenage black girl whose life is a living hell. Pregnant for the second time by her father and bullied and abused both emotionally and physically by her mother, she ...
For immediate release:
After the success of last year’s event, organisers of the 2009 British Urban Film Festival (BUFF for short) are to once again offer free tickets to the public in what’s been dubbed ‘credit crunch cinema’, part of its’ strategy to capitalise on the growing interest in urban independent film and making it accessible to the public at large.
Launched last December when the credit crunch began to hit people financially, over 400 people took advantage of free tic...
