The
UK Hip-Hop group N-Dubz will headline the British Urban Film Festival’s
broadcast coverage on Community Channel in April. The four-time MOBO winners,
who got together as teenagers, are the subject of a documentary, which followed
the band when they first started out in their career over a decade ago.
‘Before
they were Dubz’, directed by film journalist Jessie Grace Mellor, is the
centrepiece of the “BUFF Presents…”strand premiering on Community Channel on
Saturd...
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...
In a little over 4 months from now, this year’s British Urban Film Festival line-up will be decided. Another year consuming, digesting and deliberating on hours of output, private screenings and submissions will come to a head and the UK’s buffest films (otherwise known as the sweet 16) will be offered to the public for due consideration at BUFF 2012, the 7th such occasion, with each festival seemingly surpassing itself in profile and prestige year on year. And so it goes without saying th...
The first month of Olympic year in London has not failed to disappoint in terms of celebrating the best of British. At the time of publication of this blog came news that the network television premiere of ‘Sus’ – co-produced by and starring Clint Dyer attracted 600,000 viewers on BBC 1, dominating all TV viewing at the time of broadcast (which at 11.15pm is quite impressive). Previous BUFF blogs and the festival in general have championed the likes of films like ‘Sus’ and will conti...
In keeping with the tradition of listening to a rather powerful woman just before you’re about to embark on what’s really important – or maybe you’ve already squashed Christmas lunch by the time your attention is perhaps swayed by a certain Elizabeth Windsor – its’ time we took note of another Christmas message – the one being brought to you by another powerful woman (Sheila Nortley) who is fast becoming a regular fixture on the urban independent film circuit. And before we hear ...
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...
Mr Geoff Small, Mr Stephen Lloyd Jackson, Mr Yves Brodsky, Ms Sonja Phillips, Ms Jane Sanchez-Gull, Mr Aml Ameen, Mr Cassius Matthias, Mr Lyndon Ives, Mr Harold Chapman, Ms Ida Akesson, Ms Beth Parkes, Mr Richard Bond, Mr Ben Miller, and Mr Paris Leonti.
Having saluted our 16 shortlisted filmmakers BUFF would like to thank all of those other talented filmmakers who’ve submitted their entries for festival consideration – it has been a privilege to watch them all. We would also like t...
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...
From a spunky heroine to ‘the’ flashback, from ‘Babymother’ to ‘Sus’, Anjela Lauren Smith has graced British cinema for the best part of 2 decades and continues to adorn the big screen and the small screen. Behind the scenes, her versatility and passion for the industry shows no sign of abating either. The latest string to her bow was her recent appointment to the board of members at Buff Enterprises. We’re delighted that Anjela has accepted this position at a time where British ...
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...
No matter how many times BUFF ventures down to Soho to get entertained, the result is always the same. And no matter how you dress it up, January is almost invariably a month-long period of attrition, angst and apathy. So it seemed perfectly reasonable to expect a good time to be had when yours truly was invited down to Soho on a cold and wet Friday evening for a preview screening of ‘David is Dying’ – the debut feature-length drama penned, and produced by Stephen Lloyd Jackson and Andy ...
Over the past 12 months, BUFF has invited filmmakers and journalists to offer their thoughts and experiences of the industry. Now its’ my turn. In what has been a year of exciting developments, BUFF was the first media outlet to announce the winners of the Film London Best of Boroughs awards – one of whom submitted their entry into the British Urban Film Festival only weeks before. The awards just happened to take place in the same week it was announced that the UK Film Council was to be...
This month's edition is guest-written by Jessie Grace Mellor, previously the resident film reviewer for The Daily Mirror and now director of 'N-Dubz - The Way We Were', one of this year's BUFF UK premieres...
During this blog about my experiences with BUFF, I’m going to flit between a few different timelines. A time machine won’t be required but please bear with me. I’m gonna start in 2005.
I had just finished my short mockumentary ‘Billy Blaze’ and was eag...
This month's edition is guest-written by David Trumble, director of 'The Shift', one of this year's BUFF UK Shorts...
BLOG BEGINS: I have never guest-written for a blog before, so one thing you should know about me right off the bat: I ramble. Emmanuel very kindly asked me if I could write up my impressions of this year's British Urban Film Festival, and I was only too happy to. This is the first film festival my short film The Shift has been selected for, and I can't think of a better place ...
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...
The British Urban Film Festival 2010 4th, 5th, 6th September For immediate release Chairman's formal announcement The British Urban Film Festival returns. The annual 3-day event which is free to all ages kicks off on Saturday 4th September at Tottenham’s Bernie Grant Arts Centre – named after the black Labour politician who was MP for the area for over a decade. The stage play-turned-movie “Sus”, starring Clint Dyer, Rafe Spall & Ralph Brown, will be screened on the opening nig...
Who would be a film festival director ey? It was always going to be a chaotic period once the deadline for submissions closed on Sunday July 25 at midnight. It was even extended to 5pm the next day. Add to that filming with Lateef Lovejoy for the festival and the debut of ‘Buff on Tour’ in Cricklewood at 7.30pm the next day also - and the phrase ‘killing hours’ comes to mind, a phrase which embodies the amount of energy being exhausted – and shared in equal measure by this year's fes...
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...
Organisers of the British Urban Film Festival have confirmed that the hit stageplay-turned-box office movie Sus will be the opening feature film for its’ annual showpiece later this summer. It marks the second year in succession that actor Clint Dyer has featured at the event having starred in the Channel 4 documentary ‘Rappin at The Royal’ which showed at the 2009 British Urban Film Festival. At a time where films like Avatar cost the same as a small country’s GDP, SUS rebuffs (pardon...
