Celebrated filmmaker, Femi Odugbemi, has just returned from another successful international assignment serving as the Chairman of Jury of the just-concluded Uganda Film Festival (UFF) held in Kampala, Uganda.
Odugbemi, a three-time lead judge of the Africa Magic Viewers Choice Awards, was also jury’s chair of last year edition when he headlined the festival’s international guests along with Nollywood star actress Patience Ozokwo.
At that time, the organisers of the festival, the Uganda Communication Commission, through its Executive Director Mr Godfrey Mutabazi, wrote a glowing tribute stating that Odugbemi’s “professionalism and commitment displayed during the task, together with the quality of decisions made contributed highly to the resounding success of the UFF 2014.”
It was no surprise, therefore, that Odugbemi was invited once again to chair the jury along with distinguished international members, including a professor of Literature at Makerere University, Kampala, Dr Sister Dominic Dipio; an German film curator MsBarbel Mauch; President of the East Africa Film Network, Mr Leonce Ngabo of Burundi and pioneer Ugandan TV Producer, Faustin Misanvu.
The Uganda Film Festival, in its third outing, showcased films of Uganda filmmakers and other East African countries, including Kenya, Burundi, Tanzania and Rwanda. The festival also featured exhibitions, a film market, training workshops and master classes. The final day of the festival was capped with an elaborate gala evening of glamorous red-carpet and awards in various categories.
Speaking at the gala awards, Odugbemi revealed that the jury began work over three months ago with over 130 entries into the 2015 UFF. The pre-selection process for the competitive categories was electronically conducted over the course of 60 days and five nominees per category were identified and announced by the organisers in the first week of August.
The jury then reconvened in Kampala from August 24 to 27 to select the winners. While congratulating the winners, Odugbemi expressed delight at the remarkable progress in the talent and technical quality of the nominated works, especially in the areas of storytelling, casting, performance, visual aesthetics, cinematic values, sound and music.
While calling for more efforts in the areas of additional dialogue recording (ADR), sound design, music score and final mix, he noted that there has been an improved in the quality of sound, which was usually a weakness of some films in the past..
The celebrated winner of the festival was the feature film Joseph Ken’s House Arrest which carted prizes for Best Feature Film, Best Sound, Best Screenplay and Best Actress. Other winners of UFF 2015, included Boda Boda Thieves, which won the Best Cinematography and Best Editing prizes; Walk With Me by Peter Muhumuza and Johan Oetitinger which won Best Short Film; Matovu Francis’s Chimp-Boda which won Best Animation and “HALF A DOLLAR” by Oris Ssebowa which won the Best Documentary prize.
