Bringing Jamaican Videography to The Fore

Gone are the days where music videos in Jamaica were seen as irrelevant and rarer than a hurricane in Canada. Today, the music video industry in Jamaica has seen an increase in the need for talent, both in front and behind the camera. Twenty-five year old Kimala Bennett is one such fixture within this influx of visual medium.

She represents a new generation of young directors, in an era where Jamaican filmmakers are equipping themselves with proper education, gaining experience and exposure. With Jamaica’s growing obsession with music videos, artistes such as Baby Cham, Sean Paul, Junior Gong and Shaggy, are leading the revolution by hiring young local talents such as Kimala Bennett, to produce high quality videos for their songs.

“I get a little irritated when I hear people comment on the quality of Jamaican videos. Don’t get me wrong, there are some videos on TV that are really bad, but there are some videos that are good compared to the budgets that these people are working with. The budget that we are getting to shoot a video is what Usher has as his wardrobe on a film set.”

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Congratulations to Buzzz Magazine’s senior photographer, Roy Sweetland, who has made us proud. Talent proves to come in all art forms, and Roy Sweetland attests to this.

He has gained twenty-eight awards in all categories of the National Visual Arts Competition 2006, held recently at the Shortwood Teacher’s College.

The awards range from gold, silver, bronze and merit. His photographs are nothing but of high quality, eminence and class.

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Who has ever heard something as absurd as sun shining in the night? Well, the writer, cast and crew and more importantly, the audience, didn’t think about absurdity when watching Ellis Production’s One Night of Sunshine, as this comedic drama played to an almost packed theatre. The staging even had fake light shining out into the night, in the advent of preserving the title of the drama.

The production however was anything but brilliant. From the moment the lights went up, it was a believable scenario that unfolded before our eyes. The story line is such that it could have been set in any middle class setting throughout Jamaica, as the situation is not far fetched since it happens behind closed doors daily in our society.

We were first introduced to two sisters: ‘Sunshine’, the vivacious, spirited go-getter (played by Deon Silvera) who is just out of a bad marriage and wants to get a head start in the music industry as a singer; and her older sister Petula or ‘Pet’ (Rosie Murray), the devoted wife and home maker who had sacrificed her childhood to raise her sister when she assumed the role of mother at age fifteen. The play opened when the two comes in tired but happy, from a Friday ‘girls’ night out’ and discuss the things women who are closer to each other talk about in private. When Pet’s husband Al (Tesfa Edwards) comes home from ‘work’ minutes later, we realize that the marriage is on shaky grounds despite Pet’s efforts to be a good woman.

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Every summer for the past four years culminates of a mass migration to the newly partying capital of Negril, which hosts the pulsating ATI weekend.

Absolute Temptation Isle took place over the Emancipation weekend, July 28th to August 1st. Being dubbed the original ATI weekend, I can assure you that Absolute Entertainment did its best to keep their name and reputation up to standard. “We have put together an exceptionally strong line up of events that were never before on the ATI line-up”, Absolute promoters outlined.

The weekend started off with ‘First Fridays’ which drew a considerable crowd and I guess being the first night, it had a decent vibes - but for me, the event that stole the full exuberance of the weekend was the infamous ‘wildsides’. Let me tell you, bodies were covered in foam, while limbs locked tightly together, and moved rhythmically to the gyratory and bass boomed songs that the selectors never fail to deliver.

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