Art Bytes

FILM - YOUNG JAMAICAN FILMMAKER WINS PRESTIGIOUS AWARDS

 

Jamaican director Isabella Issa’s short film Yellow Girl and Me has been racking up several awards at the Black Film Festival of New Orleans, getting Best Director, Best Writer, Best Film and Best Actress. The film has also been selected for the Toronto Black Film Festival and the feature length screenplay made it to the second round (of two) of the Sundance Screenwriter’s Development Lab and is getting interests from other producers.

 

Inspired by Issa’s real life friend, Nicole Robertson, the film tells the story of abuse of her and her older sister-guardian, and Nicole’s own battle with losing her hearing. Yellow Girl and Me was developed as a thesis project to complete Issa’s Master of Fine Arts in Directing at the American Film Conservatory and was then selected for production. It has since premiered in Los Angeles and recently in Kingston. Issa is working on her second feature script, a coming-of-age drama about Jamaican schoolgirls.  

 

Art Bytes

Dr Rachel Moseley-Wood, head of the Department of Literatures in English at UWI, Mona recently launched her 254-page book, Show Us as We Are: Place, Nation and Identity in Jamaican Film.

Six students from the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts designed a mural to mark the starting line of the Sagicor Sigma Run in February.

Ivorhod Walters’ Before They Came will be part of the second staging of Due West, the National Gallery West’s annual exhibition that runs till April 11th. Walters, a St.

Ebony Patterson’s installation Invisible Presence: Bling Memories is at the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle as part of the In Plain Sight exhibition.

Two fashion designers of Jamaican descent are included on Vogue Magazine’s top 15 black designers to know about in 2020.

The Royal Albert Memorial Museum (RAMM) in Exeter has commissioned photographer Joy Gregory to develop and produce new work not currently featured in their collection for their 2020 year of Untold

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