Making Your First Feature: Kinyarwanda
by Website Update on October 25, 2011 in Uncategorized
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The team behind Sundance Film Festival World Cinema Audience Award Winner Kinyarwanda share the story behind their turbulent low-budget production and what lessons and advice aspiring filmmakers can apply to their own productions.
From the 2011 Filmmaker Conference
Alrick Brown, Director, KINYARWANDA
Alrick Brown has a M.F.A. from NYU Tisch, where he currently serves on the directing faculty. Alrick’s collective work has screened in over forty festivals and received numerous awards. In 2007 Alrick addressed the Motion Picture Association of America on C-SPAN. In 2009 he directed his first stage play. His first feature narrative film, “Kinyarwanda,” shot on location in Rwanda, won the World Cinema Audience Award at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival.
Darren Dean, Producer, KINYARWANDA
Darren Dean came to film late in life, writing, directing and producing the award- winning short, SLEEP OVER. He followed that up as Co-Writer and Producer of PRINCE OF BROADWAY, which has won 18 prestigious awards internationally to date. Dean, also a respected journalist, is currently in pre-production as writer/producer on the big screen adaptation of Will Eisner’s A CONTRACT WITH GOD.
Brittany Ballard
Brittany Ballard is the Manager of the FILM FORWARD Program, a joint initiative between Sundance Institute, President’s Committee of Arts & Humanities and the National Endowment of Arts. She is also serv¬ing her sixth year as Producer and Director of Programming for Urban-world Film Festival, presented by BET (NYC). Before forming her production company, little plow films, with partner Jamil Walker Smith, Brittany was Head of Acquisitions at Newmarket Films and Programmer at Santa Barbara International Film Festival. Brittany produced the indie feature MAKE A MOVIE LIKE SPIKE, currently traveling the festival circuit (including Santa Barbara and Edinburgh International Film Fests) and most recently won the New Visions Award at Cinequest Film Festival, and was featured as the Centerpiece Film at the Veterans For Peace National Convention. Brittany and Jamil co-wrote and will co-direct the screen adaptation of Ayelet Waldman’s acclaimed novel, Daughter’s Keeper, for which they hold the film/TV option.