Get your bag of popcorn for Film Festival 2010

The Belize International Film Festival is celebrating its fifth anniversary this year and the calendar of events is filling up. In fact the festival is being extended beyond Belize City and will now include screenings in San Pedro and San Ignacio as well as workshops and seminars countrywide. As for the submissions, final selections have not yet been made but the opening film is expected to be the Silent Army, film from Belgium. A documentary on Port Au Prince in honor of its two hundredth anniversary will also be screened at the closing along with a short film created by the President of the Association of Haitian Film Makers after the devastating earthquake in January. That film will be available for purchase on DVD and the proceeds will be donated to ongoing relief efforts in that country. Festival Director Suzette Zayden, says she is impressed with the unfaltering participation and support, particularly from the locals.

Suzette Zayden, Festival Director, Belize Intl Film Festival

suzette zayden

“We actually had a fantastic submission period. We had sixty films come in from approximately thirty different countries. Ten of those films came from Belize, ten came from El Salvador. And we have quite a few still on their way here from the Caribbean who kinda got wind of the submission process a little bit last minute. We have some from Europe, we have from North America, we have from South America and a few from the Middle East. So we think that the film festival’s name has gone abroad. A few films are also on the way from Africa from a short film festival there.”

“Right now we’re looking at film screening in San Pedro at the Paradise theatre at the Reef Village Resort. We’re screening films at the Ka’ana Boutique Resort in San Ignacio. We are screening films in Belize City at the Princess Cinema and the opening and closing films will be here at the Bliss center as well as one day we will be screening films for children for free on the Wednesday here at the Bliss. We also have a really huge lineup of workshops scheduled this year. In fact this is probably an extremely full nine days of workshops.”

Delahnie Bain

“Do you feel that the support for the festival has increased over the years or has been maintained?”

Suzette Zayden

“Definitely there is an increased interest in the festival. We have the support of a few faithful sponsors who are with us all the time because they see the potential for film to be a moneymaking venture in Belize very soon, we have a group of faithful attendees at the festival and this list is growing. We’re marketing this year to the university students involved by offering them fifty percent discounts at all the workshops, getting them to come to the films and let people a little bit more about films. We have a lot of international interest.”

Special guests at this year’s festival include Hollywood actors Daryl Mitchell and Anthony Anderson. Zayden says that if the festival is well received in San Pedro and San Ignacio, they will extend to a fourth part of the country next year. For more information visit the festival website at www.belizefilmfestival.com.