The second Belize Film Festival opened last night at the Princess Theatre with a showing of the academy award nominated Brazilian film, "City of God."
And while last night was by invitation only, event organizer Suzette Zayden says that the movies being shown for the festival are meant to attract regular folks who just want to finally see something familiar on the silver screen.
Suzette Zayden, Int'l Film Festival Organizer
"We have the film makers section and we have 13 short films from the Caribbean, 9 from Caribbean. There is one called laugh Jamaica and you can right here at government house and laugh. We have another one entry denied which stars the guy who starred in dancehall queen.and third world cop. The story is about this ghetto youth who got a football scholarship to the United States and entry denied is his journey to the US embassy to get a visa since he has a criminal record. He is a feature person about this person who got a scholarship so the whole film is about him and that. There is a lot stuff that should appeal to the Belizeans since its what they would want to watch regularly."
Andrew Belington, Caribbean Filmmaker
"My own perception of making films especially in the Caribbean is that we need to start looking at films as an important expression of our culture and see our culture as being important to begin explore what is there before, dance, and music. In our writers to look at the potential of exploring that humanity. And if we begin here and look a the old folk stories and look how we evolved eventually we will see a national story evolved but it is a lot of work."
The film festival continues tonight, through the long weekend and ends on Tuesdays. Throughout movies will be shown at the Princess Cinema and the House of Culture. Tickets, passes and schedules are available at the Mexico Belize Institute.