The African Movie Academy Awards (AMMA) has collaborated with StarTimes to host the AMAA-StarTimes Short Film Festival (The Shorts).
According to organisers, the event aimed to motivate young and promising filmmakers on the African continent by providing a platform for talented young people to succeed.
The festival had shortlisted more than 200 short films selected from over 500 entries across Africa, in which some of the short films were aired daily on the ST Nollywood Plus channel on StarTimes at 8 pm.
The pay-tv operator has also added the films on the StarTimes-ON mobile app to run throughout the festival.
The award ceremony, held in Lagos, had industry experts in attendance, including Tunde Kelani, Femi Odugbemi, Peace Anyiam-Osigwe of AMAA, Femi Adebayo, with StarTimes team led by CEO Alex Jian, and Content Director Viki Liu.
The overall short film winners were Frank Abasiekong from Nigeria as 2nd runner-up for his short film Room 10; Frank Dzikonu from Ghana as 1st runner-up for his animation film Sad Story of Kojo; and Enobong Nkanta from Nigeria emerged as the winner for his short film Mama’s Song.
The 2nd runner-up received US$1000, the 1st runner-up received US$2000, including a cellphone, while the winner received US$3000 and a laptop.
Speaking at the Award ceremony, Peace Anyiam-Osigwe, Founder of AMAA, said, “We are delighted with this initiative to reward our young filmmaker and happy with the collaboration StarTimes is creating in the film industry. Filmmakers need to understand the process of filmmaking. And when we approached StarTimes for a partnership deal, StarTimes was willing to help us nurture these resourceful people.”
Also speaking, CEO of StarTimes, Alex Jian, said, “We are here to award excellence, hard work, creativity and originality. It’s our goal to provide a bigger platform for talented young creatives to succeed in their craft. StarTimes has been deeply engaged with Nollywood since last year, during which we noticed the industry’s great potential. As a Pay-TV platform rooted in Africa, we aim to provide the best content for our audience. And we are willing to support content creators in all ways because the industry grows when they grow.”
