Cosima Amelang: In July, I headed down to Trinidad & Tobago to serve on a jury reviewing proposals for children’s content production on behalf of the Trinidad & Tobago Film Company. I had some great discussions with my fellow jurors, and learned an incredible amount about the local film and television industry – a fantastic experience overall. I’m very much looking forward to seeing the final outcomes of the proposals we chose, and hope to have the chance to bring these creative voices from the Caribbean back to U.S. on behalf of the Children’s Film Festival Seattle.

 

Maija Heitala:  During my studies in the MSc. Film, Exhibition and Curation programme I added to my previous work experience in arts and film festivals by volunteering at Africa in Motion Film Festival and DocPoint Helsinki International Documentary Film Festival. While finishing up the course I worked as Guest Services Assistant at Edinburgh International Film Festival in 2012 which led to the position of Guest Coordinator at the festival this year. The Guest Services department at EIFF is an extremely hectic and fast-paced festival environment to work in with long hours but overall the job is very rewarding and a lot of fun! The best part of the job is working with like-minded amazing colleagues and meeting filmmakers and talent from all over the world as well as seeing the films in the programme. At the moment I have a job as Administrator at Screen Academy Scotland, working on their Screen NETS and Lo-fi projects which I am thoroughly enjoying while also working on the ‘New Cinema’ programme for the Edinburgh Film Guild, which is a series of films to be shown monthly at the Filmhouse in Edinburgh. The programme has yet to be announced in full but you can check out the website here: http://edinburghfilmguild.org.uk/wordpress/?page_id=1346