Vonley Smith and Jason Russell have just created history as they are the first Barbadians to win a Bronze medal in the Tokyo Film Awards with their 48-hour film Murphy’s Law.
Tokyo Film Awards is a unique film competition organised by working professionals from Japan’s film and tv industry. Their programming is mainly focused on short films as their mission is to promote young talent and their vision from all over the world.
In 2019, Barbados’ 48-hour Film Challenge, hosted by the Barbados Film and Visual Media Association, saw its most participants ever with over ten teams taking part. Even though Murphy’s Law didn’t win the competition, the film was a resounding success with the audience. Each time it was screened, it elicited peals of hearty laughter.
The film piqued the interest of the organizers, who asked if it could be submitted. Little did Smith and Russell know their entry would make them one of the few Afro-Barbadian filmmakers to receive such a commendation.
Murphy’s Law uses parody, satire, and humour within a mockumentary style to comment on the 48-hour Film Challenge competition. It’s based on the theory of Murphy’s Law in which ‘anything that can go wrong would go wrong’.
“The feeling I had back then was that it was very random, and I wondered how we would create a film from this as the requirements were you had to have sunglasses, a razor blade, a quote which was the opening line of the movie ‘I decided long ago to never walk in anyone’s shadow’. [We just took] the requirements of how we can take limitations and still tell a story, use what we had and create something in a short space of time that is impactful, relatable, and funny,” Smith said.
Russell, a graduate of Full Sail University, added that Vonley decided they would just go with the flow within the film, improv from a written script and tell the real-time story within the competition while crafting an exaggerated yet clever story of filmmakers battling Murphy’s Law.
Smith believes this blend made the film universal to a global audience. He describes it as a “filmmakers’ film” as those who encounter Murphy’s Law during the filmmaking process can relate to it and have a laugh.
An excited Smith said he was at the Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival when he got the email from the Toyoko Film Awards and he immediately contacted Russell asking him what their response should be to the inquiry.
“I said to Jason, ‘This festival reached out to us by finding our film online. Let’s enter it and see how it goes. Hopefully, we get a selection.’ I was not thinking that it would win an award. I was in shock. I would have never thought that the film that we created would end up in Japan, of all places,” he said.
Russell, who also acted and did the cinematography, said winning the Bronze Medal was a testament to the international standard of work Barbadian filmmakers have been producing over the years.
“I would like to show [Barbadians] that a film that was created in Barbados, made in Barbados, in Bajan with no subtitles went to Japan and won something and not just won something but won a Bronze Medal. I think that is huge. I think when I look back at where I came from. Did I imagine I would end up in Japan? Maybe. But like this, no. I don’t think that when Vonley and I worked on the film, we thought it would end up in Japan. We thought it would end up in other Caribbean islands, the US,” he said.
The film was selected and screened at Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival in 2020, as well as at the Hairouna Film Festival in St. Vincent and the Grenadines in 2021.
“I [have to thank and mention] the real MVP Prince Dippy Alfay, as he cleared his entire weekend to shoot this film with us, took directions and performed astoundingly. If there is anyone deserving of going to Japan with us, it would be Dippy who played the main actor of the film,” he said.
Smith had some words of advice for any aspiring filmmaker. “If anything is your passion, you have to keep going. You will have times when it would be tough, but if you ever get a chance to follow through with that passion, do it because you never know how far it will take you. Also, put your work out there. We are living in an age where traditional ways of pushing your work have changed. You never know who will see your work, so put it out there. You never know who it is going to inspire,” he said. (Write Right PR Services)
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