Emmanuel Anyiam-Osigwe, the man who founded the British Urban Film Festival 14 years ago, has been recognised in the 2020 New Years honours list with an MBE for ‘services to the Black and minority ethnic film industry’.
Anyiam-Osigwe is a familiar face to UK film audiences having spent 17 years working in film festivals and awards ceremonies, firstly at BFM (Black Filmmaker Magazine), followed by Screennation and latterly with BUFF (British Urban Film Festival) which he founded in 2005.In 2016, Metro newspaper ranked the film festival no.1 in a list of global list of film festivals to attend which celebrates diversity.In 2017, BT Group sponsored the British Urban Film Festival – the first corporate sponsorship of its’ kind by the company in its’ history.
In 2018, he was headhunted for the post of Head of Cinema at the Barbican. In the same year, he was appointed a jury member of the BAFTA-recognised Aesthetica Short Film Festival.He was awarded an icon recognition honour by Creativity Hub magazine for services to film exhibition in 2015 and earlier this year, was inducted into the Britflix Power 100 list of prominent and emerging figures in independent film and TV.The British urban film festival ventured into production and distribution in 2018, with Dr Clare Anyiam-Osigwe’s debut feature, multi-awarded romantic drama ‘No Shade’ which Emmanuel exec produced as the first BUFF Originals project, making Clare the 6th black British female director to receive a theatrical release.
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