Howard Allen: Producer/ Film Director
Howard Allen is an independent film and television producer and the founder of HAMA Productions. He made his feature film directorial debut with “The Sweetest Mango” a romantic comedy based on how he and his wife met and fell in love. It was released in February 2001.
The “Sweetest Mango” became Antigua and Barbuda’s first locally produced feature film and the first indigenous film for the Eastern Caribbean. It has since been screened at several film festivals in North America and Caribbean and made its world television premiere on Caribvision in 2007 to potential audience of 280 million via DirecTV.
Filmmaking is Howard’s life-long dream and to date he has produced and directed three films The Sweetest Mango (2001) a romantic comedy, No Seed (2002) a drama and Diablesse (2005), Caribbean folklore. Now in production is his fourth film The Skin (2010) starring Jamaican film icon Carl Bradshaw.
Howard’s interest in media and communications began at an early age. At 15 he produced and hosted a children’s radio program for ABS Radio and ZDK Radio in Antigua. Howard is a graduate of the Antigua Grammar School where many of his schoolmates remember him as a magician with the keen interest in the Arts & Sciences. He sees what he does now, as a combination of both. Howard studied electrical engineering at the Antigua State College and later worked at CTV Entertainment Systems in Antigua as a video production engineer and later as a producer/director. He received further training at with the Caribbean Broadcasting Union in Barbados in 1989. This proved to be the turning point in Howard’s career. He returned to Antigua as a systems technician and went about re-designing the post-production facility at CTV.
Howard and his wife Mitzi started their own production company, HAMA Productions in 1992. The production company quickly gained a reputation for its innovative approach to high quality productions. HAMA is the producer of television programmes, such as Island Magazine, Pet Playhouse, Teen Talk, Queen Material, and the drama series Paradise View, along with many documentaries and industrial videos. HAMA also produces feature reports for television programmes in North America.
Howard’s work as a filmmaker has been singled out by the department of Cinema and Photography at Ithaca College in New York, for his innovative approach to filmmaking in a developing country. He has conducted master classes at Ithaca College on “Feature Filmmaking on a Shoestring Budget.”
Howard has begun training young people in the art of television and film production in the hopes of building a cadre of future film industry professionals in Antigua and Barbuda. HAMA Productions was recognized by the Youth Department in the Ministry of Education with a “Young Pioneers” award for its inspiring work as pioneers in filmmaking in Antigua & Barbuda.
Howard hopes that filmmaking in Antigua and Barbuda will become as much a part of our creative and cultural expression as calypso and pan.
