Juma Stevens

Here’s a sample of what Juma Stevens has been up to these days.

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Juma Stevens website

DJ Revel screenshot

These are screen shots of his Web Page, Juma Stevens. It is  A Film/Photography Journal. Juma became interested in film back in high school. After many hours reading books and doing web teaching programs, he taught himself how to write screen plays, shoot and edit film, and work with programs like Final Cut Pro. He took a college course while duel enrolling in high school. It was a black and white film class and his teacher was a great inspiration to him. He has since went on to do photo shoots. He compiles all the photos from the shoots, unedited and turns them into video clips with background music. Watching these clips is a good way to see the progression of the shoot and how many shots it takes to get a few really great shots. He then goes on to edit his favorite which then land on his web site on the gallery page.

There is also a page with his various films. These are not all the short films he has done to date. You need to visit Vimeo for that. Make sure you sign up with Vimeo, it only takes a minute, and press the heart to like his works. It just makes it more fun to have interaction with others, which in turn inspire you to keep on with all the hard work involved to produce all this.

If you don’t know Juma then here are a few fun facts:

Juma grew up in Coral Bay, St John, Virgin Islands. He was born at home in an apartment we were renting from a West Indian couple that had lived in St Thomas most of their days. When they retired they moved to the Coral Bay side of St. John and built their home,  brick by brick, or should I say block by block, which made a lovely place for Juma to be born.

Soon after he was born, Starbo finished the shack in the valley, a little piece of LaLa Land. (Really and truely the name of the land on the books at Cadastral-the land records building in St Thomas). This house was on a half acre of some of the only flat land on St John. We had plenty of red ants which the kids quickly learned how to avoid or quickly remove when not avoiding. But the land also provided some of the coolest playground settings for him and his little sister.

His whole childhood existed at the beach, running free in the woods, building forts with a machete and hanging hammocks in trees with his sister along with sailing in the KATS program. He homeschooled with his mother and  a variety of talented, loving tutors that took him sailing, hiking, swimming and drumming.

My favorite story is when he needed a bit of help with his reading skills so I would drive him to Roundbay and meet Dorothy Muilenburg in her dingy. She would row him out to board  her boat, “Breath”, where they would work together for  a few hours twice a week.

We moved to the states when Juma was entering eighth grade. He decided to enter public school. That lasted a year then back to home school for his first two years of High School. He finished high school in the public school called Estero High. It had it’s advantages and drawbacks. Tennis was great but achedimics was a bit of a joke.

After graduation he went to New York then took a train to Montreal, staying at hostels and walking the city for days, enjoying the French language and music festivals.

He applied to UCF along with a separate application to their film school. He got into both and is currently a student at the University of Central Florida enrolled in the film program. The real juice of the program does not start till his Junior year. Waiting for that does not seem to be a problem. He fills his days editing photos, editing videos and more than anything else, he is DJ-ing. He seems to be lost these days in creating Dub step rhythms. If your curious what that is, he has a separate web site for that. DJ Revel.

So what started in St John is now reverberating for all the world to see and hear.

I love you Juma.