TAMWORTH’S claimed a slice of cinematic history at the weekend – with the invention of a new word in the movie-making dictionary.

The town’s staging of the highly-successful, week-long Heart of England International Film festival, reached a dizzy climax on Friday night at the Oscar-style gala awards banquet in the Castle Hotel.

Some 160 film-makers from the four corners of the globe, special guests including Bond and Star Wars actor Jeremy Bulloch plus town business heads and civic leaders packed the Tudor Suite for the glitzy event.

And the first surprise of an evening, which saw 25 awards presented to film-makers from as far afield as Hong Kong right across to the west coast of America, was the name of the festival awards – the Tammies.

Gala night co-host Jim Lee told the black-tie event: “These are not Grammies or even Trannies – but Tammies.”

The awards, hewn out of local slate and designed and produced for the gala spectacle by Tamworth College’s Angie Solomons, had a silver heart moulded to the work-of-art.

“They are very unusual and Angie’s own invention as a fitting local take on the trophy,” said festival director Nick Hudson

“Certainly the film-makers from all over the world who collected these on Friday will not forget them – or Tamworth – as a result.”

The theme of the friendly festival was When Tammie Met Sally – based on a loose take of the infamous film When Harry Met Sally and the popular name for the town’s population linked to a 2009 festival film Toy Room whose main actress is called Sally Tomato.

“The name Tammies fitted the bill for the awards perfectly and, who knows, they might one day go down in movie-making history,” added the festival director.