MEMPHIS, Tenn. - Racine native Anwar Jamison came up with a movie idea in the late 1990s and this week that idea debuted as his first full-length feature film.

Jamison, 31, showed the film, "Funeral Arrangements," to a large audience for the first time Monday at the 12th annual Indie Memphis Film Festival in Memphis, Tenn.

"It felt great," Jamison said of the debut showing, "especially just knowing they laughed when they were supposed to and got excited when they were supposed to."

"Funeral Arrangements," a comedy and drama, tells the story of an aspiring music producer with a dead-end job. He gets an opportunity to attend a big music industry event, but has to lie to his boss to get there. As a result, he ends up at a stranger's funeral with outrageous situations ensuing, including a case of mistaken identity.

The idea came from something Jamison wrote for a screenwriting class he took while studying for his bachelor's degree in writing and English at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.

"The assignment was to write the first 15 pages of a movie," Jamison said. "I thought one day I would finish it, but I had no idea I would direct it myself."

Jamison said his interest in film stems from a lifelong love of writing combined with playing music. He wanted to make music videos, which led him to film school at the University of Memphis.

"Once I got there it was a whole new ball game and I saw where I could take all that energy I had for writing fiction and tell it in a whole new way," Jamison said. "I just fell in love with it."

The Case High School graduate now lives in Memphis and works as an English professor and video specialist at Mid-South Community College in West Memphis, Ark., where he has honed his directing skills.

"The main thing is being able to visualize the story and then getting on the set and being able to direct people to do it as you've already pictured it," Jamison said. "All I had to do was make sure what I saw in my head was what made it onto the screen."

Jamison said one of his obstacles in directing was having a small budget - he funded most of the movie and equipment himself except for a few donated cars and free use of locations, he said.

To make the film, Jamison had a nine-person crew and about 25 actors. The directing on set took about three weeks and then post-production lasted nearly a year with Jamison doing 95 percent of the editing and soundtrack additions - work he said makes the film's completion even more special.

"It's a bunch of emotions all rolled into one, but mainly I'm just excited and motivated," Jamison said. "It makes me want to go on to the next one and see how that feels."

And he's wasting no time on that goal. Jamison is about to start work on two more feature films, he said Thursday as his current film was finishing up at the festival.