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Wednesday, July 23, 2025

New opening for Caribbean filmmakers

by

20131012

Sharp-tongued com­ic Rachel Price gave a small au­di­ence a glimpse of her vul­ner­a­ble side re­cent­ly, ex­chang­ing a long, tight hug with Caribbean film­mak­er and dis­trib­u­tor Frances-Anne Solomon. Price re­called how Solomon gave her the ca­reer-boost­ing chance a decade ago to star along­side Den­nis "Spran­galang" Hall in the Caribbean-Cana­di­an tele­vi­sion com­e­dy se­ries Lord Have Mer­cy! which Solomon co-cre­at­ed."Every child sup­posed to know who Frances-Anne is. Every child sup­posed to know who con­tribut­ing to our cul­ture," Price said. She com­plained: "We do not ho­n­our or re­spect our own."In tele­vi­sion and film at least, Solomon is work­ing to build re­spect for Caribbean cre­ators. Since Lord Have Mer­cy! Solomon–a for­mer BBC pro­duc­er who grew up in Trinidad and now lives in Toron­to–has giv­en op­por­tu­ni­ties to oth­er Caribbean peo­ple in the in­dus­try. Her lat­est ini­tia­tives in­clude a video-on-de­mand ser­vice for films and tele­vi­sion pro­grammes li­censed to her Caribbean­Tales World­wide Dis­tri­b­u­tion com­pa­ny.

A "Caribbean Net­flix" it was re­peat­ed­ly called at its re­gion­al launch–head­lined by Price–on Sep­tem­ber 29 at Ross­co's in Wood­brook. For US$9.99 a month, sub­scribers have ac­cess to the ex­ten­sive Caribbean­Tales cat­a­logue.Solomon and her team will al­so be run­ning a short-film com­pe­ti­tion from Oc­to­ber 15-De­cem­ber 10. Win­ners will be an­nounced by Jan­u­ary 15. En­tries are to be be­tween three and five min­utes long on the theme Caribbean Christ­mas. The win­ner will be the film that re­ceives the most num­ber of view­er "likes."Caribbean­Tales is a net­work of com­pa­nies that pro­motes Caribbean films in dif­fer­ent ways: find­ing buy­ers for Caribbean TV and film pro­duc­tions, in­clud­ing Lord Have Mer­cy! and the Gayelle TV mag­a­zine se­ries; or­gan­is­ing an­nu­al film fes­ti­vals in Bar­ba­dos, New York and Toron­to; and of­fer­ing train­ing in film mar­ket­ing and a film­mak­ing schol­ar­ship."It was my dream that we in the Caribbean must have a Caribbean film in­dus­try," Solomon said, telling the au­di­ence at the launch why she start­ed Caribbean­Tales ten years ago."An in­dus­try where we cre­at­ed, pro­duced, dis­trib­uted and made mon­ey from the con­tent that we cre­at­ed. And that idea re­al­ly has come to fruition now."

Her ef­forts were not the on­ly rea­son for her op­ti­mistic state­ment: an un­prece­dent­ed num­ber of vis­tas have opened for Caribbean film in re­cent years. Caribbean film show­cas­es have been sprout­ing up and grow­ing in the re­gion and North Amer­i­ca, where there's a large Caribbean di­as­po­ra. The re­gion has at least ten film fes­ti­vals, among them the just-con­clud­ed T&T Film Fes­ti­val (TTFF), which had its biggest year yet in 2013. An­oth­er is com­ing up in the An­i­mae Caribe An­i­ma­tion and New Me­dia Fes­ti­val, which runs in T&T from Oc­to­ber 28-No­vem­ber 2.TTFF or­gan­is­ers an­nounced a num­ber of col­lab­o­ra­tions with the fes­ti­vals in Cu­ba, the Ba­hamas, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, Cu­ra­cao, Puer­to Ri­co and Guade­loupe, in­clud­ing a Caribbean film mar­ket like those in Eu­rope and the US, where in­dus­try pro­fes­sion­als meet to net­work and buy and sell films. There are al­so plans to set up an on­line por­tal to fur­ther fa­cil­i­tate the buy­ing and sell­ing of re­gion­al films.

Var­i­ous coun­tries in the re­gion have es­tab­lished state bod­ies to boost film­mak­ing, like the T&T Film Co, which pro­vides fund­ing and train­ing for film­mak­ers.The film com­pa­ny and its mir­ror or­gan­i­sa­tions in the Ba­hamas, Bar­ba­dos, Guade­loupe, Ja­maica and the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic signed an MOU in 2011 to cre­ate a Caribbean Re­gion­al Film Com­mis­sion to max­imise their re­sources and ef­forts. Re­gion­al film com­mis­sion­ers met at the Un­esco/TTFF con­fer­ence Cam­eras of Di­ver­si­ty for a Cul­ture of Peace, held from Sep­tem­ber 25-27, in Port-of-Spain. (De­tails of the meet­ing have not been made pub­lic.)

T&T cin­e­mas have shown that they can be pur­suad­ed to air lo­cal films, with­in and out­side of fes­ti­vals. Movi­eTowne–T&T Film Fes­ti­val part­ner–ear­li­er this year showed Home Again, a Cana­di­an dra­ma shot most­ly in Trinidad. Last year, the mul­ti­plex aired the to­tal-lo­cal pup­pet com­e­dy I'm San­tana: The Movie. Both films were big hits. An­oth­er lo­cal­ly made film, Be­tween Friends, di­rect­ed by Omari Jack­son, pre­miered at Movi­eTowne on Wednes­day.Di­rec­tor Nicholas At­tin in­de­pen­dent­ly got his ac­tion-dra­ma Es­cape From Baby­lon aired in mul­ti­plex­es in Trinidad and Bar­ba­dos.On­line crowd-fund­ing ser­vices like In­diegogo are help­ing Caribbean film­mak­ers raise cash, even though two film­mak­ers, in the au­di­ence of a TTFF pan­el dis­cus­sion on fund­ing, not­ed that the pledges came main­ly from friends and fam­i­ly.New en­ter­tain­ment blogs and mag­a­zines like Jay Blessed Me­dia and the T&T Guardian's own Metro help cre­ate buzz around Caribbean films.It's still a strug­gle to make films in the Caribbean. Com­pe­ti­tion for Best Lo­cal Fea­ture film at the TTFF was light: just two films were up for it. And Mary Wells, who di­rect­ed the fes­ti­val favourite Kingston Par­adise, is the first Ja­maican woman to make a full-length movie.But the over­whelm­ing pop­u­lar re­sponse to Best Lo­cal Fea­ture win­ner God Loves the Fight­er–shot in Trinidad on a low bud­get–is an en­cour­ag­ing sign.The de­mand for the movie dur­ing the fes­ti­val was so high that screen­ings sold out days in ad­vance and or­gan­is­ers added an­oth­er show­ing. The film won the Peo­ple's Choice award at the fes­ti­val."I can't do it with­out you," di­rec­tor Dami­an Mar­cano said on stage, an­nounc­ing that the film would be re­leased glob­al­ly in March and ac­knowl­edg­ing the im­por­tance of sup­port from lo­cal au­di­ences to the film's wider suc­cess."I have to get through the next five months of tak­ing this film every­where to show every­one that you guys gave a damn," he said.

The Caribbean­Tales VOD ser­vice and more in­for­ma­tion on the short-film com­pe­ti­tion are avail­able at caribbean­tales-tv.com


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