Soyini Grey
Filmmaker and producer Danielle Dieffenthaller has died.
Her brothers Kees, Hans and Jon announced her passing via the Kes the Band Instagram account.
Dieffenthaller was known for her groundbreaking soap opera Westwood Park, which ran for six seasons and was syndicated across the region, North America, the UK and parts of Africa.
She worked with the Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival for years as a programmer. She and her production partner Walt Lovelace captured some of the most well-known footage of the 1990 coup.
In 2019 she was named the Arts and Letters Laureate by the ANSA McAL Foundation and the Anthony N Sabga Awards for Caribbean Excellence.
In offering tribute to Dieffenthaller, they recognised her as a passionate advocate for a strong Caribbean film industry and hailed Westwood Park (1997–2004) as “a signature achievement in T&T film production for its dramatic insight into the lives of middle-class Trinbagonians.”
Westwood Park ran for six seasons. Speaking in the tribute video for Dieffenthaller’s Ansa Award, Professor of Gender and Culture Studies, Professor Patricia Mohammed, said of the series, “Unconsciously, perhaps what Westwood Park does, is that it does give you an insight into the kinds of relationships between the classes and the way in which maybe people from the different classes think about each other.”
She was diagnosed with Stage 5 renal failure in 2018 and was in need of a kidney transplant. The covid-19 pandemic forced the shutdown of the transplant unit. When it restarted in 2022, her family organised a star-studded concert to raise funds and recruit possible donors.
Her child, Xica Dieffenthaller-Lee-Poy, started a GoFundMe to help defray the cost of treatment. It also details the family’s frustration with what they described as the slow process of waiting for a transplant via the public health system. Several years on dialysis caused damage to her heart, for which she required surgery and had to heal before once again preparing for a possible transplant, the cost of which prompted the family to launch a second GoFundMe.
Dieffenthaller-Lee-Poy’s plea ends with, “My mother still has a lot to offer this country and the world, and I wouldn’t want to lose her from this disease.”
Funeral arrangements are yet to be announced.
