Soyi­ni Grey

Se­nior Re­porter

soyi­ni.grey@guardian.co.tt

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 lo­cal soap opera West­wood Park, which ran for six sea­sons and was syn­di­cat­ed across the Caribbean re­gion, North Amer­i­ca, the UK and parts of Africa.

She, and her pro­duc­tion part­ner Walt Lovelace, shot some of the most well-known footage of the 1990 coup. In 2017, she cre­at­ed the NGO Film­Co with four oth­ers, with the goal of cre­at­ing a sus­tain­able ecosys­tem for film, and she worked as a pro­gram­mer with the Trinidad and To­ba­go Film Fes­ti­val for sev­er­al years.

In 2019, she was named the Arts and Let­ters Lau­re­ate by the ANSA McAL Foun­da­tion and the An­tho­ny N Sab­ga Awards for Caribbean Ex­cel­lence.

Yes­ter­day, the foun­da­tion was among the many pay­ing trib­ute to Di­ef­fen­thaller.

They recog­nised her as a pas­sion­ate ad­vo­cate for a strong Caribbean film in­dus­try, and hailed her se­ries West­wood Park (1997-2004) “a sig­na­ture achieve­ment in T&T film pro­duc­tion for its dra­mat­ic in­sight in­to the lives of mid­dle-class Trin­bag­o­ni­ans.”

Speak­ing in the trib­ute video for Di­ef­fen­thaller’s ANSA Award, Pro­fes­sor of Gen­der and Cul­ture stud­ies, Prof 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.”

Yes­ter­day, as news of Di­ef­fen­thaller’s pass­ing spread, mem­bers of the lo­cal en­ter­tain­ment fra­ter­ni­ty and even re­gion­al­ly, re­called her cre­ativ­i­ty, her vi­sion and her strong work eth­ic she em­ployed to bring her ideas to life.

She had been di­ag­nosed with Stage Five 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 re­sumed op­er­a­tions in 2022, her fam­i­ly or­gan­ised a star-stud­ded con­cert to raise funds and re­cruit pos­si­ble donors.

Her daugh­ter Xi­ca Di­ef­fen­thaller-Lee-Poy start­ed a Go Fund Me to help off­set the costs of treat­ment. It al­so de­tailed the fam­i­ly’s frus­tra­tion with what they de­scribed as the slow process for a trans­plant via the pub­lic health sys­tem.

Hav­ing been on dial­y­sis for sev­er­al years caused dam­age to her heart, for which she re­quired surgery and had to heal from be­fore, once again prepar­ing for a pos­si­ble trans­plant.

The cost of which caused the fam­i­ly to once again start a Go Fund Me.

Di­ef­fen­thaller’s ca­reer in en­ter­tain­ment be­gan in the mid-80s as part of the cast and crew of No Bound­aries, and as a re­porter for Trinidad and To­ba­go Tele­vi­sion (TTT). She al­so worked at lo­cal pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny, Banyan Ltd.

Her ca­reer al­so saw her as a pro­duc­er for Chan­nel 4, on the icon­ic se­ries The Ban­dung Files, af­ter grad­u­at­ing from Ry­er­son Uni­ver­si­ty in Toron­to, Cana­da.

Fu­ner­al arrange­ments are yet to be an­nounced.