CaribbeanTales is proud to partner with the Harbourfront Center's Island Soul Festival

Caribbean Tales Presents An Exciting Day of Films at the Harbourfront Center's "Island Soul" Festival

Caribbean Tales Annual Film Festival is proud to partner with the Harbourfront Centre to present a day of exciting film screenings and thought-provoking Talk Back sessions at the Island Soul Festival.

Curated by Caribbean Tales’ artistic director, Frances-Anne Solomon, an accomplished filmmaker, writer, director and producer, the day promises to be one you don’t want to miss.

Diasporic Documentaries
August 2, 2009 1.30pm

Featuring a selection of dynamic documentaries from the Caribbean and it's Diaspora.

Alex Cuba: The Making of Alex Cuba by Safiya Randera

From the Cuban countryside to rural British Columbia, discover Juno winner Alex Cuba. The Making of Alex Cuba observes the artist in his emerging success as an international musician from recording in Havana's famous Egrem Studios through behind-the-scenes footage of the upcoming music video, Tu Boca. Join Alex Cuba as he looks within his own history for discoveries on bridging culture through music. (24 min)

The Insatiable Season: Making Carnival in Trinidad and Tobago by Mariel Brown

The Insatiable Season: Making Carnival in Trinidad and Tobago, a documentary production of SAVANT Ltd, was launched in January 2008, just in time for carnival. "The Insatiable Season is ... a film that, simply and appropriately, finds joy in the mundane romance of putting a mas together, from the conceptualising of the band to the construction of the costumes . . . and yes, in the end, to wining down to the ground come Carnival Tuesday. . . This is a highly enjoyable film, not least for the bits of candour it is so adroitly able to capture." --The Caribbean Review of Books, August 2008

Ramabai Espinet: Coming Home by Frances-Anne Solomon

Ramambai Espinet visits her home town of San Fernando, Trinidad. What was planned as “a simple, nostalgic trip” soon becomes a fascinating journey into a brilliant writer's personal history and cultural heritage. (44 min)

TRINIDAD EXPLOSION
August 2nd, 2009. 5pm

A spotlight on the explosion of new film and television work from the twin islands of Trinidad and Tobago.

Bacchanal by Lisa Wickham

Music video from Destra Garcia's 2009 abum, Hott. (4 min)

Mami Wata by Yao Ramesar

An Orisha ceremony at the feast for Yemanja, the water goddess, at Salibiya Bay in Trinidad whee the river delta meets the sea. (11 min)

Reunion by Frances-Anne Solomon

In 1943, three hundred middle class "coloured" women from across the West Indies were recruited to the ATS, a branch of the British Army. This documentary documents for the first time the contribution of these women to WW2.(25mins)

Carmen and Geoffrey by Linda Atkinson and Nick Doob

This beautiful feature documentary is about the work of two exceptional artists, dancer and choreographer Carmen de Lavallade and director, painter, choreographer and designer Geoffrey Holder, who stepped forward in the 1950's to play a vital part in the newly energized world of American modern dance. It is also about a fifty-four year long love affair and the creative partnership that sustained their accomplishments. (80mins)

Between Heaven and Earth

I'm delighted to tell you that this year, 2007, we will be producing Audio Books of Shani Mootoo's two novels:Cereus Blooms at Night and He Drown She In The Sea.

This will be our second series of CaribbeanTales Audio Books. Last years imprints, which are selling well in schools, are The Swinging Bridge by Ramabai Espinet, Skin Folk by Nalo Hopkinson,Gardening In The Tropics by Olive Senior, This Body by Tessa McWatt, and My Mother's Last Dance by Honor Ford Smith.

Find out more about these, or buy copies of the Audio Books from our E-store.

Shani Mootoo is at the forefront of modern Canadian Literature. As well as being my (almost) contemporary, she is also my countrywoman, (from Trinidad). I am very proud of her.

I remember feeling awe a few years back while reading her first novel "Cereus Blooms at Night". The story and characters are so richly imagined and vivid. The thought crossed my mind: "This extraordinary breadth of vision was developing in a young person, a young GIRL of roughly my age, somewhere in Trinidad, while I was growing up."

Why was I suprprised?

It came from the sense I had as a child, and particularly as a girl, of the imaginative limits that were placed on us by our environment: school, family, society. Every sort of prejudice hung heavy even in the air we breathed.

Not just that but writers like Naipaul were busy saying our environment was a literary and cultural wasteland, that nothing fertile ever grew there.

Shani's two novels face off every sort of colonial prejudice, not in an aggressive way, but simply by being larger, more imaginatively inclusive of all things human. Her stories teem with life, her characters embody complex (some might say transgressive) social, sexual, and racial realities, woven into a unique and breathtaking vision.

Naipaul was wrong, in so many ways. How often over the years have I wanted to throw back:

"There is more between heaven and earth, Vido, than was dreamt of in your philosophy!"

(Photo - Sir Vidia Naipaul: Limited imagination.)

Praise Song for de Gayelle

I was in Trinidad over New Year's and delighted to see Literature Alive playing Wednesday nights on Gayelle TV. It was a very different experience from watching it in Canada; different again from making it. That's why I don't get bored watching my programs, because each new context brings fresh insights, new perspectives on craft, form, process, audience.

To start the New Year just right, here's a clip from our award-winning documentary Blood, Dub, and the Matriarch, about dub poet d'bi.young. In it d'bi talks about growing up poor in Jamaica, and the importance of telling our own stories, even in the face of capitalism, classism, and American colonialism.


I want to appreciate Gayelle TV: one of life's miracles.

Now 3 years old, the station is really coming into its own. Location inserts and original drama have been added to a core studio-based format of call-in talk shows, interviews, and sketch comedy. Its passionately devoted viewership extends by cable to Grenada, and via the internet, around the world. Its content is 100% local programming, 24/7. Not bad for a young, independently-owned channel, run from a tiny island in America's armpit.

Gayelle, tho new as a Channel, is the product of a long gestation. Decades of dreams, analysis, commitment, blood and tears went into the development of the unique model that hit local airwaves in 2004 as Gayelle TV. So many of us passed through, as students of and participants in the process, on our way to whoever we were becoming.

I was 24 when I had the privelege of belonging to "the Gayelle family" for a brief intense moment in time. It was the year of The Hammer (Rudder), Ship Is Sinking (Gypsy) and Too Young To Soca (Machel). Hall, Laird and Paddington (impossibly flawed leaders) were directors of Banyan, the small TV production company that was producing a giddying mix of documentaries, ads, music videos, drama series, training, and their weekly flagship magazine programme called GAYELLE. The shows were developed through a rigorous collaborative process of brainstorming and improvisation. They were defined by a commitment to reflecting Trinidad and Tobago's extraordinary culture to itself, on its own terms, in its own language, using its images, characters, humor, rhythms, points of reference. Television as the voice of ordinary people, and daily life, as an instrument for social change. The medium itself was inherently democratic, and democratising. It was also in its nature creative, and healing, bringing together artists - writers, painters, comedians, singers - to pool their talents in a new electronic form as traditional and native to us as the Gayelle.

In the old days, the Gayelle was a backyard place that people came to stickfight, watch cockfights, lime, drink and exchange news and gossip in the form of kaiso. It was a vital social forum for discussion and expression. This was the concept underlying Banyan's flagship series "Gayelle".

But those were tough, lean times. The constant battle with the single local broadcaster (TTT) for airtime and funds meant no money to pay people, no ressource to create, time to finesse, space for the necessary dialogue. Always so much more to do. It was heartbreaking. In the end Banyan's programs were starved off the schedule, replaced by insipid irrelevent American content, and wall to wall American cable TV. A depressingly familiar scenario.

In the 90's the idea of a whole TV station devoted to local programming, successfully targetting a popular audience, seemed impossible, utopic.

In 2004 the digital age gave birth to Gayelle TV, as we all watched with incredulity and awe. Now it seems (almost) normal. But for me, still, a miracle. I still get choked up when I see the slogan:

AT LAST WE OWN TELEVISION.

Photos: Inside The People TV. Old Year's at midnight I jumped in my car and headed down to Gayelle. Got there just in time to bring the New Year in with friends, Robin Foster and Errol Fabian, here seen presenting the New Year show.

Leda Serene Films & CaribbeanTales celebrate a productive year!

We've had a busy year at Leda Serene Films and CaribbeanTales. Over the past 18 months we've produced:
The multi-facetted LiteratureAlive project including
- 20 documentaries - Literature Alive Seasons 1 and 2, produced in association with Bravo!, CLT, BookTV, CIFVF, and OMNI.
- 5 audio Books by Caribbean-Canadian authors, with support from the Trillium Foundation
- 5 radio programmes, in association with CBC's Radio's "The Arts Tonight"
- Our educational website - LitereatureAlivOnline.ca, produced with support from The Department of Canadian Heritage, Canadian Culture Online Program
In addition we also produced:
- 8 newsletters - caribbeantales.ca, with support from the Gateway Fund
- a theatre play - A WinterTale produced by CaribbeanTales, directed by Michele Lonsdale Smith
- a feature film - a WinterTale, for CHUM/Telefilm, a Leda Serene Films production, directed by Frances-Anne Solomon
Many, many thanks to everyone who worked with us to make this posible. For information about these and other projects, or to buy our products please visit ledaserene.ca, caribbeantales.ca, literaturealiveonline.ca.

Photo: The CaribbeanTales Team at the recent launch of LiteratureAliveOnline and our Audio Books series, at the Multicultural History Society, Queen's Park Crescent, Toronto.