CaribbeanTales Film Festival celebrates fourth anniversary

The Festival's Guest Of Honor Mme. Euzhan Palcy

Reelworld Festival's CEO Tonya Lee Williams, who received the 2009 Community Service Award, with CaribbeanTales Founder and Director Frances-Anne Solomon

It's been another successful outing for the CaribbeanTales Film Festival – now in its fourth year. Four packed days celebrated the burgeoning Caribbean film industry, courtesy CaribbeanTales, the Canada-based multimedia company founded by award-winning Trinidadian filmmaker, producer and Festival curator Frances-Anne Solomon.

CaribbeanTales is an organisation which creates, markets and distributes educational films, videos, radio programmes, audio books, theatre plays, websites and events to showcase the rich heritage of Caribbean diaspora. Solomon's aim when starting the company was and remains fostering intercultural understanding through film, as a tool to working toward an inclusive Canadian society.

The 2009 CaribbeanTales Film Festival showcased some 65 Caribbean films, and was produced in association with the University of Toronto (UT), with sponsorship from the Consulate Generals for Barbados, France, Trinidad & Tobago; the Trinidad & Tobago Film Company; and the Canada Council for the Arts. This year's theme was "Caribbean Film – a Tool for Education & Social Change".

In addition to film screenings, the Festival hosted a CaribbeanTales Industry Development Programme (CTIDP), focused on providing training workshops, roundtable sessions, and panel discussions on film practice, animation, business development and marketing to support producers to break into the Canadian industry.

The Festival's special guests included director Melissa Gomez (Antigua/UK); producer Magali Damas (New York/Haiti); filmmaker and photographer Ricardo Scipio (Vancouver, Canada); Penelope Hynam and Ian Smith from the Barbados Film & Video Association; Annette Nias from the National Cultural Foundation in Barbados; international programmer June Givanni (UK); author Elizabeth Nunez (US/Trinidad); Emiel Maartens from the University of Amsterdam; and Gladstone Yearwood, Director of the Errol Barrow Center for Creative Imagination, UWI Barbados.

Solomon's home country of Trinidad & Tobago was well represented, with a contingent comprised of Lisa Wickham, CEO of Imagine International; Christopher Laird, CEO of Gayelle The Channel; Camille Selvon-Abrahams, Founder/Director of Anime Caribe Animation & New Media Festival; Jean Antoine of the University of the West Indies; multi-media artist Elspeth Duncan; US-based Producer Horace Wilson; and emerging filmmakers Dara Healey and Andre Johnson.

There was also a who's-who of Canadian-Caribbean filmmakers, including ReelWorld Film Festival President and actor Tonya Lee Williams; multi-award winning video artist and lecturer Richard Fung; filmmaker and academic Michelle Mohabeer; producer/director Nicole Brooks; TV executive Karen King; National Film Board producer Lea Marin; "Soul" creator Andy Marshall; director Powys Dewhurst; and Vancouver-based producer Glace Lawrence.

The festival's high point came at the Saturday evening Tribute Awards Ceremony, honouring trailblazers in the Caribbean film industry. The Award of Honour went to Euzhan Palcy, the first woman of African descent to ever direct a Hollywood Studio movie (A Dry White Season with Marlon Brando and Donald Sutherland in 1989). Her first film, 1983's Black Shack Alley, remains a seminal Caribbean cinematic achievement.

Palcy, who came from France to receive the Award, spoke of the importance of this Festival: "It is most important to me that we as Caribbean people be able to express love and appreciation for each other, not just in our films, but in relation to each other. For that, I treasure this award above others."

Christopher Laird, co-founder and CEO of Gayelle The Channel in Trinidad received this year's Lifetime Achievement Award for his pioneering use of television as a tool for community and social engagement. Earlier in the festival, rapt audiences were also treated to the World Premiere of Laird's new film Drummit2Summit, which documents a tense stand-off between police and local activists during the Summit of the Americas in Port of Spain in April 2009.

Along with Laird, tribute was paid to several extraordinary Caribbean talents including Camille Selvon-Abrahams, who received the 2009 Innovation Award for her groundbreaking and visionary work in establishing the Caribbean's first animation studio and film festival, Anime Caribe, that trains, produces and exhibits work by a new generation of Caribbean-centered animators.

Jamaican film and theatre icon Leonie Forbes presented the Festival's first Leonie Forbes Award to Canadian-Jamaican rising star Michael Miller for his work as an actor and youth worker with youth-at-risk in public housing communities in Toronto.

Actor and producer Tonya Lee Williams received this year's Award for Community Service in recognition for her tireless generosity in establishing and maintaining the Reel World Film Festival and Foundation, whose vision is to showcase Canada's diversity in film. The festival is now 10 years old.

Barbadian-Canadian actor, director, and producer Alison Sealey Smith received the 2009 Award for Excellence, presented to her by the Consul General for Barbados in Toronto, Leroy McClean. Sealey-Smith's many accomplishments include Founding Artistic Director of the Obsidian Theatre, Canada's prolific and Dora Award-winning black theatre company.

Mme. Euzhan Palcy with Trinidadian Animator and CEO of Anime Caribe Camille Selvon Abrahams, recipient of the Innovation AwardBarbados' Consul General in Toronto, Leroy McClean presenting the Award of Excellence to Barbadian-Canadian Actor/Director/Producer Alison Sealey-Smith

Canadian-Trinidadian filmmaker Richard Fung listens to Gayelle The Channel's CEO Christopher Laird, recipient of this year's Lifetime Achievement Award

Jamaican film and theatre icon Leonie Forbes, who presented this year's Leonie Forbes Award to actor Michael Miller - with author Elizabeth Nunez, a guest of the Festival