MEP Caribbean Publishers: Best of CaribbeanTales Film Festival & Symposium gets ready for Barbados

The Best of CaribbeanTales Film Festival & Symposium, founded by Trinidadian Frances Anne Solomon, takes place at the Savanna Hotel and Olympus Theatres in Barbados, 23 February through 2 March.

A highlight of the fortnight will be a two-day master class on film directing with American filmmaker Julie Dash presented by the Caribbean Film and Media Academy (CFMA), founded by Trinidadian Lisa Wickham, and the US Embassy in Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean on Saturday 27 and Sunday 28 February. The class is aimed at both emerging and established Caribbean film directors at the Savannah Hotel in Barbados. It is free to the public.

Dash's 1991 debut feature film Daughters of the Dust made her the first African American woman to have a movie on general theatrical release in the United States. In 2004, the Library of Congress placed added the film to the National Film Registry as a "national treasure". Her 2003 The Rosa Parks Story won her a NAACP Image Award, The Family Television Award and The New York Christopher Award, as well as an Emmy nomination for lead actor Angela Bassett who played the role of Parks.

The CFMA will also host two screenings of Dash's The Rosa Parks Story on 23 February at 9:30am (for secondary school students), and 26 February at 3:00pm (for the general public) at the Olympus Theatre. Both screenings will host feedback sessions with the director.

Additionally, there will be screenings during the festival of Trinidadian Frances Anne Solomon's A Winter Tale; Africa Unite by Stephanie Black; Maria Govan's Bahamian feature Rain; Tribes by Jamaica's Ras Kassa; Power of the Vagina by Jimmel Daniel; Nurse.Fighter.Boy. by Charles Officer, among others. The festival also features a symposium on global distribution hosted by One Caribbean Media, and a Caribbean film marketplace hosted by the Shridath Ramphal Center at the University of the West Indies, as well as other educational workshops and events.