For 2010 we are showcasing African-Canadian filmmakers – that’s you!

* Are you a Black or African-heritage Filmmaker (writer, producer, director)? We would like to screen your work for high school and University students during the festival.

* We are seeking to screen short films, features and documentaries by filmmakers of African-Canadian heritage, and/or about Afri-Canadian life and culture.

* You are invited to participate in the festival’s workshops and Q&A’s, for audiences of young people across Ontario.

* All films screened will be elligible for the following awards, to be presented at our Festival Launch in January 2010:

- Outstanding contribution to the representation of Black people on screen in Canada.
- Most innovative African-Canadian filmmaker
- Outstanding African-Canadian Woman Filmmaker
- LifeTime Achievement Award

* CaribbeanTales is producing a series of 10 five-minute films on African-Canadian filmmakers and we are looking for volunteers to shoot and edit them. The completed films will be screened online at our website and Ezine, and at the Festival in Feb 2010. This is great experience and exposure for new filmmakers!

* We are seeking filmmakers and graphic designers interested in designing our 2010 Logo, and festival Ident. Your work will be screened at the festival and credited in our program, website and on screen at the festival.

CONTACT US NOW! PASS THE WORD ON!

Contact: Miki Nembhard,
CaribbeanTales Youth Film Festival Coordinator,
99 Gore Vale Avenue
Toronto Ontario,
Canada M6J 2R5.
Tel: 416 598 1410.
ctyfilmfestival@gmail.com

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The CaribbeanTales Youth Film Festival – Celebrating Black History Month , launched in February 2009, screens classic and contemporary Africentric films, aimed at high school and university students and educators.

The festival presents a unique selection of films and documentaries from and about the African diaspora, representing a broad range of experiences that celebrate and educate on the richness and diversity of African Diasporic heritage worldwide.

Its aim is to deepen audiences’ understanding of Canada’s vibrant multicultural communities.

Every year, the festival celebrates a film artist who has made an outstanding contribution to the representation of Black people and culture on screen. In 2009, the first CaribbeanTales Youth Film Festival Award of Honor was presented to acclaimed African American filmmaker Julie Dash.

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The CaribbeanTales Youth Film Festival is produced by CaribbeanTales in association with The Caribbean Studies Program and New College at the University of Toronto; The Ontario Multi-Cultural History Society; and with the financial support of the Department of Canadian Heritage through the Gateway Fund.

CaribbeanTales is an innovative multimedia company that creates, markets and distributes educational films, videos, radio programs, audio books, theatre plays, websites and events, that showcase the rich heritage of the Caribbean and its Diaspora.

CaribbeanTales’ mandate is to foster and encourage intercultural understanding and citizen participation through
the medium of film, contributing to an inclusive Canadian society.

Delroy, an artistic 8 year old black child from a tiny seaside village in the Caribbean immigrates to a ‘First World’ inner city. He begins to wonder where his white friends disappear to for the holidays. His imagination comes alive as the film explores the black immigrant child’s experience while celebrating cultural differences in a whimsical fantasy using a unique blend of simple animation, illustration, projection and live action.

Powys Dewhurst is a Caribbean-Canadian filmmaker, his interests lie in fantasy, magical realism and science fiction and using those to explore social issues some some level involving race and identity in unique ways, even controversial ones

Obinna (Lucky Ejim), an African refugee in Canada, faces deportation in 30 days, but is provided an opportunity by a chance confrontation with his terminally ill landlord, Tim (Taylor). A former immigration officer, Tim makes him a proposition offering: he will intervene in his deportation, enabling him to remain in the country, if he will find his estranged daughter so he can make peace with her before he dies. With the clock ticking, Obinna battles a series of emotional crises as the very foundations of his principles are shaken by the discovery he makes about the people he presumed he could trust.

An urban love story about the soul of a mother, the heart of a fighter and the faith of a child.

JUDE is a single mother who descends from a long line of Jamaican caregivers. SILENCE is a ‘past his prime’ boxer who fights illegally to survive. CIEL is a boy who delves into music, conjuring dreams for his mother. During the last week of summer, a late-night brawl finds the fighter in the nurse’s care causing their three fates to be forever entwined.

Her other directing credits include the feature film Peggy Su! (BBC Films, 1997); the drama What My Mother Told Me (Channel 4 1995), and Bideshi (British Film Institute 1994); and documentaries Literature Alive (Bravo!/OMNI, 2006), Reunion (BBC,1993), and I Is A Long Memoried Woman (Arts Council of England 1991).

She is currently developing a new feature film project, based on her critically acclaimed theatre play LOCKDOWN that launched at the Toronto Fringe Theatre festival 2009.
As well as directing, Frances-Anne is the Artistic Director and President of the two companies she founded, Leda Serene Films, her film and television production vehicle, and CaribbeanTales, a prolific not for profit company that makes multimedia products aimed at the educational market.
Most recently she created, produced and directed the multi-facetted Literature Alive and HeartBeat projects, comprising 35 documentaries exploring the life and work of Caribbean authorsand composer/musicians from the 60′s through the hip-hop generation (for Bravo! CLT, BookTV, and OMNI TV); a series of audio books (for the Trillium Foundation), and the DCH funded educational website.

She was the Co-creator, Producer and Director of Lord Have Mercy! Canada’s multi-cultural hit sitcom, which aired on Vision TV, Toronto/ one, Showcase and APTN in 2003 and was nominated for two Gemini Awards: Best Comedy series, and Best Individual Performer (Leonie Forbes)

She is the Founder and curator of The CaribbeanTales Annual Film Festival Canada’s one and only forum showcasing the best of Caribbean cinema from around the world, now entering its fith year.
This year 2009 marked the launch of another Frances-Anne Solomon project – The CaribbeanTales Youth Film festival Celebrating Black History Month, a unique screening series that showcases Africentric films for high school and university students.

As a Producer and Executive Producer for BBC TV Drama & Films in the 1990′s, Frances-Anne was responsible for several strands of films and TV movies including the Black Screen Strand, and Screen on the Tobe (with the BFI). Productions include Speak Like A Child, director John Akomfrah, Love Is The Devil, director John Maybury, The Sixth Happiness, director Waris Hossein, and Siren Spirits, directors Ngozi Onwurah, Pratibha Parmar and Dani Williamson.

She previously worked as a radio drama producer/director for the BBC, producing some 35 radio plays, and as a documentary researcher and director for The Bandung File (Channel 4) and Ebony (BBC2).

She studied Theatre at the University of Toronto with Steve Martineau and Ken Gass, and poetry with Jay MacPherson; and trained as a film director in the UK at Bristol University’s RFT Programme and the prestigious BBC Drama Directors Course.

Filmography

* LockDown, Feature Film, In Development, 2009. As Creator, Writer, Director.
* HearBeat, 2008, TV Series – as Series Creator/Producer, Director.
* A Winter Tale, 2007, Feature Film – as Writer/Director, Producer.
* LiteratureAlive, 2005-6, TV Series – as Series Creator/Producer, Director.
* Lord Have Mercy!, 2001-3, sitcom – as Director, Producer, Co-Creator, Co-writer.
* Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon, 1998, Feature Film – as Executive Producer

… aka Love Is the Devil (France) (UK: short title) … aka Ai no akuma (Japan)

* Speak Like a Child, 1998, Feature Film – as Executive Producer
* Peggy Su!, 1997, Feature Film, as Director
* Sixth Happiness, 1997, Feature Film – as Executive Producer
* Flight, 1995, Television Movie, as Executive Producer
* What My Mother Told Me, 1996, Feature – as Writer/Director, Producer
* Siren Spirits, 1995, Mini-Series – as Creator, Series Producer.
* Bideshi, 1995, Short Film – as Director
* Reunion: West Indian Women at War, 1993, Documentary – as Writer/Director, Producer
* I Is a Long Memoried Woman, 1990, Documentary Feature – as Writer/Director.

Websites

Leda Serene Films
A Winter Tale
Newz Blog
CaribbeanTales
Lord Have Mercy
Leda Serene’s Myspace
A Winter Tale My Space
LiteratureAlive Online
Youtube Chanel
Flickr

She is the producer of three feature films, The Sweetest Mango, No Seed, and Diablessealong with a number of television programmes, including the children’s television program Pet Playhouse for the Humane Society of Antigua and Barbuda. This programme, which is aimed at sensitizing children about animal welfare and conservation in the Caribbean, was funded by The World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA). Mitzi has also produced a number of documentaries and news features, which are distributed throughout the Caribbean and North America.

Mitzi is now the managing director of HAMA Inc. which owns and operates HAMA TV an independent cable channel. She is the host of LIVE UP the regional television programme produced by the Caribbean Media Partnership on HIV funded in part by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Elton John Foundation and the Ford Foundation.. HAMA’s latest project is the production of the drama series Paradise View.

His screenwriting credits include Stomp the Yard, Code Name The Cleaner and Turn It Up. He also directed Turn it Up.

Articles

“Interview with Robert Adetuyi”, Sudbury Star, January 24, 2007
Hit Movie Written by Sudbury’s Robert Adetuyi
Hollywood and Vine – Interview with Rob Adetuyi

Links

Robert Adetuyi at the Internet Movie Database