Caribbeantales International Film Festival To Be Held In September In Toronto, Canada, As The Event Celebrates 10 Years In 2015 !!
TORONTO, Canada – From Barbados we screen four amazing films at Caribbeantales International Film Festival!! There is a spectacular feature narrative and a short film Directed by Rodney Smith from Barbados, who is based in Canada . His feature, ‘Out of Time’, is a Science Fiction film. The others are two wonderful short films, “Soucouyant”(from Barbados/ St. Lucia) by Sean Michael Field, “Going Beyond” by Damien Pinder.
‘Out of Time’ is a first feature length Science Fiction from a Barbadian Director and is much more than spaceships and ray guns. It follows a man who has to change his past as he is implicated in the murder of his girlfriend, so must go back in time in order to save her. “….It is based firmly in our world and our time with technology that exists in some form, with a healthy dose of “what if”. I can definitely say that it’s a product of my upbringing in Barbados and it shows how we tell the story. Our culture and everything around us shapes how we all view science fiction. The questions we ask are always going to be different than someone else raised in North America or even in China or Africa. I’m glad to bring this film to CaribbeanTales and show that it’s not just culturally important films or stories that have to come from the Caribbean. We can dream big and bring a level of skill and professionalism that can be accepted anywhere in the world”, says Rodney Smith.
At a recent media launch held at the Consulate General for the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago in Toronto on July 8th, CaribbeanTales unveiled its 2015 Programme. The standing- room-only event featured many Toronto luminaries, and was MC’d by the Honourable Jean Augustine, PC, CM with speakers including T&T Consul General Dr. Vidya Gyan Tota-Maharaj, CaribbeanTales founder and Executive Director Frances-Anne Solomon, Programmer Christopher Pinheiro, Partnerships Coordinator Emmy Pantin, and Incubator Chair Dr. Rita Shelton-Deverell.
“CaribbeanTales continues to have its finger on the pulse of a dynamic movement of evolving film expression across the region and its Diaspora,” says founder and filmmaker Frances-Anne Solomon. “In just ten years, a very short period of time, our film stories have matured to become stunningly assured, explosive, transgressive, probing, beautiful and urgent. And this is what we see represented on screen in this year’s selections.”
Running from September 9 – 19 at the chic Royal Cinema, CTFF’s 10th anniversary edition will showcase a fantastic selection of Caribbean films from around the globe. These include 16 feature-length films and 30 short films in Official Competition for the CTFF Jury and Audience Awards, to be announced on the closing night – September 19.
Caribbeantales International Film Festival, runs alongside the prestigious Toronto International Film Festival and also features an intensive five-day Incubator Program for Caribbean and Diaspora filmmakers, followed by a Pitch Breakfast at the TIFF Bell Lightbox (Toronto Int’l Film Festival facilities) and many exciting networking events.
CTFF’s 2015 programming committee, consisting of movers and shakers from the Caribbean film community, has worked hard to put together a line-up that will surely WOW audiences. The festival’s uniquely themed Program consists of evenings of features and short films including Caribbean SCI-FI new exciting Caribbean science fiction stories; Vanishing legacies covering important Caribbean traditions; Trini-to-the-Bone, a celebration of old and new Trinidad culture; Jamaican Symphany legendaries and the best of the Jamaican music culture; Queer Caribbean, spotlighting new LGBTQ films; Shifting Perspectives, a partnership with the Rendezvous With Madness Film Festival that focuses on mental health issues; After The Exodus, exploring themes of reparations, slavery and trafficking, and #AllBlackLivesMatter – Caribbean, that addresses in fiction and documentary the escalation of tensions between Haitians and Dominicans in the Dominican Republic…
The September 8 – 13, 6th Annual CaribbeanTales Incubator Program (CTI), is an internationally recognized platform that offers selected filmmakers the opportunity to hone their creative and business skills, through workshops and one‐on‐one mentorships with world-class specialists. CTI will culminate in The Big Pitch, when participants present their developed film projects to international funders and buyers.
This CTFF Film Festival & 10 Year celebration is a first in Canada and the only one of its kind in North America devoted to Caribbean films – and is not to be missed !! Festival Website: http://www.caribbeantales.ca/CTFF/
