CaribbeanTales-TV celebrates International Women’s Month this year by sharing 42 titles from 23 women Caribbean filmmakers. All the films listed can be streamed directly from the CaribbeanTales-TV website, and are on sale at special Women’s Month prices until the end of March. Support women Caribbean filmmakers by viewing their films here!
Alison Saunders
Hit for Six – Trinidad and Tobago 2007 | 90 minutes
SYNOPSIS: As Alex battles the demons of his past, he learns valuable lessons in love and forgiveness. Hit For Six! is the story of a playboy West Indies cricketer who is still fighting the demons of his past, which includes a match-fixing charge. He learns about love as he struggles for his last chance to play in a major global tournament. And he desperately wants to earn the respect of his estranged father, a former great West Indies cricketer. This inspirational and emotional drama, punctuated with excitement, intrigue and love, recounts how Alex Nelson, a talented but inconsistent cricketer, has been sidelined from the West Indies team for scuffling with his coach, Amir Misra of India. Blackballed by the team for three years, he pursues an unlikely quest to get back on the team for a last chance to play in the Global One Day Series — an opportunity unfairly denied to his father.
Annalee Davis
On The Map – Documentary | Barbados, Trinidad & Tobago & Guyana | 2007 | 30 mins | English
SYNOPSIS: The film debunks the myth of a unified, “laid back” Caribbean culture by exposing how Caribbean people treat themselves as ‘other’. By questioning the notion of a merged Caribbean, the film asks difficult questions: Have regional institutions failed to advance integration? Will political leaders sacrifice sovereign power for a shared power under increasing regional governance? Is the CSME interested in the lives and dreams of poor, unskilled Caribbean nationals? Includes interviews with: Mas man Peter Minshall; poet Kamau Brathwaite; playwright/performer Michael Gilkes; and, musician Wendell Manwarren, among others. Notable Festivals & Screenings: 4th Annual Latin American & Caribbean Film Festival, Atlanta, GA; 9th DC Caribbean Filmfest 2009 Decima Bienial de la Habana, Cuba; 3rd Annual Trinidad & Tobago Film Festival; CARIFESTA X, Guyana; Roxbury Film Festival, Boston; Orlando’s 1st Caribbean Film Festival; ReelWorld Film Festival; Brooklyn Museum of Art Barbados International Film Festival.
Asha Lovelace
Joebell and America – Feature Film | Trinidad & Tobago | 2006 | 83 mins | English
SYNOPSIS: A gambler concocts a risky plan to escape to the promise and fantasy of America. Prepared to leave everything behind, including his newly-found romance with the village beauty, he sets out for his final destination. With each step of his journey he discovers more of himself and understands more about the island of his birth. Based on a short story by Commonwealth Writers Prize winner Earl Lovelace, Joebell and America is adapted and directed by his daughter Asha, filmed and edited by his son Walt, with son Che as the Art Director.
Dawn Wilkinson
Devotion – Feature Film | Canada | 2005 | 80 mins | English
SYNOPSIS: A bi-racial 11-year-old girl loses her mother in a car accident because of her father’s drunk driving. As father and daughter begin a new life, she is haunted by memories of her mother’s death and displeased with the new woman in her father’s life. This coming-of-age story seeks resolution between her identity as the child of a white mother and her reluctant forgiveness of her black father. Devotion is Dawn Wilkinson’s first feature film. For it, she won the Tony Stoltz Completion Award and the Star! Audience Award at the ReelWorld Film Festival in Toronto, as well as Best Feature at the San Francisco Urban Kids Film Festival.
Instant Dread - Short Film | Canada | 1998 | 13 mins | English
SYNOPSIS: Kauri, a stylist at the Max ‘n’ Relax Salon, dreams of a spirit who gives her a magical shell pouch. Inside, she finds a secret ingredient for her new invention. Unexpectedly, the product gives everyone instant dreadlocks and Kauri is faced with the charge of selling out her culture.
Wilderness - Short Film | Canada | 2012 | 12 mins | English
SYNOPSIS: When Linda Michaels wakes to find her teenaged son, Kevin, has left home in the middle of the night, she begins the all-too-familiar search for him in the gritty downtown streets of the city. Kevin refuses treatment for schizophrenia, causing him to become more and more erratic and paranoid. Wilderness is about the enormous suffering experienced by those who stand alongside the people they love struggling with severe mental illness.
Ella Cooper
Black Men Loving - Short Documentary | Canada | 2014 | 28 min | English | HD
SYNOPSIS: Black Men Loving is a heartwarming film that challenges racial assumptions and stereotypes often associated with Black fathers in the media. Through short intimate profiles with men from Regent Park and across Toronto, the film strives to share a new perspective on Black fathers, as they take on parenthood in full stride.
Elspeth Duncan
Invisible - Short Film | Trinidad & Tobago | 2008 | 11 mins | English
SYNOPSIS: The story of a woman named “Veronica” and her two children. Both the mother and her young daughter are HIV-positive and face the bitter effects of discrimination against people living with HIV/AIDS in Trinidad & Tobago. Subsequent to the making of this video, Duncan and friends partnered with Habitat for Humanity to build a home for “Veronica” and her children. This film was created for the Trinidad & Tobago Coalition for the Convention on the Rights of the Child (TTCCRC).
Frances-Anne Solomon
What My Mother Told Me - Feature Film | Trinidad & Tobago | 1995 | 57 mins | English
SYNOPSIS: A young woman from England goes to Trinidad to bury her father. Reluctantly she agrees to meet her mother, whom she thinks abandoned her when she was a child. Her mother tells her stories that reveal her parents troubled and violent marriage and she is forced to face the truth. What My Mother Told Me is one of the few works produced by a Trinidadian woman that deals with the survival strategies of middleclass Caribbean women. Exquisitely beautiful and profoundly moving, it is a dramatic journey towards self-discovery. It won the 2006 HBO Best Feature Award at Martha’s Vineyard African-American Film Festival and Best Film Depicting the Black Experience, Festival of Black International Cinema, Berlin.
A Winter Tale - Feature Film | Canada | 2008 | 105 mins | English | HD | IMDb
SYNOPSIS: Six Black men — all patrons at Miss G’s Caribbean Take Away Restaurant – come together to form a support group after a young boy is shot dead. Their efforts are a poignant attempt to rescue their broken spirits and salvage the besieged community In A Winter Tale, Frances-Anne Solomon explores the men’s nuanced relationships against the backdrop of their multicultural neighborhood’s unrealized hopes and dreams. Bitter and tragic, funny and hopeful, the film tells a uniquely Canadian story that features Toronto as a central character.
Bideshi - Short Film | U.K. | 1995 | 20 mins | English | SD | IMDb
SYNOPSIS: Bideshi (d. Frances-Anne Solomon, 1994) was one of four films featured in Siren Spirits, a BBC2 series of short films by Black and Asian women writers on the theme of magic and the supernatural. Written by Tanika Gupta (Flight, 1994; London Bridge, 1998; Crossroads, 2001), Bideshi is an enchanting, playful portrayal of the final odyssey of a dying man. “Bideshi” is a slang term for a foreigner, though as many people with a cross-cultural heritage will admit, “Bideshi” has a bittersweet echo that says one can be a foreigner twice.
HUMAN TRAFFIC: PAST AND PRESENT - Documentary | U.S.A | 2012 | 34 mins | English
SYNOPSIS: This documentary records the themes and outcomes of a Conference on Human Trafficking hosted by Duke University, October 11-13 2011. An intimate weekend of discussion and presentation that aimed to tease out some of the themes as well as the fallacies and myths that afflict this troubling phenomenon. Produced by the Center for African and African American Research at Duke University. Executive Producer: J. Lorand Matory PhD; Associate Producer: Michaeline A. Critchlow Presenters include: Siddharth Kara, Robert Bach, Gunther Peck, Cindy Hahamovitch, Jacqueline Bhabha.
I is a Long Memoried Woman - Documentary | U.K. | 1990 | 50 mins | English
SYNOPSIS: An extraordinary video based on Grace Nichols’ collection of poems that chronicles the history of slavery through the eyes of Caribbean women, it is a striking combination of monologue, dance, and song – griot-style – that conveys a young African woman’s quest for survival in the New World. The poems are performed by two narrators. The first, played by Adjoa Andoh, is a young girl, painfully trying to come to terms with her enforced reality. The second, Leonie Forbes, is a mature woman who has seen and survived all. The dramatic narration is juxtaposed with dance sequences performed by Malisha Adlum, Eusebia Suffren and Steve Wright, along with archive stills of enslavement and revolt. Awards: Gold Award for Television Performing Arts, New York International Film & Television Festival Best Feature Documentary (BBC Radio Version), Sony Radio Awards. Most Innovative Radio Feature (Nominated), Prix Futura.
Peggy Su! – Feature Film | U.K. | 1997 | 92 mins | English
SYNOPSIS: A romantic comedy set in a Chinese laundry in Liverpool in 1962. Like the character of Peggy, the film is a small gem and there is much more to it than meets the eye. The main character, Peggy (Pamela Oei) yearns for romance and wants to be married, these are the men she encounters. Oei makes a seemingly plain girl into an interesting, vital personality.
Reunion - Documentary | U.K. | 1993 | 25 mins | English
SYNOPSIS:It took the War Office two years of infighting to allow Caribbean women of colour to join the ATS, a branch of the British Army. Five of these women get together again some 50 years after they were among 300 West Indian women who came to Britain to serve in the war so that male soldiers could leave their desk duties to go to the Front. Solomon’s upbeat film makes good use of some truly appalling War Office internal memos. The documentary also uses archival footage and still photographs of these young women looking astonishingly exotic in foggy wartime London. These five friends settled in England afterwards, one to become a Head Teacher while another became a midwife.
Lord Have Mercy - Series | Canada | 2003 | 22.4 mins per episode | English | SD | IMDb
SYNOPSIS: A refreshingly new and funny take on church life, set firmly in the tradition of British sitcom classics like Desmond and Bless Me Father, Lord Have Mercy! takes familiar universal threads of everyday multicultural life.
Judith Falloon Reid
Gift Everlasting, The - Feature Film | Jamaica | 2014 | 81 mins | English
SYNOPSIS: The extravagant celebrations planned to celebrate a couple’s 20th wedding anniversary are a sham – they have drifted apart and the once cohesive family is now in turmoil. As the plot unfolds it exposes the effects of neglect and misplaced priorities on the family as both parents seek consolation and comfort in all the wrong places. Hours before the big event, things take a dramatically wrong turn, threatening the success of the evening’s event and the future of the entire family.
Judy Singh
Blood - Documentary | Cuba | 2005 | 24 mins | English | SD
SYNOPSIS: The film is part extraordinary music video (shot on locations around Havana, Cuba) and part entertaining after-dinner conversation between d’bi young and her friends. Directed and produced by Cayman-based filmmaker Judy Singh, the film features performances by the Cuban female Hip-Hop Group Las Krudas.
Karen Martinez
After Mas - Short Film | Trinidad & Tobago | 2013 | 20 mins | English | HD
SYNOPSIS: AFTER MAS is a new short film from London-based Trinidadian filmmaker Karen Martinez. It tells the story of a love that flourishes under the cover of darkness during the festival of J’ouvert on the streets of Port-of-Spain. Shot in Trinidad in February 2013 during Carnival, we experience the charge of this bacchanalian drama before following the characters return to their separate lives. In the cold light of day, can these young lovers from very different backgrounds stay true to their desires?
Lana Lovell
Resilience: Stories of Single Black Mothers - Documentary | Canada | 2010 | 48 mins | English
SYNOPSIS: With honesty, intelligence and humour, Nancy, Simone and Gloria reflect on their experiences of balancing single parenthood, working life, relationships and the fulfillment of their own goals in the context of a society that is often harshly judgmental. By interweaving these intimate stories, the documentary offers a deeper understanding of the challenges, practical strategies and dreams of three resilient women and, indeed, of many black single mothers in Canada. Notable Festivals & Screenings: Ontario Black History Society’s International Film Festival; DOC Night Out; African Diaspora Film Festival; Mid-Atlantic Black Film Festival; International Black Film Festival of Nashville; Detroit Windsor International Film Festival.
Mandisa Pantin
Caribbean Skin, African Identity - Short Documentary | Trinidad & Tobago | 2010 | 38 mins | English
SYNOPSIS: Examining the concept of African identity as it has evolved over the generations in Trinidad & Tobago, Pantin explores her own identity, using the Emancipation Day parade and its rituals as a starting point for her journey. Interviews with African-Caribbean people and scholars define and explain some of the complexities of race in this society.
Maria Govan
Rain - Feature Film | Bahamas | 2008 | 123 mins | English
SYNOPSIS: A teenaged girl with no parental role model in her life, must look within herself for strength and discovers she has a gift for running. She receives guidance from her school’s track coach, Ms. Adams, but the poverty and despair of her mother’s reality threatens to spoil her dream.
Director Maria Govan makes her debut with one of the first films indigenously produced in the Bahamas. Rain shows a darker side of the country that tourists rarely see with a striking visual sense that reflects the contrast between the idyllic setting and the harsh realities of Bahamian life.
Mariel Brown
Insatiable Season - Documentary | Trinidad & Tobago | 2007 | 52 mins | English
SYNOPSIS: It is January 2006 and Brian MacFarlane’s carnival workshop is quiet and practically empty – littered with left-over costumes and a couple of hangers-on from last year’s carnival. As the days pass the atmosphere starts to change. One by one, carnival costume makers begin arriving at the workshop (mas camp) anticipating the release of designs and the work that’s to come for the 2006 band, Threads of Joy. The Insatiable Season is a fun and intimate look at the creations, crises and passion of the MacFarlane camp as they produce a beautiful costumed band for Trinidad’s Carnival.
Solitary Alchemist - Documentary | Trinidad & Tobago, U.K. | 2009 | 70 mins | English
SYNOPSIS: Trained at England’s prestigious Royal College of Art, Barbara Jardine moved back to her native Trinidad in 1974. Here she developed new techniques in working with traditional and indigenous materials and evolved a personal narrative style for making wearable works of art.
But 30 years on from returning to the Caribbean, and in spite of having her work purchased by a major metropolitan museum, there are nagging questions she just can’t shake: Why isn’t my work more recognised? Have I made a crucial mistake? An opportunity to create a new piece for an exhibition in Scotland presents itself and Jardine is both nervous and hopeful. Will this be the chance to finally carve out her own space in the world?
Marion Bethel
Womanish Ways, Freedom, Human Rights & Democracy - Documentary | Bahamas | 2013 | 75 mins | English
SYNOPSIS: This documentary is dedicated to the heroic struggle of Kate Moss and Mary Prince, two enslaved women who fought for their freedom in the 1820s in The Bahamas, and to the women of the Women’s Suffrage Movement who continued with the advocacy for freedom and social justice. In their singular womanish ways, these women advanced and expanded the cause of democracy in The Bahamas.
Mary Wells
Art for Social Change - Documentary | Jamaica | 2008 | 35 mins | English | SD
SYNOPSIS: There are many similarities between the story of A Winter Tale and the present-day realities of crime and gun violence in Jamaica. Michael, an inner-city Kingstonian youth, is so moved by the film’s relevance to issues in his own community and life that he decides to take the initiative to arrange a screening within his community. The documentary shows how powerful film can be used as a tool for discussion. It also shows how it can strengthen the efforts of young people who want to take their lives into their own hands in order to change their environment. Notable Festivals & Screenings: CaribbeanTales Youth Film Festival
Now Jimmy - Documentary | Jamaica | 1999 | 15 mins | English
SYNOPSIS: A documentary that explores land rights issues from Jimmy’s “very jamaican” POV. Jimmy is a squatter.
Nicole Brooks
A Linc in Time - Documentary | Canada | 2010 | 48 mins | English | HD
SYNOPSIS: During the era of America’s civil rights movement, Lincoln MacCauley Alexander made Canadian history. The film heralds his significant roles as the first black Member of Parliament in Canada and as the first black Lieutenant Governor of Ontario as well as his extraordinary personal attributes. The documentary reveals a surprising, funny, often heartbreaking but always inspiring account of his childhood, loves of his life, successes and tragedies — in his own words.
Ase - Documentary | Canada | 2012 | 6 mins | English | HD
SYNOPSIS: Dance film that celebrates the lives of enslaved Africans. As they are released from their daily work, they gather to prepare and participate in Sunday worship in solidarity with their Ancestors and for the Orishas (revered deities in the Yoruba religion). Ase gives us a glimpse into this awe-inspiring service and in turn pays homage to those slaves who managed through terrible adversity to conserve a piece of their heritage and identity in song and dance.
Orisha Suite, The - Short Film | Canada | 2010 | 34 mins | English
SYNOPSIS: A celebration of the spirit of enslaved Africans, who were able to preserve some of their culture and ritual practices in the new lands where they were taken to by force. Journeying through spirit to a period of ancestor reverence and ritual, a little boy experiences history on the shores of the ocean, through song, dance and rhythm. The film pays homage to the Orishas, and celebrates one of the rich cultural legacies of the Caribbean.
Sistahs Concert, The - Documentary | Canada | 2010 | 47 mins | English
SYNOPSIS: On March 3, 2010, eight of Canada’s most beloved Black female vocalists came together on the same stage, for one night of extraordinary music. Along with the evening’s best performances, viewers are given a ‘backstageÕ pass and experience behind the scenes exclusives, mini interviews, rehearsals and preparations that went into putting this awesome show together. Includes appearances by Molly Johnson, Jackie Richardson, Ada Lee, Divine Brown, Toya Alexis, Alana Bridgewater, Sacha Williamson and Shakura SÕaida. It features a variety of solos, and culminates in an awe-inspiring group number.
Nina Vilus
Trou D’Air - Short Film | Guadeloupe | 2010 | 7 mins | English
SYNOPSIS: Soah is a former flight attendant who suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorders. While experiencing one of her anxiety attacks, a thief comes into her world.
Nyasha Lang
Punta Soul - Documentary | Beize | 2008 | 39 mins | English
SYNOPSIS: Punta Soul is the intergenerational story of an inspiring musical journey told through its intimate portraits of Garifuna musicians such as Andy Palacio. The Garifuna, an afro-indigenous people exiled from the Caribbean to the coast of Central America in 1798, have carried on a rich and vibrant culture whose expression is found in the electric sound called “punta rock” and the more soulful “paranda.”
Rachele Magloire
Deported - Haiti / France | 2012 | Feature Documentary | 81 min | English, French & Spanish | G | HD
SYNOPSIS: A series of portraits that give voice to sentences offenders who on release from prison are deported to their home country, Haiti.
Back in Port-au-Prince, a city they left as children, a new life begins for these “Americans” in an environment that is both completely unfamiliar and quite hostile. They are unprepared for its return (with no family ties in their “home” country nor mastery of the Creole language) and lack the means to manage any sort of re-integration.
Renee Polonais
Directions - Short Documentary | Trinidad & Tobago | 2008 | 12 mins | English
SYNOPSIS: No one gives directions like a Trinidadian. Ask a Trini how to get to a certain place and if he doesn’t know the way, instead of admitting his ignorance, he’ll send you on a roundabout route guaranteed to get you hopelessly lost. In this short dramatization of that endearing and frustrating phenomenon, a number of persons are asked to give directions to a well-known Port of Spain landmark, with unsurprisingly hilarious results. Awards: People’s Choice Award for Best Short Film, Trinidad & Tobago Film Festival.
Quiet Desperation - Short Drama | Trinidad & Tobago | 2010 | 23 mins | English
The story of 58 year old Heathcliff Defour, a man fast approaching retirement with alot of “luggage”. His life is dull and his marriage unfulfilling. For the past 35 years he has been maried to Merlin, a controlling and bitter woman who is critical of everything, especially him. But it is when Heathcliff finally expresses what is really on his mind, that he loses more than he can handle.
Sarita Siegel
FIRE BURN BABYLON - Documentary | U.K. | 2012 | 53 mins | English
SYNOPSIS: An inquiry into the transformations of culture and place when a spiritually vivid past meets the intransigent reality of a Western city. Rastafarians Lyndon, I-Shaka and Elroy reinvent themselves as rude-boy rappers and small-time hustlers on the East End nightclub circuit. Will their dreams of celebrity be realized before the law catches up with them? There will be difficult choices to be made. Told through the eyes of the men themselves, the women who love them and the elders who guide them. Awards: Audience Award Freestyle Life Film Festival 2012; Special Mention, Aruba International Film Festival 2011; Bronze Palm award, Mexico International Film Festival 2010; Honorable Mention, COMMFFEST MADA AWARDS, Toronto. ‘Best MusicÕ nomination, Jamaica Reggae Film Festival 2012.
Princess Simone Dunlan
Footprints - Short Documentary | Grenada | 2013 | 28 mins | English
SYNOPSIS: In 43.94 seconds a teenager from one of the smallest countries on Earth beats the rest of the world. A young man with a big heart from a small island makes history for Grenada. At a time when unemployment was at its highest and the economy and political climate was under strain, a little fishing village in Guoyave, Grenada, became a spontaneous Carnival city with outpourings of love and camaraderie.
Tamara Tam-Cruikshank
Come with it Black Man - Documentary | Trinidad & Tobago | 2012 | 103 mins | English
SYNOPSIS: An independent feature-length documentary film, digging deep into the consciousness of the Black Man himself, legendary calypsonian Dr. Leroy Calliste, better known as Black Stalin. Featuring the big man’s music and performances as well as interviews with Trinidad’s top entertainment and academic names: Kees, David Rudder, JW and Blaze, Nadia Batson, Dr Roy Cape, Denyse Plummer and Dr. Pat Bishop.
Joanne Gail Johnson (director/producer)
Louris Martin Lee-Sing (producer)
J. Tracy Farrag (producer)
Sally’s Way - Feature Film | Trinidad & Tobago | 2015 | 90 mins | English
SYNOPSIS: Young Sally is traumatised when her only caregiver, her grandmother becomes ill and Sally is forced to move in with the family her grandmother works for. Overcoming her despair, Sally finds unique ways to improve her situation and help both her grandmother, and herself, in “Sally’s Way”. Set in the island of Trinidad in the Caribbean, the film has a universal message of growing up despite the odds. So whether you are living a “Sally Life” or not, this family film will resonate positively with you. The movie is an adapted and expanded version of the children’s book by Joanne Gail Johnson.
Check out the CaribbeanTales catalogue for more films!