Frances-Anne Solomon's acclaimed movie A WINTER TALE, starring Peter Williams and Leonie Forbes, makes it's Canadian Television Premiere on Bravo!

Toronto – December 11th 2009

Following a string of successful North American festival premieres, theatrical releases, and international awards Frances-Anne Solomon’s acclaimed feature film A Winter Tale comes to television audiences across Canada. The film, which features a talented ensemble cast led by Canadian star Peter Williams, rising Toronto actor Michael Miller, and famed Jamaican actrsss and Gemini nominee Leonie Forbes, will have its Canadian television premiere on Bravo! Canada on December 17th at 9pm.

Written, directed and produced by Frances-Anne Solomon, A Winter Tale tells the moving story of a Black men's support group that forms at a local Caribbean takeaway restaurant after a young boy is killed by a stray bullet. With a plot that sensitively explores the psychological effects of the universally relevant issues of urban "Black on Black" violence, the film beautifully captures the day-to-day emotional struggles of this group of men, and a community under seige.

Over the past 18 months A Winter Tale has travelled the world, garnering rave reviews and international recognition through film festivals and cinema releases in Toronto, Montreal, Halifax, New York, Los Angeles Africa, the Caribbean, and the UK.

Most recently it won recognition at Fespaco (Africa's Oscars held biannually in Burkina Faso, West Africa). Other awards include Outstanding Canadian Feature Film Award at the ReelWorld Film Festival, as well as the top awards at the Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival, the Zuma International Film Festival (Nigeria), and many others.

A Winter Tale was developed through a collaborative improvisational process by Vancouver-based theatre director Michele Lonsdale Smith and Frances-Anne Solomon, working together with an extraordinary team of experienced and emerging Canadian and international actors, including Trinidad and Tobago's Dennis "Sprangalang" Hall, and Canada's Valerie Buhagiar.
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SELECTED REVIEWS OF A WINTER TALE:

Caribbean Release - 2008

Television stars in Antigua for debut of acclaimed film - 19 May 2008
The Trinidad Guardian -Online Edition Ver 2.0 - May 18, 2008
A Caribbean filmmaker - May 18th 2008
`A Winter Tale` To Open In Trinidad & Tobago - May 12, 2008
Winter Tale cast arrives for premiere - May 9 2008
Tale of Racism and Healing - May 3 2008
‘A Winter Tale’ impresses Jamaica audiences - April 13, 2008
'A Winter Tale' tells of manly chill - Jamaica Gleaner, Jamaica - April 9 2008
Peter Williams finds 'Wright' role in 'A Winter Tale - April 6, 2008'
'A Winter Tale' makes Jamaican debut - Jamaica Gleaner, Jamaica - April 6 2008
Peter Williams finds 'Wright' role in 'A Winter Tale' - Jamaica Gleaner, Jamaica - April 5 2008
'Winter' in April - Jamaica Gleaner, Jamaica - April 5 2008
‘Winter Tale’ makes TT debut - Trinidad News, Trinidad and Tobago - April 1 2008
Leonie Forbes - On becoming myself - Jamaica Gleaner, Jamaica - March 30 2008
A Winter Tale, starring Leonie Forbes, heads to Jamaican theatres - February 28, 2008
Trinidadian Migrant`s Film Makes BAM Screening Again - February26, 2008

Canada Press
Film examines poverty, gun crime - The Guardian - Etobicoke, 07 February 2008
Something to talk out - Toronto Sun, 04 February 2008
Watching and talking about violence in Toronto - February 5, 2008
A Winter Tale Tells Our Story - Community Contact - August 30 2007
Stepping Up in A Time Of Sorrow - Montreal Gazette - August 29 2007
Capsule Reviews of Selected 2007 WFF Films - Montreal Gazette - August 24 2007

World Premiere of A Winter Tale
Expose - A Winter Tale is pure fireworks
A Winter Tale: An Interview with Frances-Anne Solomon - April 9 2007
This Weekend "A Winter Tale" opens at Rainbow Cinema Woodbine ...
A Winter Tale - The Movie - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Flickr: Photos from frances-anne solomon
A Winter Tale by Frances-Anne Solomon’s Vox :::::: VUVOX
Today@York: A Winter Tale screening - Confronting violence through ...
More News: Free screening of A Winter Tale will be followed by an ...
The Movie that is creating a buzz in Toronto, A Winter Tale
Weather is right for A Winter Tale
WE FILM - A WINTER TALE

*****************

Frances-Anne Solomon is an award-winning filmmaker, writer, director and producer. She is the president and artistic director of the two companies she founded: Leda Serene Films and CaribbeanTales, and has also worked as a film and television drama producer for the BBC.

Recent projects include A Winter Tale (for Telefilm Canada/CHUM Television); Heart Beat (Bravo!) which profiles Caribbean musical creators; Literature Alive, a multi-facetted multimedia project profiling Caribbean authors; and the Gemini-nominated Lord Have Mercy!, Canada's landmark multicultural sitcom, for Vision TV, Toronto1, APTN and Showcase.

Peter Williams, Jamaican-Canadian film and television star, plays Gene in A Winter Tale. Williams' film credits include Catwoman, Chronicles of Riddick and Stargate SG-1.

Leonie Forbes has graced the silver screen in major Hollywood pictures, performed in dozens of theatrical productions, and has worked as a radio broadcaster and programmer in Jamaica. Her selected credits include:Old Story Time, Arawak Gold, Champagne and Sky Juice, and Smile Orange. Her film and television credits include: Shattered Image, Milk and Honey, Passion and Paradise, What My Mother Told Me, and Children of Babylon.

Dawn Wilkinson's Devotion

Producer Bobie Taffe and her team produced this video profile of filmmaker Dawn Wilkinson whose feature film Devotion is being screened at the CaribbeanTales Youth Film Festival.

View "Dawn Wilkinson - Devotion" from Frances-Anne Solomon on Vimeo.

SWEET DEVOTION: During her final year of a BA in Women’s Studies and African Studies at U of T in 1996, Dawn Wilkinson took a one-week filmmaking workshop in Mount Forest, Ontario, that persuaded her to pursue a life behind the camera. The young writer had been crafting plenty of fiction and literary criticism in her classes, but, at the screening of her five-minute film, she was floored by the “immediacy” of the response. “Seeing people connect to my story was something I’d never fully experienced with my writing.”

In 1999, Wilkinson studied at the Canadian Film Centre Directors’ Lab in Toronto. She also served as a director observer (in which a young filmmaker-hopeful watches an established pro at work) during the shooting of the movie Hurricane, with director Norman Jewison (BA 1949 VIC). Wilkinson had established the production company, Afterlife, in 1998, and has since made four short films, as well as several documentaries.

Her first feature, Devotion, recently won the Audience Award at the 2005 Reel World Film Festival in Toronto. The movie explores the concerns of belonging and alienation facing an 11-year-old biracial girl. Alice, the main character, also struggles with her mother’s death, caused by her father’s drunk driving. “The plot is not about being biracial; it’s about her not fitting in at school, about not getting along with her dad. Being biracial is the lens she’s looking through,” says Wilkinson. “I wanted to show that complexity: how she saw herself wasn’t how she was seen by others.”Reprinted from the University of Toronto Magazine.


More Clips from Devotion:

Dawn Wilkinson’s “Devotion” Trailer

Dawn Wilkinson Interview for“Devotion”

Fight Scene from Dawn Wilkinson's "Devotion

Alice and Grant from Dawn Wilkinson's "Devotion"

The Sally scene from Dawn Wilkinson's "Devotion"

Ja Ganesha from Dawn Wilkinson's "Devotion"

Halloween Scene from Dawn Wilkinson’s “Devotion”

More about Dawn Wilkinson

More about Devotion

AfterLife Films Youtube Channel including interviews with Dawn and clips from "Devotion"

Devotion Offical Website

Dawn Wilkinson's website

Best of CaribbeanTales 2010 : Film Festival and Symposium

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The creative industries of film and television will receive a boost this February when CaribbeanTales, a Toronto-based multimedia company, brings together formidable local, regional and international partners to showcase, discuss and promote Caribbean film at “THE BEST OF CARIBBEANTALES FILM FESTIVAL AND SYMPOSIUM” that will take place at the Olympus Cinema, Sheraton Center and at UWI Cave Hill from February 23rd to March 2nd, 2010. The Festival kicked off with a Media Launch on December 8, 2009 at 1.30pm at the Errol Barrow Center for Creative Imagination, UWI Cave Hill.

The event’s Director is accomplished Toronto-based Trinidadian filmmaker Frances-Anne Solomon, whose most recent award-winning feature film A Winter Tale has won international acclaim, and who has been a visiting lecturer at UWI. She said: “February is Black History Month and it is fitting for us to mark this with a celebration of film, to start the year with a bang and to push the discussion forward about how we can create here a sustainable and profitable industry”.

The festival is incredibly proud to partner with a number of local organisations including One Caribbean Media, that will co-host a Symposium on Global Distribution; the Shridath Ramphal Center at UWI, that will co-host a Film Market at the Festival; and the Barbados Film and Video Association, whose president Penelope Hynam said: “I am delighted that Barbadian audiences will get to see some of the wonderful films we saw at the Caribbean Tales Festival in Toronto this year, including a fantastic cross section of work by our most important filmmakers from around the Diaspora.”

This year 2010 the CaribbeanTales Film Festival welcomes 3 new Associate Directors who will work alongside Solomon to program, manage and promote the festival: Jamaican filmmaker Mary Wells, whose first feature film Kingston Paradise, recently wrapped production, and is destined for screens later in the year, joins the festival’s management team as the Co-ordinator of the Barbados event. Trinidad-based Producer-Director-TV Personality Lisa Wickham, CEO of E-Zone Entertainment, and Director of the Caribbean Film and Media Academy, (CFMA) will assist with the event production. The CFMA will also host a number of workshops as part of the festival activities. And Mitzi Allen, CEO and Co-owner of HAMA TV in Antigua, also joins the Festival as an Associate Director. HAMA will be covering the Festival, and will be seeking to bring a delegation of OECS producers to Toronto in June.

SYMPOSIUM ON GLOBAL DISTRIBUTION: Hosted jointly by One Caribbean Media and Caribbean Tales, the 1-day Symposium will feature a presentation by OCM Group CEO Terrence Farrell as well as contributions by leading international players in the distribution field.

FILM MARKET: Modelled on the Rotterdam Cinemart, and hosted jointly with the Shridath Ramphal Center at UWI, Cave Hill, selected independent producers will have an opportunity to pitch their projects and have one-on-one meetings with regional and international film and TV buyers, broadcasters, cinema owners, and government representatives.

WORKSHOPS, MASTER CLASSES, EDUCATIONAL SCREENINGS: The Festival in partnership with the Caribbean Film and Media Academy and UltimaxTV will host a number of master classes and workshops including "Lighting and Camera Operation for Film and Video" conducted by UK Cinematograher Lincoln Ascott. The Barbados Film and Video Association will host a workshop at the festival, and there will be educational screenings for high school students, alongside a week of public screenings of some of the best Caribbean and Black international feature films and shorts to be produced in recent years.

The CaribbeanTales Film Festival is North America’s only standalone festival showcasing the best of Caribbean cinema from around the world. Founded by Frances-Anne Solomon, the festival has survived, grown and thrived in the highly competitive Canadian festival scene, to become a notable event in the city’s calendar. “For our 5th anniversary we have planned a number of exciting events and initiatives to promote Caribbean film and TV, including a presence at Cannes 2010. It seemed fitting that we kick off this extraordinary year with a discussion in the Caribbean and Barbados is dynamic, central and accessible.”

Contact: Frances-Anne Solomon/ Monique Young
BestofCaribbeanTales.wordpress.com

actor.director.writer- Spotlight on Filmmaker Charles Officer

Charles Officer's beautiful film Nurse.Fighter.Boy has garnered international praise and acclaim, and will be screened as part of the CaribbeanTales Youth Film Festival on Feb 4th 2010 at 9.30am and again on Feb 24th at 1pm. Buy your tickets today, at our Early Bird Group rate - $7 til December 15th.

Actor.Writer.Director by Jean Hodgkinson

Dashing into a local coffee shop on Danforth just west of Coxwell, in the heart of his old east-end Toronto stomping grounds, Charles Officer looks around as though worried I’ve arrived and, not having seen him, departed already. Making the most of his time in between west coast shoots for his new film, a National Film Board documentary on Vancouver sprinter Harry Jerome, missed opportunities can be costly and a smile of relief crosses his face when he realizes he’s mistaken. He shakes my hand enthusiastically and unnecessarily offers apologies before ordering a coffee. He must then accept a few apologies of mine when I’m forced to dash down the street for a pair of triple-A batteries so we can record the interview. Two of a kind when it comes to first impressions, I suppose.

Having thusly put him at ease, the first interesting nugget divulged by the director/writer of Nurse.Fighter.Boy is that although he acts and directs, he prefers directing. And when he does act, he prefers the live theatre to film because it only gives you one chance to get it right. This principle applies even when he’s directing. “You have to get everything in the shot, the actors have to be on point ... I think it’s a masterful way of working,” Officer said referencing influences on his philosophy as a filmmaker, from classic European and Indian cinema to Alfred Hitchcock. “People think that doing one take is easy, but it’s actually very difficult.” And we’re back to first impressions.

After screening short films in previous years, his first feature Nurse.Fighter.Boy was widely praised at its debut in the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival. But that was only the world’s first impression. Officer recalled how one day, after years of writing and re-writing the story, one of many he was and is constantly working on, he “really decided” Nurse.Fighter.Boy was going to be the first. But the decision didn’t mean the film came easy. The growing process he experienced while honing the script was arduous as were the delays, including an actor’s strike, once filming was set to begin. And it’s not an easy task, revealing your or your family’s trials and tribulations.

“My mother was a nurse, and the black men I grew up around were constantly fighting, with themselves most of the time, but also physically fighting. I initially wrote the script, and there were never any names. They were always just Nurse, Fighter, Boy,” Officer explained. “The story is very much inspired by my sister, who struggles with sickle-cell anaemia.”

The film graphs itself onto the frame of Fate by intertwining the lives of Jude, Ciel and Silence using the themes of three of humanity’s most universally recognizable bonds: love, mortality and belonging. “It all came from these archetypal characters,” Officer said. “I wanted to create a sort of painterly, heightened-realistic presentation of some of the things that I recognized from my childhood.” But although his own experiences inform the story, it isn’t a simple re-telling of his own life.

One of the profound early impressions was his sister’s sickle-cell anaemia, a blood disorder affecting 1 in 5,000 people in the population, but 1 out of every 500 in the black community. Officer has had a chance to see the impacts of the disease on a wider scale. “There are many people I’ve been able to connect with who are sickle-cell anaemic in the community who have been alone,” he recalled when talking about response to the film. “They live with this disease, but no one knows. They disappear for a month because they’ve had a crisis and people don’t know where they are. It’s tough.”

But don’t mistake Nurse.Fighter.Boy for a “disease” film. “I wanted it to be based on a real connection between a mother and a son,” Officer stressed. Working as an emergency-room nurse, Jude is also a single mother raising her 12-year-old son in Canada because his father died when Ciel was an infant, and at the outset of the story she has two worries.

The first is saving enough money to take Ciel to Jamaica to see where he’s from. Jude’s second worry is far more serious: that the sickle-cell anaemia is slowly but surely overcoming her body’s defences and will make an orphan of her beloved son. For his part Ciel, who is well aware of his mother’s ailment, fights insomnia and loneliness while his mother is at work by listening to music, performing tricks and casting magic spells to the delight of a neighbouring girl his own age.

Both Jude and Ciel are fighters, but Silence is the retired boxer earning money by illegal street fighting. As the name implies he’s a man of few words, as is the film in general. Officer maintains the tension throughout by relying effectively on his story, choice of music and visual cues such as facial expressions and body language. Jude just happens to be on duty when Silence meets an opponent and they scuffle, sending him to the emergency room with a gash on his head. He hardly says a word to her during this first meeting but, as Officer remarked, love at first sight exists on film as nowhere else.

The tone is established from the outset. Nurse.Fighter.Boy opens with Silence trying to make amends for an uncharacteristic and prolonged absence from his boxing club. He offers the club’s owner a bottle of rum to make amends, but is calmly rebuked. A day or two later he’s greeted with the news that the owner, his mentor, has died of a heart attack. Silence decides he must now run the club so the young boxers can continue training.

In Nurse.Fighter.Boy Officer has achieved several goals, including “giving work to black actors” and delving into the universal human “fear of losing someone close.” The camera work, the lighting and shadow play, the brilliant sets, a terrific cast and mesmerizing musical score all add up to a haunting yet supremely uplifting film.

jp hodgkinson
11 novembre 2009

More about Charles Officer

More about Nurse.Fighter.Boy

View The Trailer!
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The CaribbeanTales Youth Film Festival 2010 - Celebrating Black History Month screens Africentric films for audiences of high school and university students, and educators.

View The Full Festival Schedule here!

WHEN: February 2-25 2010 @ 9:30 a.m. and at 1:00PM Weekdays
at William Doo Auditorium, 45 Willcocks St. Toronto

Tickets are still available for the following films:
Invisible City by Hubert Davis
Nurse.Fighter.Boy by Charles Officer
The Tenant by Lucky Ejim
Embracing Da Kink by Trey Anthony and Joel Gordon
A Linc in Time by Nicole Brooks
The Incomparable Jackie Richerdson by Lana Lovell
Esther Baby and Me by Louis Taylor
Finder of Lost Children by Ricardo Scipio
A Winter Tale by Frances-Anne Solomon
Devotion by Dawn Wilkinson
The Little Black School House by Sylvia Hamilton
Guns by Sudz Sutherland
The Survivor's Project by Cabral "Larc" Trotman
The Woman I Have Become by Alison Duke

TICKET INFORMATION:
Early Bird Rate (pay before November 30th)
Students: $7.00
Educators: Free admission per 10 students

Tickets are available at UofTtix Box Office
(416) 978-8849 uofttix.ca
or at the University of Toronto's Central Box Office
Open Mon-Fri 11am-5pm in Hart House, UofT.

To get our SPECIAL GROUP RATES
Please contact :
Miki Nembhard,
Festival Coordinator
416-598-1410,
ctyfilmfestival at gmail.com.

CaribbeanTales Youth Film Festival 2010 - Celebrating Black History Month
is produced in association with the Caribbean Studies Program and New College at the University of Toronto,
The Multicultural History Society of Ontario, and with assistance from
The Department of Canadian Heritage through the Gateway Fund.

A Canadian Pioneer - Fil Fraser

Born of Caribbean parents in the East End of Montreal, FIL FRASER has been a life-long broadcaster, journalist, television program director and administrator, and a radio, television and feature film producer.

"I've been a broadcaster since I went to work for Foster Hewitt's CKFH in Toronto when I was still a teen-ager. I'm still connected as a director of Denham Jolly's Flow 93.5 radio station in Toronto. Along the way I've done everything there was to do in front of and behind the microphones and cameras, from anchoring the CBC TV Edmonton supper hour to being CEO of a national television network.

Since growing up in a French Canadian neighbourhood in east end Montreal I've always lived and worked in the mainstream (i.e. white) world. Being Black was rarely an issue in my career. There were only two occasions on which I faced overt racism, and I didn't know about the first until long after it happened. I was working at CKBB, a radio station in Barrie, Ontario in the 1950s as the Sports Director and Assistant News Editor, doing the play-by-play for the Barrie Flyers hockey games. Apparently one of the sponsors didn't like the idea of a "Black boy" doing his commercials and told Ralph Snelgrove, who owned the station, to get rid of me. It was years later, when I was being inducted into the quarter century club of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters, that Snelgrove told me about the incident. He told the sponsor to take his business elsewhere - and never mentioned it to me.

I was in Saskatchewan in the early 1960s, publishing the Regina Weekly Mirror, when a landlord refused to rent an apartment to me because of my colour. I called up the province's attorney general, who had just passed a fair accommodation practices act and told him about it. The case was the first to be prosecuted by the legislation. The company offered me an apartment, which I declined.

All of this is to say that when I grew up in east end Montreal, where maudit négre sounded like one work, and fighting my way home from school was a regular occurrence, I learned coping skills that allowed me, as I grew up, to be quite comfortable in mainstream society. In a long career in broadcasting, journalism, human rights and movie making, no one ever told me that I couldn't do what I wanted to do.

This fact has perplexed me for years. Was I just lucky? Was my career the product of tokenism? Did I just not see the racism that was all around me? It's possible that all of the above were factors in my life. But I have always been keenly aware of the subtle racism than animates so much of Canadian society, and I have very good radar to detect it. When I saw racism in my own life, I simply refused to tolerate what I perceived and volubly identified as ignorance on the part of the perpetrators. At the same time I was angered by the racism faced by other members of the Black community, and, as a journalist and later as Chief Commissioner of the Alberta Human Rights Commission, spoke out against it. My essay on being Black in Canada appeared in the 100th Anniversary issue of Saturday night magazine in 1987. Regular columns in a number of daily newspapers, including the Toronto Star, frequently addressed this issue.

So when I started making movies in the early 1970s I made them in mainstream Canada. That's where the money and the audiences were. I was not aware of anyone making Black oriented films at the time. But now, as I watch the burgeoning careers of Claire Prieto, Clement Virgo, Frances-Anne Solomon, Charles Officer, and others, I wish I were 30 or 40 years younger and could get into the game. But making movies requires the energy, the stamina and the bull headedness of youth.

So now I write books. The first was a mainstream effort, chronicling the extraordinary period in Alberta when Peter Lougheed's government provided more funding for the arts than, with the possible exception of Quebec, any other province. The second, a biography of Harry Jerome, went a long way to connecting me to the country's modern Black community. The third has put me right into the middle of it.

How the Blacks Created Canada is part of a series being produced by my publishers that tells the stories of how various ethnic groups contributed to the development of the country. How the English, Scots, French and Italians created Canada are already in print. Another author is writing about the Chinese and other volumes are in the works.

The stories of Black achievement that I have discovered are remarkably uplifting; from how Blacks saved British Columbia for Canada to how Josiah Henson became a friend of the Archbishop of Canterbury and dined with the Queen to how the Oliver/White family has, for generations, shown the way to success in Nova Scotia to how one of the best editorial cartoonists in the country is the great grandson of former slaves who moved from Oklahoma to homestead near Maidstone, Saskatchewan in 1908, the Black contribution to Canadian life has not been told.

How the _____ Created Canada should make a great film series. One of our young film makers should grab the initiative."

Fil Fraser
www.filfraser.ca

More about Fil Fraser

Fil Fraser's contributions to Canadian film and Television will be honored at the CaribbeanTales Youth Film Festival GALA LAUNCH

Date: Thursday January 21st 2010 @ 6.30pm
Venue: William Doo Auditorium, 45 Willcocks St. Toronto
Tickets are $20 each,
Look forward very much to seeing you there!

Frances-Anne Solomon
Artistic Director, Founder
_______________

The CaribbeanTales Youth Film Festival 2010 - Celebrating Black History Month screens Africentric films for audiences of high school and university students, and educators.

View The Full Festival Schedule here!

WHEN: February 2-25 2010 @ 9:30 a.m. and at 1:00PM Weekdays
at William Doo Auditorium, 45 Willcocks St. Toronto

Tickets are still available for the following films:
Invisible City by Hubert Davis
Nurse.Fighter.Boy by Charles Officer
The Tenant by Lucky Ejim
Embracing Da Kink by Trey Anthony and Joel Gordon
A Linc in Time by Nicole Brooks
The Incomparable Jackie Richerdson by Lana Lovell
Esther Baby and Me by Louis Taylor
Finder of Lost Children by Ricardo Scipio
A Winter Tale by Frances-Anne Solomon
Devotion by Dawn Wilkinson
The Little Black School House by Sylvia Hamilton
Guns by Sudz Sutherland
The Survivor's Project by Cabral "Larc" Trotman
The Woman I Have Become by Alison Duke

TICKET INFORMATION:
Early Bird Rate (pay before November 30th)
Students: $7.00
Educators: Free admission per 10 students

Tickets are available at UofTtix Box Office
(416) 978-8849 uofttix.ca
or at the University of Toronto's Central Box Office
Open Mon-Fri 11am-5pm in Hart House, UofT.

To get our SPECIAL GROUP RATES
Please contact :
Miki Nembhard,
Festival Coordinator
416-598-1410,
ctyfilmfestival at gmail.com.

CaribbeanTales Youth Film Festival 2010 - Celebrating Black History Month
is produced in association with the Caribbean Studies Program and New College at the University of Toronto,
The Multicultural History Society of Ontario, and with assistance from
The Department of Canadian Heritage through the Gateway Fund.

Invitation to attend our Gala Launch

(Click on invitation to enlarge)

Tickets are now available for

CaribbeanTales Youth Film Festival GALA LAUNCH and Awards Ceremony

Date: Thursday January 21st 2010 @ 6.30pm

Featuring "Invisible City"
Winner of the Best Canadian Documentary Award at Hot Docs 2009
and "Hardwood"
from Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Hubert Davis.
Mr. Davis will join us for the Launch and to introduce his award-winning films.

Venue: William Doo Auditorium, 45 Willcocks St. Toronto

Tickets are $20 each,

Look forward very much to seeing you there!

Frances-Anne Solomon
Artistic Director, Founder
_______________

The CaribbeanTales Youth Film Festival 2010 - Celebrating Black History Month screens Africentric films for audiences of high school and university students, and educators.

This year the festival shines a spotlight on African-Canadian filmmakers.

View The Full Festival Schedule here!

WHEN: February 2-25 2010 @ 9:30 a.m. and at 1:00PM Weekdays
at William Doo Auditorium, 45 Willcocks St. Toronto

Tickets are still available for the following films:
Invisible City by Hubert Davis
Nurse.Fighter.Boy by Charles Officer
The Tenant by Lucky Ejim
Embracing Da Kink by Trey Anthony and Joel Gordon
A Linc in Time by Nicole Brooks
The Incomparable Jackie Richerdson by Lana Lovell
Esther Baby and Me by Louis Taylor
Finder of Lost Children by Ricardo Scipio
A Winter Tale by Frances-Anne Solomon
Devotion by Dawn Wilkinson
The Little Black School House by Sylvia Hamilton
The Survivor's Project by Cabral "Larc" Trotman
The Woman I Have Become by Alison Duke

TICKET INFORMATION:
Early Bird Rate (pay before November 30th)
Students: $7.00
Educators: Free admission per 10 students

Tickets are available at UofTtix Box Office
(416) 978-8849 uofttix.ca
or at the University of Toronto's Central Box Office
Open Mon-Fri 11am-5pm in Hart House, UofT.

To get our SPECIAL GROUP RATES
Please contact :
Miki Nembhard,
Festival Coordinator
416-598-1410,
ctyfilmfestival at gmail.com.

CaribbeanTales Youth Film Festival 2010 - Celebrating Black History Month
is produced in association with the Caribbean Studies Program and New College at the University of Toronto, and The Multicultural History Society of Ontario.

This project was made possible with the support of The Department of Canadian Heritage through Canadian Culture Online.

Call for Submissions CaribbeanTales 5th Annual Film Festival 2010

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS FOR THE 2010 CaribbeanTales 5th ANNUAL FILM FESTIVAL

We are now accepting submissions for our summer film festival that will take place June 8th-13th 2010 in Toronto Canada.

On June 2 2009 Barack Obama named June “Caribbean Heritage Month”, to honor the cultural, social and economic contributions of millions of Caribbean people who have made their homes in North America.

He said: “They have brought a unique and vibrant culture. Their multilingual and multiethnic traditions hasve strengthened our social fabric. They have made their mark in every facet of our society, from art to athletics and science to service. “

For our 5th Festival in 2010, we celebrate our Caribbean OURStory. Artistic Director and Festival Founder Frances-Anne Solomon says: "For this milestone festival we recognise and celebrate all the different journeys that have brought us to this time and place from the corners of the world. Caribbean culture is global yet distinctive. Our stories draw on everything, and are unique for that reason. Our films reflect that"

With a growing international awareness of the Caribbean's burgeoning media industry, the CaribbeanTales Film Festival aims to entertain and educate through a series of industry panels, filmmakers' presentations, and networking opportunities, alongside 5 days of entertaining film screenings and stimulating talk-back sessions.

The much buzzed about 2009 CaribbeanTales Film Festival – “A Tool for Education and Social Change” was a huge success, screening an astounding 72 of the best Caribbean films from around the world. The festival welcomed over 50 international guests. The high point took place at our Annual Tribute Awards Ceremony that honored the careers of a number of movers and shakers in the Caribbean film industry, including Christopher Laird, Co-Founder and CEO of Gayelle (Lifetime Achievement Award) Canadian-Jamaican actor Michael Miller (Rising Star Award) Anime Caribe’s Camille Selvon Abrahams (Innovation Award), and Barbadian-Canadian actor, director, and producer Alison Sealey Smith (Award for Excellence). Internationally acclaimed Martinican filmmaker Euzhan Palcy who came from France to receive the festival’s Award of Honor spoke movingly of the impact 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." Said Ms Palcy, whose first film Black Shack Alley, produced in 1983, remains a seminal Caribbean cinematic achievement.

We invite filmmakers of Caribbean heritage, or who have a film with a focus on the Caribbean to participate in this monumental festival, North America's only stand alone Caribbean Film Festival. Please submit by March 31st 2010 to be considered for the CaribbeanTales 5th Annual Film Festival. We look forward to seeing your work!

Submissions can be sent to:
CaribbeanTales
Film Festival Submissions
99 Gore Vale Avenue
Toronto ON M6J 2R5
www.caribbeantales.ca
caribbeantales2009@gmail.com
416-598-1410

Submission Deadline: March 31st 2009

*Please note that submissions will not be returned

CaribbeanTales' mandate is to foster and encourage intercultural understanding and citizen participation through the creation, distribution and presentation of films, videos, new media and events that reflect the diversity and creativity of Caribbean-Canadian and Caribbean-Diasporic heritage and culture. Our vision is to contribute to an inclusive Canadian society by celebrating the rich traditions of Caribbean heritage storytelling.