Rattlesnakes will open Caribbean Tales Film Festival - this afternoon's Caribbean Camera this morning:

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Grab your popcorn. CTFF About to Open. Annual Filmfest has Snakes on the Brain for Gala Night

By Stephen Weir

When the Caribbean Tales Film Festival (CTFF) opens in a couple weeks, the first film of the annual flickfest will have the audience thinking they have snakes on the brain when the theatre lights come back on.  Rattlesnakes is a full- length feature that has rattlers not just in the personalities of the principal actors but literally on camera too. 

The Canadian debut takes place September 4th, right on College Street in Toronto’s Little Italy.  The film will be feted at the festival’s early evening 2019 kick-off and street party, followed by an 8pm VIP filled screening across the street at the Royal Cinema!

This is probably going to be the first movie an audience will ever see where they will see the names of three snakes in the final credits! Slash and Strike don’t get much screen time or any lines to speak, but they do rattle audiences when the hiss and shake their tails at a key point in the flick. The third snake, Delilah was a snake stand-in, whose best scenes were probably shed by the movie’s editor!

The film is adapted from a stage play penned by red-hot UK author and playwright Graham Ronald Farrow. Julius Amedume, the film’s Ghanaian-British director worked with Farrow to come up with a tight 85-minute story.  Rattlesnakes received its World Premier at the Pan African Film Festival in Los Angeles earlier this year and snapped up the Audience Award for Best Movie.

“ The movie is at one level close to the original British play,” Haitian-French-American actor and producer Jimmy Jean-Louis told the Caribbean Camera. “I am not white; in the movie I am kidnapped by three business men who are.  In the original play everyone is white and the kidnappers are regulars Joes, one is a plumber. We have changed that and it makes a significant difference (in the nuance of the story)”

Pictured Right: Jimmy Jean-Louis and Christian Oliver

It is being called a neo-noir thriller, where nothing, except the rattlesnake, is exactly what it seems. Jean-Louis plays a New Age guru, or, is he a sex therapist bedding the unhappy wives of the kidnappers in a swank Santa Barbara retreat?

Fast paced, the film opens with the three cuckolded husbands digging a grave for the therapist. They are enraged after a private eye shows them damning pictures of what sort of therapy Jean-Louis delivers to their unhappy wives (which they are paying for). They have agreed amongst themselves to break into the California love nest and teach the guru a lesson he probably isn’t going to survive!

The therapist is bound and beaten with a knuckle-breaking hammer. And, before the torture ends, the kidnappers rip open his fly to see if their wives might have been attracted to him because of the size of his penis!

“We never mention colour,” continues Jean-Louis. “ It’s the unspoken word in the room, but it is an issues which the movie really hangs on. IT really divides how audiences interpret Rattlesnakes.” According to the movie’s director and star, husbands and wives can have many different interpretations on what is all really about and who exactly the real bad people are in the film.

Even though his hands and feed are tied the therapist does gets his licks in telling each of the kidnappers how flawed their marriages really are and how they are to blame.  It is a masterful performance by a Caribbean actor who hasn’t had much exposure in Canada.

The once homeless actor is best known for his role as "the Haitian" on the NBC television series Heroes and now has a starring role on the television show Claws.

Pictured left: Jimmy Jean-Louis and Kathleen McCellan

“I have worked on films in three Canadian cities: Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal. I do know the country’s big cities,” said Jean-Louis. “This time though I will get a good chance to explore Toronto. I will be up with you for 8-days around the Festival.”

“Love the idea of the CTFF,” he continued. “I am going to take part in their Incubator programme.  I want to pitch my next movie, it is also written by Julius Amedume.  It is a feature length Psychological Horror Thriller, that will be shot in my country of origin, Haiti.”

“The film is called Mother Water and is fictional film, based on the African Caribbean folk tale/ mythology of what some of you might know as Mami Wata,” he said. “ Mami Wata is a half-human, half-fish like deity, that comes from the sea to dwell on land in human form, often to detrimental effect, depending on who she interacts with or what she wants.”

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Caribbean Tales Film Festival Wrap-up

Winning viewers for Caribbean Movies in Toronto and Trinidad

By Stephen Weir

The biggest news for the just completed Caribbean Tales Film Festival (CTFF), took place not at home in Toronto but in Port of Spain, Trinidad. It was announced last week that Frances-Anne Solomon, the head of the CTFF, and a filmmaker herself had just won the People’s Choice Award at the Trinidad and Tobago International Film Festival

 

Francis-Anne Solomon

Ms. Solomon, in addition to spearheading the Toronto festival, has been hard at work all spring and summer completing her own film.  That movie, HERO -- Inspired by the Extraordinary Life and Times of Ulric Cross, was previewed and premiered at the CTFF in Toronto and then rushed down to Port of Spain to be shown in competition in their T&T film festival a week later.

The film is the first Trinidad / Canadian feature length film to be premiered and previewed in both country’s keynote festivals in the same year.  The movie tells the story of a man who leaves T&T in 1941 to join the RAF, where he becomes the most decorated WW11 West Indian serviceman.  Post war, Cross moved to Africa to work as a government lawyer for several emerging countries.

HERO opened the 13^th annual CTFF early in September and set the bar high for the 30 films that were screened over a two-week period at seven screenings. Overall, organizers are happy with the results of this year festival. There were new programmes added, there was expanded outreach to Hamilton filmgoers, and attendance, with one notable exception  (an evening of LGBTQ theme films) was strong.

  “Our LGBTQ screening is always the lowest attendance, from what I saw on the other nights our screenings were quite successful with full cinemas,” Maya Bastian, the festival’s Marketing and Partnerships Manager told the Caribbean Camera. “I worked hard to increase numbers at our LGBTQ screening this year, and we did have an improvement”.  

This year for the first time, there were three feature length films –  (US) Bruk Out, Rockers (JA) and Green Days by the River (T&T) that were shown weeks in advance of the festival at the Royal Cinema to perk up interest in the coming Caribbean festival.  AS well, there were more community showings of Caribbean films in 2018 in a variety of locations including Hamilton, Regent Park and Harbourfront. 

“Rockers was very successful! It's part of a partnership we have started with The Royal Stompbox music series,” continued Ms. Bastian. “CTFF is in talks to do more screenings like this and the sold-out dance hall documentary Bruk Out screening we held in March.”

Last week a full house packed the Scotiabank Theatre for the closing night of the Caribbean Tales Film Festival and the screening of It Stays With You directed by Cahal McLaughlin and Siobhan Wills. The film was shot in Haiti’s Cité Soleil, a severely economically depressed neighbourhood to examine the impact of the 2005-2007 crackdown on criminals that left scores of civilians dead or injured.

“As the 13th annual Caribbean Tales International Film Festival comes to a successful close, I am proud to be a part of the continued celebration of our Caribbean filmmakers “and our stories,” said Associate Festival Director Diana Webley, “The winners of this year’s awards encompass everything that our theme calls for by leading the way, spreading their message and focusing their light on change.”

Winners in the following film categories were announced: 

BEST Feature - Unfinished Sentences directed by Mariel BrownBEST Documentary - Incursion directed by Sasha-Gay Lewis.BEST Short Film: Kinto directed by Joshua PaulIntersect Award: Passing directed by Lucah Rosenberg-Lee and J. Mitchel ReedCaribbean Spirit: Hearts of Steel directed by Gayle WilmotCineFam Award: Sin Ayo directed by Elizabeth Francisco

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Movie Review: River Flows from Mayaro to Downtown Toronto

Best all Trini movie you will never see in a Canadian theatre

By Stephen Weir for Caribbean Camera

Chances are if you went to school in Trinidad you have read and studied Michael Anthony’s Green Days By The River. If you haven’t read the classic Trinidadian novel there is a new made-in-T&T movie that faithfully tells the story of coming of age for a poor young man in the coastal village of Mayaro in 1952.

The book, first published in 1967, is considered one of Trinidad’s most important post colonial novels and Michael Anthony one of the most important living authors (he is listed as one of the 50 most influential people in Trinidad and Tobago).  Now his masterpiece is a movie, and late last week, film junkies got to see the feature film for maybe the first and last time in Canada at a media screening in Toronto.

Michael Mooledhar, a Trinidadian born film maker put together a 100% T&T cast and crew to make Green Days By the River into a lush full length film.  For the past year the flick has been showing at festivals around the Caribbean, North America and Europe to critical acclaim. Last week the film was shown at the Royal Cinema in Toronto to launch this year’s Caribbean Tales Film Festival (CTFF).

Proudly Trinidadian, it is a moving, suspenseful film that stirred the mostly Canadian Caribbean audience that all but filled the College Street cinema. Aside from the English subtitles for those that don’t have a “Caribbean ear”, the actors, the landscape and the moral dilemmas of its main characters were Trini to the Bone.

“It is really a story about nothing, and everything, “ says director Michael Mooledhar. “It touches on all the issues of Trinidad 66-years ago. It tackles colour issues, black and.  There is cultural conflict everywhere, between country and the city. The beachside and the bush. Race and religion too. It is also a story about love, life, death and coming of age of a teenage boy.”

 Mooledhar describes the story thusly: “In a remote village by the sea in 1952 Trinidad, a Black ambitious fifteen-year-old, Shellie (Sudai Tafari), is charmed by the attractive Indian girl Rosalie (Nadia Kandhai), and flattered by the friendship of her father, Gidharee (Anand Lawkaran), who mentally accepts him as a future son-in-law.”

Despite his father's terminal illness, Shellie follows a compassionate Gidharee to work his exotic plantation along the river in hopes of attracting Rosalie. All the while, Shellie falls for a tender, dainty girl from the city, Joan. The love triangle develops, as Shell leads on the girls, not realizing the marriage trap set by Gidharee.

“ We tried not to stray to far from the original story,” the film’s producer Christian James told the Caribbean Camera. “We had the blessing of Michael Anthony, and he did come on set to give his advice.  We did make changes to some of the details – we couldn’t find the right almond tree that opens the film and had to settle for a mango tree instead – but it is undoubtedly Green River.”

Mooledhar and James try to appear at all the festival screeners. “We do it whenever we can,” he continued. “We are always looking for distribution leads.  It has shown in Caribbean theatres but a North American deal has escaped us.  Canadians want to see the film? Follow us on Facebook, because we are looking at streaming it on ITunes or something similar very soon.”  

The film was brought to Toronto by the CTFF to bring attention to their coming movie fete.  What is in store for 2018? The theme this year is Light It Up, which the CTFF describe as “a call to action. A call to arms. A call to change.”

Director Mooledhar by sweirsweir

It all begins September 05 at the Royal Theatre in downtown Toronto and runs until the 20^th. Over 30 provocative and political stories of the Black Caribbean experience will be screened including feature presentations from Trinidad, Haiti, Barbados, South Africa and Canada.