CaribbeanTales announces film festival winners

The 8th Annual CaribbeanTales Toronto Film Showcase announced its award recipients Saturday September 14 during the Closing Night celebrations.

This year, there were ten feature-length films and 45 shorts in Official Competition. The diverse selection included features and documentaries from 25 countries covering all genres and themes.
“My primary concerns in judging these particular movies in competition are: how does the film succeed in projecting a cinematic Caribbean tale that deserves to be specially recognized and shared because it harps on the universal longing to break barriers towards valuing cultural diversity and minding gaps? In what ways did the production team invest the frames with such coded qualities and digitizing morphs to synergize a cinematographic effect with unknown spectators? Thus, how does the movie earn international respect for a team’s collaborative effort to add their particular mosaic to the big pictures that get included in making up humanity’s evolving story?” said Camilo Antonio, Jury Chair for this year’s Feature Length CaribbeanTales Awards.
The feature awards were selected by a jury comprising: film reviewer and documentarist Camilo Antonio (Chair); Director of Tourism for the Government of Antigua and Barbuda in Canada, Erica Henry Jackman; writer and social media specialist Bridget “Bee” Quammie; documentary filmmaker Melissa Gomez; and, filmmaker and Associate Professor at NYU’s Tisch School, Ian Harnarine.

The winner of the Caribbean Spirit Award for Best Feature Documentary goes to Miquel Galofre and Amanda Sans for Songs of Redemption.

The winner of the Best Narrative Feature Award goes to Terracino for Elliot Loves.

Best Narrative Feature – Special Mention Mary Wells for Kingston Paradise.

Audience Award (Feature-length films): Mary Wells for Kingston Paradise.
Best Narrative Short (Under 40 minutes) award was shared by; Things I See by Shirley Bruno  (Haiti/United Kingdom) that explores, through the eyes of a 10 year old child, how a Haitian family copes with news of the devastating 2010 Earthquake; and Cinco Minutos Para Mi Pais by Dominique Telemaque (Haiti/Dominican Republic), a beautifully told story that takes us into daily working life of Haitians living in the Dominican Republic.

Best Documentary (under 40 mins) award was also shared by Mom by Ryan Singh, a touching confessional short that explores the role of fatherhood through interviews with the filmmaker’s mother and his wife; and, Footprints by Princess Simone Donelan, a snapshot of the impact on the people of the island of Grenada of Kirani James Olympic 2012 Win in the 400meter race.

The Perfect Pitch Award for Incubator 2013 was awarded to Karen Chapman for Cocoon, a feature documentary that testifies to the human impact of grief, as the filmmaker meets with her father’s killer in an attempt to come to terms with his death.

While the end of another festival has come, CaribeanTales will be busy with its recently launched CaribbeanTales-TV, a Netflix-style video on demand platform. Stay tuned for details on the 9th annual CaribbeanTales Film Showcase set for August 2014.