The CaribbeanTales Incubator (CTI) is a year-round development and production hub for Caribbean and Caribbean Diaspora Producers that aims to create strong, compelling and sustainable content for the global market.
The ultimate goal of the CTI is to increase the pool of world-class indigenous film and television content so as to build the region’s audio visual capacity.
Incubatees will pitch their projects to a panel of industry leaders, including producers and development executives at major distribution companies.
Frances-Anne Solomon is an award-winning filmmaker of Caribbean heritage and a writer, producer and director in film, TV, Radio and New Media. She was born in England to Trinidadian parents and educated in Trinidad, Canada, England and France. She then went on to build a successful career over thirteen years in England with the BBC as a TV Drama Producer and Executive Producer. In 2000, she returned to Toronto where she continued to create direct and produce her own project. In 2001 she successfully launch the first CaribbeanTales project. Today, the latter has grown into a group of companies – the CaribbeanTales Media Group — that produces, markets and sells Caribbean-themed audio-visual content across the globe.
Andrew Millington is an independent filmmaker and educator born in Barbados. He is the writer, director and editor of the narrative feature film Guttaperc (2000). Zora’s Dream, another feature is scheduled for re-release in October 2016. He is currently producing a documentary Sugar, spirits and Sovereignty, a historical treatment of the evolution of Barbadian society and will begin production on a new film John Crow Paradise in 2017 through his production company Shango Films LLC. He serves as Senior Lecturer in Motion Picture Arts at the Errol Barrow Center for the Creative Imagination, University of the West Indies in Barbados and holds an MFA in Film from Howard University in Washington, DC.
Mary Wells is an award winning independent film Director/ Writer and Producer based partly in Jamaica. She has worked for Government Broadcasting, US Cable TV, a private production company and has over twenty five years experience in television and film production. Her work has consisted mainly of small documentaries and dramas for young adults and children for mostly the Caribbean region. In 1999, her short documentary, “Now Jimmy!” was awarded “Outstanding Documentary from the Caribbean” in the Sheryl Lee Ralph Film & Music Festival and it was also accepted: in the prestigious, Toronto Int’l Film Festival, 2002. In 2013, she Directed, Wrote and Produced her first feature narrative film, “Kingston Paradise” and is the first woman from Jamaica to do a feature film. She studied Television Production and the Theatre Arts in Washington DC and continues to do Film/TV production work of all kinds.
Suzette Zayden is a Belizean filmmaker passionate about promoting Caribbean films regionally and internationally. She holds an MPhil in Screenwriting from University of Bergen, Norway, a Diploma in Film Production from Escuela Internacional de Cine y Television of San Antonio de Los Banos, Cuba, and a BA In Communications (TV Production) from Loyola University, New Orleans. She is currently the Coordinator of the Film and Media Arts Unit for NICH – Belize’s National Institute of Culture & History – an office that facilitates the Belize Film Commission, the Belize International Film Festival of which she is the founder and current director, and all things pertaining to film in Belize.
The feedback given has been extremely helpful but as also been motivation to keep moving forward in my career. The excellent choice of helpful mentors and the feedback from the professionals after my pitch was much needed. I was especially grateful for the feedback given on my script by the story editor- script writing can be such a solitary process – her professional feedback was a gift. I hope the program continues to move forward from strength to strength
Regardless of your level of expertise, the workshops are an excellent venue to hone your craft. The mentors really push you to go further so to get those pitches as concise and catchy as possible. It helps to get ideas and comments from other people which serve as a springboard to actual pitches.
I can say that the CaribbeanTales Incubator program has elevated my status in the Dominican film community. The things I learned in the program, like preparing for a professional pitch, definitely aided in securing the funds for my first feature film, which I’ll be producing next month.
