The countdown is on to The CaribbeanTales 2nd Annual Film Festival starting this Friday – Sunday at NFB Mediatheque and Workman Theatre:
Our program is online now, and you can peruse it here
In addition, every day this week I’ve been profiling special events at the Festival, and today it’s our SPOTLIGHT ON GAYELLE THE CHANNEL:
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The CaribbeanTales Film Festival turns a Spotlight on the phenomenon of Trinidad’s dynamic local TV station Gayelle The Channel, and its founder & CEO Christopher Laird
The fast-growing young station, which exploded onto the airwaves in Feb 2004, features 100% local content, and reaches a broad audience of over a million viewers internationally through conventional broadcasting, cable TV, and live Internet streaming.
On Saturday 14th July the Festival is proud to present a screening of Laird’s brand new feature documentary “A Day in the Life of De Gayelle”, an insider’s view of the innovative young Channel, followed by an up close and personal Q&A session with the stations prolific and hard-working founder.
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Christopher Laird is the Founder and CEO of Gayelle The Channel, and co-founder and Managing Director of Banyan Limited, the Caribbean’s foremost and most prolific producer of television programmes about the Caribbean and its people, which has produced more than 500 television productions over the past 30 years.
Named by leading Toronto video artist and critic Richard Fung, as “one of the most important filmmakers working in the Anglophone Caribbean”, he is also a published poet, has run a theatre in Port of Spain, published a journal of the Arts for five years in Trinidad & Tobago, and since 1975 written, directed and/or produced over 400 TV programmes for Banyan.
He has won many awards for his pioneering use of television in the region as a tool for community engagement, as ” a call and response” mechanism to reflect and engage the authentic diverse voices of the Caribbean and its people, as a collaborative medium through which artists and community make relevent creative interventions that change society.
PLEASE NOTE: BY POPULAR DEMAND
THIS PROGRAM WILL BE REPEATED ON
SUNDAY JULY 15TH @ 11AM
