CaribbeanTales

CaribbeanTales Worldwide Distribution (CTWD) is the first full-service film distribution company in the English-speaking Caribbean, and aims to become the reference point for producers and buyers of Caribbean-themed content.

CTWD, founded in 2010 by award-winning filmmaker Frances-Anne Solomon, was registered as a not for profit organisation in 2012, and is governed by a Board of Directors including creative industries expert Dr. Keith Nurse, economist and businessman Dr. Terrence Farrell, media personality and producer Lisa Wickham, and filmmaker and writer Mary Wells.

As part of the CaribbeanTales brand, CTWD has helped to develop platforms regionally and internationally for exhibition, marketing and distribution of Caribbean-themed film and audio visual content.

The CaribbeanTales brand also includes CaribbeanTales.ca, a not-for-profit organisation based in Toronto, Canada that produces educational multimedia products, and the CaribbeanTales Film Festival Group, that holds annual events, film festivals, and filmmaker training programmes in Barbados, Toronto, and New York.

Distribution

DISTRIBUTION of CARIBBEAN-THEMED FILM and TELEVISION PRODUCTS
CTWD aims to match content with buyers and become the go-to company for both producers of Caribbean content, as well as those seeking to acquire it.

Marketing

MARKETING of CARIBBEAN FILM and TELEVISION PRODUCTS
CTWD aims to raise the international profile of film brand Caribbean — a fiercely Caribbean aesthetic that will capture the global imagination in terms of film and television — in order to penetrate the highly competitive international film and television marketplace.

Co-Productions

FUNDING FACILITATION and PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT SERVICES
Offered to regional/diaspora producers seeking financing for their products, CTWD will use the contacts acquired through distribution and sales to match producers seeking funding with appropriate funders/buyers.

Dr. Keith Nurse

(BOARD CHAIR) Dr. Keith Nurse is the Caribbean’s foremost creative industries’ expert with wide and varied international and regional expertise in his field. He has held senior positions and consultancies with governments, NGOs and international, regional and national agencies. He has taught at the University of the West Indies and the University of Ottawa, Canada. He is a former director at two state-owned enterprises in Trinidad and Tobago: National Petroleum Marketing Company and National Agro-Chemicals Ltd. He is also a director at Media 21 Ltd., Contemporary Caribbean Arts Ltd. (CCA 7) and a former director at the Entertainment Industry Development and Export Company.

Keith is a founding Director and Board Chair of CaribbeanTales Worldwide Distribution. His international network of colleagues as well as his integrated expertise in economics, business development, higher education and cultural diversity serve to enrich the strategic capacity of the 3D Project and to promote its ability to build and realize sustainable growth.

Frances-Anne Solomon

(DIRECTOR, CEO) 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.

Lisa Wickham

(DIRECTOR/PUBLIC RELATIONS) Media producer/director/TV Personality, Lisa Wickham is the CEO of Imagine Media International Limited, best known for its range of products under the E-Zone Entertainment brand. In 2007 and 2008, she was the Artistic Director and Producer of the highly-acclaimed Annual COTT Music Awards.

Appearing on television since the age of six, she made the transition from children’s TV to adult contemporary TV, hosting a series of successful television productions, including a daily morning prime time TV show and the popular E-Zone entertainment TV magazine show, which has been syndicated throughout the Caribbean and US on BETJ. She has produced a number of shows for BET and BETJ, as well as for the government of Trinidad & Tobago, including the Not Inna Dat series. She has also produced and co-directed a number of acclaimed music videos for Destra Garcia, Shurwayne Winchester, Patrice Roberts, RIZON, 3 Suns, and David Reid.

Mary Wells

(DIRECTOR) Mary Wells is an award winning independent film Director / Writer and Producer based in Jamaica and in the USA, with over twenty years’ experience in television and film production. In 1999, her short documentary, “Now Jimmy!” was awarded “Outstanding Documentary from the Caribbean” in the Sheryl Lee Ralph Film/Music Festival. It was also accepted at TIFF in 2002. “Kingston Paradise”, her first feature, was recently award “Best Diaspora Feature” in the African Movie Academy Awards 2014. She studied Television Production and the Theatre Arts in Washington DC and continues to work on a broad variety of Film / TV productions.

Christopher Laird

(DIRECTOR) Christopher Laird is Managing Director, co-owner and co-founder of Banyan Ltd. and he has produced more than three hundred documentaries, dramas and other video productions during his forty-year professional career. His genius has been recognized and rewarded with many national, regional and international awards. He is responsible for establishing the Caribbean Film and Video Archive which is (arguably) the largest collection of Caribbean culture on video. In 2003 he founded, with Errol Fabien, the Region’s first all-Caribbean free-to-air television station, Gayelle. In 2009 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of the West Indies.

Christopher has worked closely with Caribbean Tales for more than ten years, receiving the CaribbeanTales Lifetime Achievement Award in 2009. His film NO BOIS MAN NO FRAID opened CTFF 2013. Currently, CTWD distributes all Banyan’s catalogued content.