Film­mak­er Yao Rame­sar, An­tho­ny N Sab­ga Caribbean Awards Lau­re­ate for Arts & Let­ters (2006), has seen en­cour­ag­ing ad­vance­ment in his ca­reer since re­ceiv­ing his award. Rame­sar re­cent­ly de­scribed a high-paced life graced with achieve­ment, as he con­tin­ues to break new ground in the Caribbean re­gion and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. His crit­i­cal­ly ac­claimed movie, SistaGod, the first of a tril­o­gy, be­came the first T&T fea­ture film to gain of­fi­cial se­lec­tion at a ma­jor in­ter­na­tion­al fes­ti­val, when it pre­miered in 2006 at the Toron­to In­ter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val. His work and life have been fea­tured on the BBC, the New York Times, Wash­ing­ton Post and AOL Time Warn­er.

"The An­tho­ny N Sab­ga Caribbean Award was a great spring­board for my ca­reer. It al­lowed me to get to the next plateau, as it were, but not just for my­self as a film artist, but al­so for peo­ple across the Caribbean," said Rame­sar. "It al­lowed me to give re­al, tan­gi­ble sup­port to oth­er promis­ing artists. It al­so al­lowed me to take the Caribbean to the world, il­lus­trat­ed in a vi­su­al form where peo­ple any­where could see, feel, hear and ex­pe­ri­ence the life, cul­ture, folk­lore and his­to­ry of the Caribbean." Since the award, Yao re­vealed that he was able to in­crease the rate and scale of his work.

To­day, he is able to cel­e­brate more than 120 films screened in more than 100 coun­tries through­out Africa, Asia, North, South and Cen­tral Amer­i­ca, East­ern and West­ern Eu­rope and through­out the Caribbean re­gion. His work has re­ceived many ho­n­ours and is now the sub­ject of study and analy­sis across the re­gion. A book on his life and work will soon be pub­lished by a Eu­ro­pean pub­lish­ing house and a 90-minute fea­ture doc­u­men­tary, en­ti­tled the films of Yao Rame­sar, was part of last year's T&T Film Fes­ti­val. As a re­cent re­cip­i­ent of a grant from the Eu­ro­pean Union for the de­vel­op­ment of a Caribbean Trav­el­ling Film School, Rame­sar, along with Wayne Cezair, has brought to­geth­er a pro­gramme which they will take through­out the re­gion, of­fer­ing train­ing in film pro­duc­tion.

"The school was ac­tu­al­ly launched in Au­gust, 2009 and af­ter the first 21 months, it is ex­pect­ed that we will have a cadre of suit­ably trained and qual­i­fied Caribbean film pro­duc­ers." In ad­di­tion to this un­der­tak­ing, Yao is al­so con­tin­u­ing his ef­fort at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine cam­pus, in the de­vel­op­ment of a Bach­e­lor of Arts Pro­gramme in Film. Look­ing to the fu­ture, Rame­sar ad­mits he has his hands full. He feels strong­ly about the role and val­ue of re­ward­ing ex­cel­lence as a means of de­vel­op­ment: "There is a cru­cial role played by the ANSA Caribbean Awards in not on­ly re­ward­ing ex­cel­lence across the re­gion, but al­so sup­port­ing de­vel­op­ment through con­tin­ued work with lau­re­ates and achiev­ing Caribbean men and women."

Yao Rame­sar's new film, Sistagod II: Her Sec­ond Com­ing, will be screened as part of the T&T Film Fes­ti­val 2009 at Movi­eTowne.

View the fes­ti­val's re­lat­ed page at:

http://www.trinidadand­to­bagofilm­fes­ti­val.com/film.asp?f=m33