Yao Ramesar

Early years

Ramesar was born in Tamale, Ghana, West Africa in 1963, the son of Esmond Ramesar, a Trinidad educator, and Mariane Ramesar (née Soares), a Jamaican historian. He has two older sisters named Celia Gibbings and Deborah Shirley. After leaving Ghana, the Ramesar family travelled to Trinidad, then Jamaica, and finally settled in Ontario, Canada in 1966.

As a young boy, Ramesar grew up on television. He experienced significant American historical events in the late 1960s, like the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, and the Apollo 11 moon landing, through a small, black-and-white television set in the family home, which he referred to as his "babysitter". At that time, his dream was to become either an astronaut or a cosmonaut.

Upon the family's return to Trinidad in 1971, Ramesar frequently attended the six movie theaters in the Tunapuna/St. Augustine/Curepe area, which were within walking distance from his home. While studying in high school in Port-of-Spain, Ramesar regularly took the advantage to attend the movie theaters in that area. According to Ramesar himself, one of his childhood friends from primary school reminded him some 30 years later that she wrote in her diary the intended careers of her classmates, and that time, he wanted to be a filmmaker.

In 1984, Ramesar left Trinidad and Tobago to enter the School of Communications in Howard University. He pursued a Bachelor of Arts in Film Production, and graduated with a summa cum laude distinction. He also became president of the Howard University's Film Students' Association, and in 1988, he went on a hunger strike to prevent the closure of the campus-based film school. Afterwards, he pursued a Master of Fine Arts in Film Directing, and was mentored by Ethiopian filmmaker Haile Gerima during that period. On completion of his studies, he immediately returned to Trinidad and Tobago to begin his mission of teaching and developing indigenous cinema in his homeland.

1990s

Upon his return to Trinidad and Tobago, Yao was employed in the Government Information Service as a director / producer. It was during this decade that most of his seminal shorts on the culture of Trinidad and Tobago were made, the earliest of these being Mami Wata (1992), the first on-screen depiction of an Orisha feast for the Goddess Oshun. He went on to do a film series of interviews with the pioneers of the steelband movement, which includes Pan: The Overture (1993) and Pan under the Sapodilla Tree (1994). Time has proven such work infinitely precious, as many of those interviewed have already passed away, with Ramesar being the only one to capture many of their stories.

Also notable have been his shorts on traditional Carnival figures and players (Minstrel Lady (1998); Robber Talk (1998); Black Indian (1998); Fire Dance (1998), Masquerade (1998)), East Indian culture (Jahaaji Mai (1995); Children of Fatel Razack (1998); Journey to Ganga Mai (1999)) and Tobago culture (A Weddding in Moriah (1997)). His work in the short film form also covered many other themes such as cricket (Spinner's Wicket (1998)), parang (Spanish Time (1998)) and more contemporary subjects such as the cottage industries created by people living near a garbage dump in Arima (Picking Up the Pieces (1999)). Ramesar's work gained wide appeal and attained many awards. His early shorts which were also shown on prime time television as part of Trinidad and Tobago's regular Government Information Service programming.

2000s

Yao was the featured filmmaker at Carifesta VII in St. Kitts/Nevis (2000). Additionally, he filmed Trinidad and Tobago's cultural participation at Carifesta VIII in Suriname(2003) and chaired the Carifesta Film Committee in Trinidad and Tobago (2006).

In 2001, Ramesar participated in the Big River International Artists' Workshop and Exhibition. The following year, he directed the filming of the acclaimed musical "Carnival Messiah" in the United Kingdom. His work was featured in the first National Sculpture Exhibition, and at the first Kairi film Festival, in Trinidad in 2003.

Yao was the featured filmmaker at Carifesta VII in St. Kitts/Nevis (2000). Additionally, he filmed Trinidad and Tobago's cultural participation at Carifesta VIII in Suriname(2003) and chaired the Carifesta Film Committee in Trinidad and Tobago (2006).

In 2002 and 2003, Ramesar took part in the inaugural and second editions of the Festival of African and Caribbean Film (Barbados), where he delivered a public lecture and screened films; Caribbean Input screening in Jamaica; the Zanzibar International Film Festival (Republic of Tanzania); Cine Latino Film Festival (San Francisco); Sin Fronteras, University of Wisconsin, Madison, where he conducted a week-long workshop on Caribbean film; and Swimming Against the Tides, Caribbean Culture in the Age of Globalization, Bowdin College, Maine, where he lectured and screened films. His work was also featured at the VideoBrasil Festival, Sao Paolo, in 2003.

In 2006, Ramesar's fantasy drama SistaGod – which he directed, wrote and produced – premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and was subsequently screened at the Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival. The first chapter of a film trilogy, it tells the story of the coming of a black female messiah (played by Evelyn Caesar Munroe) during a period known as the "Apocalypso". The movie integrated traditional Trinbagonian Carnival characters and a powerful female lead into its narrative, whilst tackling issues such as westernization, spiritualism and culture. Sistagod remains the sole Trinidad and Tobago feature film to gain official selection at a major international film festival.

In 2007, Ramesar served as the first filmmaker in residence at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine where he pioneered tertiary-level film theory in Trinidad and Tobago through the University's Film Programme.

Ramesar wrote, produced and directed Her Second Coming in 2009. The second chapter of his SistaGod trilogy, Her Second Coming centers on SistaGod (played in this movie by real-life albino actress/singer Crystal Felix) and her progeny battling for survival in a post-apocalyptic world devoid of human life. It made its world premiere at the Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival in the same year.

In 2009, Ramesar co-founded the Caribbean Travelling Film School, which aims to incubate filmmaking talent throughout the Caribbean region. This is, in part, a continuum of a blueprint he developed in the 1980s for the consolidation of a regional cinema, which would involve filmmakers traveling in Caribbean communities and fostering a citizens' cinema, which he termed "The Moving Image".

2010s

In 2010, Ramesar worked on his yet-to-be-released third feature film Stranger in Paradise, which involved a Chinese woman arriving to Barbados speaking only Mandarin. In 2014, Ramesar flew to South Africa to begin work on his next feature film, Shade, which centered on a young albino woman (Mathapelo Ditshego) from Soshanguve, South Africa, with dreams of becoming an R&B singer.

Yao's next feature film Haiti Bride, released in 2014, is the story of a Haitian-born woman who returns to her homeland to meet her husband who lost his memory after the 2010 Haiti earthquake. Shot entirely on location in Haiti, it was the first African diaspora / Caribbean feature film selected in the 2015 feature film competition at the Pan African Film & Television Festival, Africa's largest and oldest film festival, in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. Yao was the first Caribbean filmmaker in the festival's history to compete for the prestigious Etalon de Yennenga award.

Between the months of July to August 2015, Yao visited India, specifically Mumbai, Delhi, Agra and Goa, where he continued fostering partnerships with film schools, as well as researching film education and production infrastructures. He met and held discussions with the heads of film schools in Delhi – namely Jamia Millia (Central University), Delhi and the Asian Academy of Media Studies Film School at Filmcity, New Delhi – towards establishing a relationship between their respective institutions, along with seeking co-production, undergraduate exchange and post graduate opportunities for the film students of University of the West Indies (St. Augustine Campus).

Ramesar held discussions with two key industry bodies in which he was granted lifetime memberships, namely the International Chamber of Media and Entertainment Industry (ICMEI) and the International Film and Television Club (IFTC). At the IFTC, located in the Marwah Studios Complex, Film City (India's fastest-growing film studio), he spent a half-day meeting with the Studio Head. He was also honoured to be at the commencement exercises at the Asian Academy of Media Studies Film School in the capacity of guest lecturer; a visit which further lead to discussions of collaboration between India and Trinidad's film institutions.

In December 2015, Yao screened Haiti Bride at both the 2015 edition of the Ghetto Biennale, a cross-cultural arts festival held in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and in the commune of Jacmel, where most of the film was shot.

Caribbeing

In 1970, while travelling with his family on the Federal Maple, a West Indian inter-island ferry, Yao coined the word 'Caribbeing' to his father in relation to how some of the other passengers pronounced the word 'Caribbean'. In his eventual film career, he applied the word 'Caribbeing' to describe his trademark cinematic aesthetic. This aesthetic almost always contains one or more of the following elements: the use of natural light (sunlight) as the primary source of lighting for the camera, light reflected off bodies of water, natural landscape as character, iconic gestures of Caribbean body language, the cadence of the spoken Creole language, and narratives historically unique to the Caribbean space. Additionally, it became both the title of a 9-minute short which he made in 1995, and the name of his company.

Awards and honors

Honours for his work include the Paul Robeson Awards (U.S.) for Best Film & Best Editing (1990) and Best Cinematography (1991); the Critics' Choice Award at the Global Africa Film Festival (U.S) 1992; the Royal Bank/MATT awards for Best Television Series 1996; Best Editing, Best Supporting Video and Best Television Series 1997; Best Supporting Video 1998 (Trinidad); the Saraswatti Devi Award 2000; and Decibel Award 2002; Most Popular Feature Film, Flashpoint Film Festival (Jamaica) 2006; Caribbean Cinema Award, Studio 66 Arts Support Community (Trinidad) 2006; Best Caribbean Film and Best Director, Bridgetown Film Festival (Barbados) 2007; BPTT Pioneer in Film Award for Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival (2013); (WIPO) World Intellectual Property Day Award for Sistagod (2014); ArtoDocs International Film Festival Grand Prix Award for Sistagod (2014).

Screenings

Ramesar's films were screened in more than 100 countries throughout Africa, Asia, North, South and Central America, Eastern and Western Europe and throughout the Caribbean.multi-channel cable simulcasts (California) 1992/93, WHMM-32 (Washington) 1990, European Media Arts Festival (Germany)1992, Reel Caribe (Toronto) 1996, MIDEM (Cannes) 1996, Smithsonian Institution(Washington) 1992, Oakland Museum of California 1992, Athens International Film Festival 1992, Darryl Reich Rubenstein Gallery (Virginia) 1987, Washington DC Artworks 1988, Carifesta V, VI, VII, VIII & IX (1994,1995, 2000, 2003 & 2006) and the "Sing Me a Rainbow" Meridian International Center's US-wide touring exhibition, 1998, the Noir Tout Couleurs Festival of Cinema (Guadeloupe) 1998 & 1999.

In 2000, the Jornada Film Festival in Bahia, Brazil, the BRNO16 Film Festival in the Czech Republic and the Tabernacle Trust Exhibition of Films on Trinidad Carnival (London) featured Ramesar's work. That year, the Cavehill Film Society, Barbados, also screened a retrospective of Ramesar's works. In 2001, his work was screened at Fespaco's International Festival of African Cinema in Burkina Faso, and in 2001 and 2003 at Cinefest Nuestra America in Wisconsin. His films were also included in the IDB's First Latin and Caribbean Video Art Exhibition, which toured cities throughout the Americas, as well as Washington DC and Rome.

In 2004, he was a delegate at the Art Council of England's A Free State conference, at the British Museum, where he screened selected work. He was also a featured artist at the Lighting the Shadow exhibition at CCA7. His work was also screened at the Museum Ludwig (Cologne) 2005; The Horniman Museum (London) 2006; Jakmel Film Festival (Haiti) 2006; Flashpoint Film Festival (Jamaica) 2006 and the Pan African Film Festival (Los Angeles) 2007; Bridgetown Film Festival (Barbados) 2007; Black Harvest Film Festival (Chicago) 2007; The British Museum (London) 2007; Caribbean Tales (Toronto) 2007; GRULAC (Johannesburg) 2007; Kerala International Film Festival (India) 2008; Kampala Film Festival (Uganda) 2008; DC-Caribbean Film Festival (United States) 2008 and The Caribbean Film Festival (New York) 2008.

In 2008, a documentary feature based on Yao's work entitled "Films of Yao Ramesar" made its premiere at the DC-Caribbean Film Festival.

Publications

Yao's filmography was the subject of "Filmed Portraits: an Examination of Themes and the Pictorial Techniques of Yao Ramesar, from his short film series ‘People’”, an 87-page work by Pamela Hosein (University of the West Indies), 1998 and a subsequent MPhil thesis by the same author completed in 2008. His work is also examined in PhD theses, including one by Marina Maxwell (University of the West Indies).

2006 saw the completion of a PhD thesis on Ramesar's work entitled Being, Consciousness and Time: Phenomenology and the Videos of Robert Yao Ramesar (G. Hezekiah/University of Toronto). This was published in 2009 as Phenomenology’s Material Presence (Intellect Books/UK & Chicago University Press/US). In a review of the book, it was stated that “the beautiful and innovative video work of Robert Yao Ramesar can carry out philosophy.”

Ramesar has authored a number of articles on Caribbean filmmaking including, Colour, Light & Signification in the Mise-en-Scène of SISTAGOD (Caribbean Intransit Arts Journal. Volume I. Issue 2 – March 2012); The Eye-alect of Her Second Coming (ARC Magazine – Art, Recognition, Culture. Issue 3 – July 2011; Haiti: Picking Up the Pieces (Article and Photo Essay – St. Augustine News – April/July 2011); Caribbeing: Cultural Imperatives and the Technology of Motion Picture Production (Caribbean Quarterly, Vol. 42, No. 4, and Caribbean Culture and in the Digital Domain (presented at the Carifesta Symposia 2000, St. Kitts/Nevis).

Short films

Feature length films