Sistagod

Biography – Yao Ramesar
Trinidad and Tobago
Phone: (1) 868 779-5432
Phone: (1) 868 663-0115
Email: caribbeinginc@gmail.com

Ghana-born, Caribbean filmmaker Yao Ramesar was honoured as the Caribbean’s first Laureate in Arts and Letters, at the inaugural Anthony Norman Sabga Caribbean Awards for Excellence (ANSCAFE) in 2006. The awards recognised that “Ramesar’s most significant contribution is that he has taken Caribbean cinema to the world under the rubric of an original aesthetic deemed ‘Caribbeing®’”.

His latest film "Fortune for All" is one of six features that Ramesar has directed since 2006. His penultimate feature HAITI BRIDE screened at FESPACO 2015 in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, Africa’s largest and oldest film festival: the first-ever African diaspora film to be in selection in the feature film competition; the film also screened in The Ghetto Biennale, Port au Prince, Haiti in December 2015where Ramesar, as the only filmmaker present at this edition of the Biennale. HAITI BRIDE also screened in Jacmel.

Ramesar’s SISTAGOD remains the sole Trinidad and Tobago feature film to gain official selection at a major international festival world-premiering in 2006 at the Toronto International Film Festival, the major North American and hemispheric festival. It has continued garnering awards, copping the Grand Prix for Best Feature in 2014 at ArtoDocs International Film Festival in St Petersburg Russia.

Ramesar’s Caribbeing® theories on filmmaking have been featured in numerous publications including his paper “Caribbeing: Cultural Imperatives and the Technology of Motion Picture Production” in Caribbean Quarterly Vol. 42, No 4 (1996); and “Caribbean Culture and in the Digital Domain”, presented at Carifesta Symposia in St. Kitts/Nevis (2000).

In more recent years Ramesar has authored a number of other articles including, 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, STAN (April/July 2011). Colour, Light & Signification in the Mise-en-Scène of SISTAGOD, Caribbean Intransit Arts Journal. Volume I. Issue 2. (March 2012); “Haiti Bride” Photo Essay, Caribbean Quarterly, Vol. 61, No. 2 & 3 (2015).

The year 2006 saw the completion of a PhD thesis on his 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). 2008 saw the completion of a documentary feature on his work entitled “Films of Yao Ramesar” which premiered at the DC-Caribbean Film Festival in the U.S.

Collaborating with Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott, Ramesar directed “The Sadhu of Couva” and “The Coral”, the first screen adaptations of Walcott’s poetry. He also produced documentaries on Nelson Mandela and Stokely Carmichael during their visits to Trinidad.

One of the Caribbean’s most accomplished and prolific directors, he has created over 120 films on the people, history and culture of Trinidad and Tobago, screening in more than 100 countries throughout Africa, Asia, North, South and Central America, Eastern and Western Europe and throughout the Caribbean.

Ramesar holds a B.A (Summa cum Laude) in Film Production and M.F.A in Film Directing from Howard University (Washington D.C). 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. He is a lecturer in film at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad.

Ramesar and his work have been covered in reviews, interviews etc. including in the New York Times, AOL Time-Warner, the Toronto Star, the Washington Post, BBC, Timeout, Filmmaker Magazine and numerous other broadcasts and publications.
[end]