Through the Caribbean Film Academy, Third Horizon is building a film market incrementally—each year adding a new component—to create a Caribbean and diaspora industry market that embodies Third Horizon’s filmmaker-oriented values.
In its inaugural 2021 edition, the Caribbean Film Academy served as a virtual seminar series aimed at introducing filmmakers from across the region and its diaspora to burgeoning new resources in order to further their access to the film landscape.
In 2022 Third Horizon will host a hybrid film market program in the lead up to the Third Horizon Film Festival. Beyond offering a cohort of 10+ rising regional filmmakers meetings and mentorship with industry professionals, the Caribbean Film Academy will host daytime seminars and mixers with leading regional distribution executives exploring the bounds of Caribbean cinema. By developing a film market specifically for Caribbean filmmakers and having it physically located in the Miami area, we aim to provide unprecedented support for our community of cultural producers.
Akley Olton (St. Vincent and the Grenadines)
Akley Olton is a filmmaker and visual artist from St. Vincent and Grenadines, with a passion for stories that inspire & provoke. He is interested in exploring how aesthetics can regenerate fresh connections with ancestry, tradition and cultural identity. Established as a leading voice in the emerging Caribbean film industry, he has sharpened his advanced visual aesthetic and technical expertise to translate advanced concepts into beautiful forms that resonate with audiences on a higher level. A core theme behind Akley’s visual style is resistance, and testimony to transformative power and impact that art has on society. He is an alumnus of the University of the West Indies and the prestigious International School of Film and Televisions (EICTV) in Cuba. Akley has overseen the creative direction and execution of numerous projects for some of the Caribbean’s top brands and some international companies, has also worked in different capacities on award-winning fiction & documentaries films. His award-winning debut short film “Black Doll” hailed a new kind of intrinsic critique and analysis of Caribbean conceptions of beauty. He has been featured in numerous Creative industry-related magazines and podcasts around the world. And has been recognized at multiple coveted creative industry awards and was recognized by UK’s “Pitchcool” magazine where he was celebrated for his creative merit, as door opener & pioneer.
SPOTLIGHTED PROJECT
Title: Hairouna Land of the Blessed
Year: 2022
Length: 10′
Logline: Hairouna, Land of the Blessed is a documentary about a young man who follows the path of exile into his ancestral memory. Where he finds images, which he will use to improve his life and that of his family.
Ésery Mondésir (Haiti)
Ésery Mondésir is a Haitian-born video artist and filmmaker. He was a high school teacher and a labour organizer before receiving an MFA in cinema production from York University (Toronto) in 2017. Mondesir’s work draws from personal and collective memory, official archives and vernacular records, the everyday, to generate a reading of our societies from the margins. Made in collaboration with fellow members of the Haitian diaspora in Havana, Cuba and Tijuana, Mexico, his previous films have been exhibited in art galleries and film festivals worldwide, including the Museum of Contemporary Art in Montreal, the Eastman Museum in Rochester, NY, the Norton Museum and the Third Horizon Film Festival in Miami, Fl. the Open City Festival in London, UK. Esery Mondesir: We Have Found Each Other, his current solo exhibition is at the Art Gallery of Ontario until August 7th, this year.
Mondesir’s latest project Of What Death we Die will be premiered at the 2022 Third Horizon Film Festival in June.
SPOTLIGHTED PROJECT
Title: Of What Death we Die
Year: 2022
Length: 10′
Logline: October 1980, Haiti. A 26-year-old man becomes gravely ill and dies of an unknown disease. Meanwhile, in Ronald Reagan’s United States, health authorities have decided that Haitians, homosexuals, hemophiliacs and heroin users are to be lumped together in a “4H club” whose members are dying of this deadly new epidemic.
Jian Hennings (Trinidad & Tobago)
A writer/director from Trinidad and Tobago, after completing his feature-length student film Back to Freeport, Jian was granted the Take One film grant by the Trinidad and Tobago Government, resulting in his second narrative feature project, Grace & Saleen. This second directorial effort was met with film festival screenings throughout the world and honored with ‘Audience Award – Feature Narrative’ and ‘Best Feature’ prizes at the Trinidad & Tobago Film festival and the Caribbean Tales International Film festival.
Jian hopes to continue his filmmaking journey with the same levels of creative excitement, and honesty that attracted him to writing/directing narratives so many years ago. “Filmmaking is the ultimate art form! It combines the visual and the audible, the pressures of team-based execution, and the solitary stresses of drafting a story worth telling. It has forced me to age one year for every week spent on set, and I honestly couldn’t imagine myself happier anywhere else in the world”.
SPOTLIGHTED PROJECT
Title: Grace & Saleem
Year: 2020
Length: 84′
Logline: An unintended road trip, a comical first dinner and an awkward meeting of families on Christmas day all encompass Grace and Saleem’s story of an unlikely couple told via three distinctive chapters of their relationship together.
Kique Cubero García (Puerto Rico)
Kique Cubero García (Puerto Rico) is a documentary filmmaker with experience as an editor, sound recordist, researcher and video photographer. In 2002 he became a member of the production team of Zona Franca, a TV documentary series. Zona Franca was awarded an EMMY for its documentary Vieques en el espejo de Panamá. In 2007, Cubero García started studies at the International Film and TV School of Cuba. In 2010 he finished his studies after directing Un Peso Más. Un Peso Más was awarded with a special mention at the 10th showcase of Young Directors at Cuba and with the Bronze Lion medal at the International Film Golden Lion Award at the National Arts University in Taiwan. In 2010, Cubero García co-directed a segment of Ser un Ser Humano, an award winning feature length documentary at the XlV Icarus Festival; also awarded at the Vll Encuentro Hispanoamericano de Cine y Video Documental Independiente Contra el Silencio de Todas las Voces.
More recently (2017) Cubero García was a videographer, researcher and sound recordist in Desalambrando, selected as part of Muestra Itinerante de Cine del Caribe. As videographer of Ser Grande he won Best Cinematography award at the Rincón International Film Festival. He is also founding member of the Association of Puerto Rican Documentary Filmmakers (AdocPR).
SPOTLIGHTED PROJECT
Title: The Enterprise
Year: 2022
Length: 21:24′
Logline: The ancient conflict of colonization is embodied today among residents of the Islote neighborhood, Arecibo, with the arrival of businessman José González Freyre and his project for a monumental statue in honor of Christopher Columbus.
Melanie Grant (Barbados)
Melanie Grant is an award-winning Barbadian/Vincentian filmmaker whose short films have been screened at local, regional and international film festivals and cultural events. At the 2017 National Independence Festival of Creative Arts (NIFCA), Melanie was the recipient of the Prime Minister’s scholarship for her gold award winning films. Her passion for gender and queer studies has shaped her purpose as a filmmaker and she endeavours to use cinema to educate, to advocate for positive social change and to document the stories of women and sexual minorities in the Caribbean. Melanie holds a Bachelors degree in Creative Arts from the University of the West Indies and a Masters in Visual Anthropology from the University of Manchester.
SPOTLIGHTED PROJECT
Title: Parable of the Bees
Length: 9′
Logline: A tale of five generations of women, a river goddess who loves honey and an island of vanishing bees.
Status: In post-production
Stéphanie Saxemard (Martinique)
Stéphanie is a director, director of photography and documentary film producer from Martinique. She is co-founder of Creativ Sün Films, an impact film production company based in Martinique.
Stéphanie documents the contemporary Caribbean and has directed and produced several independent short documentaries. Her cinéma vérité explores themes of identity, migration and the environment through intimate, character-driven storytelling. Stephanie is a Hot Docs 2022 Fellow, a Caribbean Film Academy 2021 Fellow and a Tribeca Film Institute 2019 alumni. She also produces Film & Impact, a podcast showcasing documentary filmmakers who use film to drive change.
After an MRes in Political Science and International Cooperation from the University of the West Indies and an MA in Human Rights from the London School of Advanced Studies, she worked as a researcher, analyst and project coordinator in non-profit organisations. Stéphanie lives in Fort-de-France, Martinique, and has previously lived in the UK, France and Switzerland. She is currently working on two short films The Third Season and The Isle and a feature film A Silent Killing.
SPOTLIGHTED PROJECT
Title: The Third Season
Year: 2023
Length: 30′
Logline: The coming-of-age story of Renny, a young boy in Dominica who loses his home to Hurricane Maria and struggles to embrace the changes to his family’s life while finding his place as a young man.
Supported by the HotDocs Cross Currents International Fund
Victoria Linares Villegas (Dominican Republic)
Victoria Linares Villegas is a queer filmmaker based in the Dominican Republic. She studied film production at The New School. Her shorts have screened at New Orleans Film Festival, Atlanta Film Festival, Shorts México and AMOR Festival Internacional de Cine LGBT+ which got her the Audience Award in 2019. Her latest short film My Mother Resents Me won an Honorable Mention at Milwaukee Underground Film Festival and Best Short Doc Jury Prize at Bushwick Film Festival (2019).
Her debut non fiction film It Runs in the Family has been official selection at True/False, BFI Flare, BAFICI 2022, Fine Arts RD 2022, winning best documentary film.
SPOTLIGHTED PROJECT
Title: It runs in the family (THFF22 Film)
Year: 2022
Length: 84′
Logline: Through a series of re-enactments starring her family and the filmmaker, she traces the forgotten life of her cousin, queer filmmaker and political activist Oscar Torres, blurring the lines between her reality and his.
Zephrine Royer (Dominica)
Zephrine Royer is a writer, impact producer and academic from Dominica. She is the co-founder of Creativ Sün Films, an impact film production company. She hosts Film & Impact, a podcast featuring documentary filmmakers, and publishes A Glimpse of Life, an online series of micro stories.
Zephrine is a recipient of the 2021 Hot Docs Crosscurrents International Fund for her directorial debut The Third Season. She is a Tribeca Film Institute Alumni and a Caribbean Film Academy 2021 fellow. Her creative work is strongly rooted in the Caribbean reality and imagination and she has produced several documentary films centred on Caribbean stories. She is currently working on two documentaries, The Third Season and The Isle.
SPOTLIGHTED PROJECT
Title: The Third Season
Year: 2023
Length: 30′
Logline: The coming-of-age story of Renny, a young boy in Dominica who loses his home to Hurricane Maria and struggles to embrace the changes to his family’s life while finding his place as a young man.
Supported by the HotDocs Cross Currents International Fund
Felene M. Cayetano (Belize)
Felene M. Cayetano is a Belizean, Garifuna, Librarian, Author, Mother, Photographer, Screenwriter and Director. Felene has published two collections of poetry and published an anthology of short fiction by Belizean authors. Some of her poems and short stories have also been published in Caribbean and Latin American literary journals. She is currently Acting Principal Librarian of Belize National Library Service and Information System, founding member of the Belizean Writers Guild and serves on the boards of directors of the Belize Book Industry Association (BBIA) and the Wagiya Foundation. Her photographs have been exhibited in Belize and are now available as NFTs. She wrote and directed Afieni (Faith), a narrative short film in Garifuna with expected completion in 2022. Sides is her first completed short film.
SPOTLIGHTED PROJECT
Title: Sides
Year: 2022
Length: 4:36′
Logline: Isieni and Miriam, a couple for three years, pack for vacation. On the road trip they each learn more about what the other really wants. Their relationship has lasted three years, but will it survive this road trip?
Ania Freer (Jamaica)
Ania Freer is an Australian-Jamaican artist, filmmaker, cultural researcher, and curator based in Kingston, Jamaica. She attended The University of Sydney and received a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology and Film Theory. Through installation and video portraiture, as well as her curatorial work, Ania addresses themes central to the Jamaican experience such as Black empowerment, resistance, feminism, environmental justice, and spirituality. All while disrupting imperialist narratives, Ania collects meaningful, lesser-known stories in order to uplift the historical legacies of autonomy, self-determination, and liberation that shape her island home. She is the founder of Goat Curry Gallery, a platform which features artworks from Jamaican craft producers along with her documentary series REAL TALK, an intimate collection of interviews from across Jamaica, exploring identity through themes of social justice, class, race and familial relationships.
Ania has exhibited in the National Gallery of Jamaica’s Summer Exhibition, she is an AIRIE (Artist in Residence in Everglades) Fellow, an Art Omi: Artist in Residence candidate, a Caribbean Film Academy Fellow, recipient of the Black Creative Endeavours Grant, the inaugural Curatorial and Art Writing Fellow at New Local Space Kingston among others.
SPOTLIGHTED PROJECT
Title: Strictly Two Wheel
Year completed: 2022
Length: 10min
Logline: An intimate portrait on a family owned mechanic shop in rural Jamaica and a father’s love for his children and community. Bobo uses minimal resources to provide a medium for mobility and independence and imbues his children with the skills to maintain the craft of bicycle building.
Alexandra Warner (Trinidad and Tobago)
Trinidadian raised and New York based freelance film director and producer. Graduated from NYU Gallatin with a B.A. in Documentary Production & International Relations in 2016. Experienced working in the mainstream news industry as an Associate Content Developer and independently as the Founder and Director of Untold Docuseries Limited. The feature length pilot episode, “The Forgotten Boys,” following the stories of three young men connected by a prison based debate team, is an official selection in “Lift Off Global Network Showcase” and a semi-finalist in “Dumbo Film Festival.” Through storytelling I strive to showcase the universality of human experience, empower marginalized voices and advocate for equality.
SPOTLIGHTED PROJECT
Title: Reclaimed
Year completed: 2022
Length: 2hrs 57mins
Logline: Reclaimed is a new short form video series for the Brooklyn Museum focusing on art as a tool to reclaim narratives that have traditionally told from a Western perspective. The series explores the unique ways in which artists leverage their work to reclaim narratives of their lived experiences. The first three features highlight artists who have been influenced by Andy Warhol and used their medium to convey the complexities of navigating spirituality and marginalized identity. An effort to highlight and empower groups that have been left out, stigmatized, and misrepresented. Follow along for a celebration of our differences and stride towards collective healing and social progress.
Rae Wiltshire (Guyana)
Rae Wiltshire is a cinematographer, photographer, actor, editor, director, producer, playwright, screenwriter, journalist, English Major (with honors), short story writer and recently, a sound recordist. He has repurposed American cinema to film his own people and speak about taboo subjects while telling stories about the Guyanese experience: Georgetown, the seawall, the Atlantic, the Guyanese tongue on the big screen, the landscapes and fruits that give this tropical place meaning.
“I want Guyanese to see themselves. I want our stories to travel borders. We are deserving of that.”
SPOTLIGHTED PROJECT
Title: Eating Papaw on the Seashore
Year: 2022
Length: 19′
Logline: Two boys are forced to love in darkness because boys are not allowed to love in light.
Synopsis: The film is a coming-of-age film between two queer boys who are now discovering their sexuality in a homophobic society.
The project started from a grant by the Commonwealth Foundation and was supported by Third Horizon and RaeWiltshire Films.
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