Literature Comes Alive!
Celebrating the launch of Literature Alive on Bravo! Television
By Catherine Emmanuel | Posted: October 16, 2005
Literature Alive, the original and explorative series on Caribbean-Canadian authors, premiered on Thursday October 6, 2005 on Bravo! Television. At the offices of Leda Serene Films and CaribbeanTales in Toronto there was a party. The team behind the production, other staff and Board members, some of the writers profiled and several wellwishers celebrated this landmark occasion in Canadian cultural programming.
Literature Alive is the thirteen-part documentary series that each week showcases selected Caribbean-Canadian writers and their literary works through three generations, from the 1950's to the current hip hop generation. Frances-Anne Solomon, founder of Leda Serene Films and creator of the series puts it this way: “People of the Caribbean are natural-born storytellers. We spend time with our ancestry. We tell stories of our past. Our rich and diverse histories are often scattered as we migrate on our diasporic journeys, but still we continue to gather, reinvent, and share our tales.”
The series introduces a range of writers who are at home in Canada and whose ancestral homes span the Caribbean and the world. It also shows how the richness and diversity of form and content created by these artists is in no small part a product of their experiences of migration to and from other countries and cultures.
On this October evening, the feeling was surprisingly Caribbean with the glow of the setting sun and warm temperatures providing the backdrop for Literature Alive’s launch party. Familiar and new faces showed up and each one was welcomed warmly. Writers like Ramabai Espinet and Jemeni joined the crowd. Guests mingled under the trees outside sharing stories, renewing friendships, making new acquaintances until the hour had arrived. Then everyone made their way inside for the eagerly awaited Bravo! broadcast of Literature Alive.
Now sitting around the TV screen indoors, we cheered as Leda Serene Films' name flashed in the opening credits. The series opened with Memory Places. In this first documentary, author Andre Alexis takes us along with him as he remembers his birthplace of Trinidad. Then we go by train with him to his childhood home of Ottawa and back to Parkdale in Toronto where he currently resides. The documentary drew us into his inner worlds and, as we sat engaged, we felt as if we ourselves were having an intimate conversation with Andre rather than watching a formal interview. Sometimes laughter, sometimes silence, filled the room as many of us remembered our own heritage culture stories, some of which were Caribbean and some that were not. On that evening, all of us there identified with many of the complex issues that Andre Alexis raised because we recognized them as inherent aspects of our unique Canadian identity.
Documentaries to follow will continue to deal with the many different issues that involve writers and their art. We will see and hear them discuss memories of home that interweave the complex tapestry of their Canadian identity with diverse heritage cultures. And so we will explore the lives and works of a group of Canadian writers who make their homes here in Canada yet still continue to connect so strongly with their ancestral heritage cultures. We will meet Dany Laferrière from Haiti and Shani Mootoo from Trinidad. There will be others like Louise Bennett, Nalo Hopkinson, Pamela Mordecai, d'bi young and Richardo Keens-Douglas whose stories also colour Canada’s cultural scene. On a larger scale, Literature Alive will bring into focus many ideas that define the current social landscape of Canada because of our country’s inherent diversity and long history of migration.
As the closing credits started to roll, a sense of pride and accomplishment permeated the room and gave credence to the fact that Literature Alive is more than just a television show. As a first in Canadian cultural programming, it offers everyone a glimpse into the lives and artistry of people with deep and broad multicultural roots. It also showcases the value they place on their heritage cultures and the extent to which they hope for a more integrated Canadian cultural landscape.
Literature Alive airs on Bravo! from October 6 to December 29, 2005 at 8 P.M. and has also been produced for Canadian Learning Television, Book Television, OMNI, and Gayelle Television in Trinidad.
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