Heavyweights join Windrush Caribbean Film Festival

Emmanuel Anyiam-Osigwe MBE and Ansel Wong CBE join the Windrush Caribbean Film Festival team

WCFF newbies: Emmanuel Anyiam-Osigwe MBE and Ansel Wong CBE

AWARD WINNING filmmaker Frances-Anne Solomon welcomed both Ansel Wong CBE and Emmanuel Anyiam-Osigwe MBE into the Windrush Caribbean Film Festival (WCFF) fold this week.

The WCFF announced that Wong and Anyiam-Osigwe are joining its team as it gears up to mark the 75th Anniversary of Windrush in June.

Anyiam-Osigwe MBE is joining the WCFF as Artistic Director.

Anyiam-Osigwe is well known in the film and wider cultural communities as the Founder of British Urban Film Festival (BUFF) which launched in 2005 as the only showcase for urban independent cinema in the UK.

In 2018, Emmanuel co-founded BUFF Originals (now BUFF Studios), the production and distribution arm of BUFF, whose debut feature No Shade won its director, Clare Anyiam-Osigwe an African Movie Academy Award.

Frances-Anne Solomon Windrush Caribbean Film Festival co-founder

Last November, BUFF Studios debuted Anyiam-Osigwe’s documentary film ‘Absolutely Marvellous’.

In October 2020 BUFF was granted BAFTA qualifying status for British Short Films. Anyiam-Osigwe was awarded an MBE for services to the Black and Minority Ethnic Film Industry, following a 20-year career in media, journalism, and film.

On this announcement, he said said: “I am excited to be working with the Windrush Caribbean Film Festival at such a pivotal moment in British history. The 75 th anniversary of Windrush in June will be a once in a generation moment.

“Therefore, the opportunity lies in wait for the festival to become front and centre of all that is great and good in showcasing Caribbean film and cinema in 2023 and beyond. It’s an opportunity that I am honoured to be part of.”

Wong has been appointed a Director of WCFF CIC, the community interest company that has brought the Festival to the United Kingdom since 2020. 

Born in Trinidad and UK based since the 1960s, Wong is a cultural historian, community leader, political activist and leader of several public and charitable organisations who uses art to affect social change and racial justice.

He has served on the Windrush Commemoration Committee, was the former Chair of the Notting Hill Carnival Trust and co-founder of Elimu Mas Band. He led a group of staff to get October designated as Black History Month. 

Emmanuel Anyiam-Osigwe MBE

Wong led the creation of much content for WCFF’s 2021 programme which focused on The Art of Carnival. 

On his appointment, he enthused: “I am honoured and delighted to be joining WCFF as I have engaged with the festival over the past two years and bear witness to the drive for excellence and quality that underpins their programming.

“I look forward to making a contribution to elevate the creativity of the Caribbean and its diaspora”.

Solomon, co-founder of WCFF, said, “We are honoured to have these two consequential figures for the cultural landscape of Britain and its Black communities.”

The (WCFF) successfully launched in 2020 with a mission to engage and educate audiences across the UK about the contributions of the Windrush generation to the country through screenings, talkbacks, interviews, and workshops.

The festival is a springboard for conversations that bridge the gap between the Windrush generation’s experience and 21st century perspectives, with the goal of discussing and celebrating this iconic generation before they are lost to us.

In addition to the Festival, WCFF inaugurated the Paulette Wilson Windrush Justice Award given to Amelia Gentleman and Nadine White, Jacqueline Mackenzie and Patrick Vernon and Wendy Williams.

The festival is supported by a national consortium of leading community, business, arts organisations, and educators working to attract a broad, diverse multi-generational audience.

Taking it to the candy shop

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1 Comment

  1. | Chaka Artwell

    With His Majesty’s African-Caribbean heritage Subjects still waiting for compensation; after having been illegally exiled to the Caribbean in 2018.

    With the continuing shocking disparity of His Majesty’s African-heritage Subjects accounting for seventy percent of London’s Youth Custody Prisoners.

    With unemployment and underemployment for His Majesty’s African-heritage Subjects not addressed; and having our skin-colour disparities used to advantage the Labour Party.

    His Majesty’s African and African-Caribbean Subjects have no political leadership.

    Can someone, anyone, tell me exactly what the “windrush generation” have to celebrate?

    Reply

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