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Richard finch ideo3/11/2024 It’s a story that not a lot of people know. “She was pleased we had taken the time to tell Ulric’s story. His 87-year-old wife, Anne, who is also portrayed in the film, saw it at a special screening in Lewes, England, where she lives.“She liked it, she thought it was great,” Ms Solomon said. Mr Cross’s son, Richard Finch, will be here to open the festival. His family is pleased that his story has been recorded for posterity. I had to understand the whole history of all those countries that was engaging and interesting from an audience point of view, but also showed the impact and importance of this man, of this time.”Mr Cross was 96 when he died in Trinidad on October 4, 2013. I had to come up with a way of telling a story that was one man’s story, but also tell a second story. “It was a very long time, partly because I’ve never seen a story like that before - one that tells the story of the Caribbean. “I began working on it in 2011 and finished it last year,” the film-maker said. These appropriations of form are essential where conventional documentation does not exist.”With so many paths to explore, the film was several years in the making. Since ‘real’ footage does not exist, we must reimagine the past in order to reclaim it for posterity. “These artistic tools are vital in order to reclaim and ?nally tell the authentic tales of our heroic Caribbean leaders, forefathers and ancestors. Its aim however, isn’t to spew the “familiar narratives of slavery and victimhood” but to instead champion “heroic agency”.“This story interweaves ‘reality’ with ‘arti?cial’ media ,” it reads. And I thought that was a very interesting story.”As described in her director’s statement, Hero straddles the three points of the triangular trade - Europe, Africa and the Caribbean. It felt very much like, let’s go and create freedom in Africa. And then when Apartheid was abolished, all over the world there was a call from South Africa for educated black people to come and help with the transformation process. “Really, it’s about the way the whole world came together to try to support the African liberation movement in the ‘50s and ‘60s. Mr Cross’s tale opened the door to the “hitherto untold story of those Caribbean professionals who helped to liberate Africa from colonialism”.“I began to realise what a big story it was,” she said. He enlisted in the Royal Air Force, ultimately becoming the most decorated West Indian airman of the Second World War, and then joined the Pan-African independence movement.It put him on “a dramatically different course”, one that was completely in line with Ms Solomon’s “life mission” as a director, producer, distributor and curator - to express the “intimate voices and larger political roles” played by people from the Caribbean throughout history. Mr Cross, a lawyer, left Trinidad for England in 1941 “to seek his fortune”. So I got involved to help my mom, initially.”Early research got her interested. She had a successful career with the BBC before she moved to Toronto, and launched her own company, CaribbeanTales Media Group, in 2001.“A family friend approached my mother and said that he wanted her to make sure a film was made of Ulric - that was his way of saying, ‘Get Frances-Anne to make a film’. It opens the Bermuda International Film Festival on March 20.“The story came to me through a family friend,” said Ms Solomon, an award-winning film-maker born in England to Trinidadian parents. Interesting story: actors Peter Williams, left, and Nickolai Salcedo in a scene from Hero, which opens the Bermuda International Film Festival (Photograph supplied)įrances-Anne Solomon did not know Ulric Cross’s story but.the request to make a film about him came from her mother.And so she started on a quest which ultimately led to Hero.
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