Yao Ramesar

Robert Yao Ramesar (born May 2, 1963) is a Trinidadian director, screenwriter and film lecturer. One of the Caribbean's most accomplished and prolific directors, Ramesar has created over 120 films on the people, history and culture of Trinidad and Tobago. With a film career spanning more than 2 decades, Ramesar remains a cornerstone of the emerging local and regional film culture, having taken Caribbean cinema to the world under the rubric of an original aesthetic deemed Caribbeing, notable for its almost exclusive reliance on sunlight to illuminate the people and landscapes of his films.

His credits in television include the She Woman series produced for the United Nations Beijing Conference in 1996 (which was broadcast live to the Caribbean region), and the award-winning People and Routes series. Collaborating with Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott, Ramesar directed The Saddhu of Couva and The Coral, the first screen adaptations of Walcott's poetry. He also produced seminal documentaries on the pioneers of the steelband movement, traditional Carnival characters, indentureship, emancipation, religious rituals and the myriad festivals and celebrations of Trinidad and Tobago.

He holds a Bachelor of Arts (summa cum laude) in Film Production and Master of Fine Arts 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. Currently, he is the coordinator and lecturer in film at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad.

Ramesar and his work have been covered in reviews and interviews for the New York Times, AOL Time-Warner, the Toronto Star, the Washington Post, BBC, Time Out, Filmmaker Magazine and numerous other broadcasts and publications.

Ramesar was born in Tamale, Ghana, West Africa in 1963, the son of Esmond Ramesar, a Trinidad educator, and Mariane Ramesar (née Soares), a Jamaican historian. He has two older sisters named Celia Gibbings and Deborah Shirley. After leaving Ghana, the Ramesar family travelled to Trinidad, then Jamaica, and finally settled in Ontario, Canada in 1966.

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