A Winter Tale

Neither chained by realism nor burdened by it, director Frances-Anne Solomon thoughtfully explores the issue of Black-on-Black crime within the Black community, which certainly transcends national boundaries. Nevertheless, in "A Winter Tale"—the opening night presentation for this year's African Diaspora Film Festival in New York City—Solomon remains specific to Black Canadian affairs. Her consistent use of intimate scenes reminds the audience that such a universal theme is grounded in a specific location that is worthy of close-up attention.

The film opens with the death of a young boy as a result of stray gunfire near a drug location. Instead of allowing female characters to pronounce the pain and mournfulness of the moment, Solomon captures the devastated sounds and piercing silence of men's pain, tears and struggles. Solomon does not ignore facial dialogue. In fact, she makes good use of visual resources at the most telling moments. Her thoughtful portrayal of a crime that might only merit a blurb in newspapers is the reason for viewing the film.

Following the death, a young community-builder, Gene Wright, starts a local support group exclusively for men. Wright thinks that this unfortunate homicide will galvanize men across generations to address problems of the community. The first meeting, however, fails expectations. It is only within a local eatery, Miss G's Caribbean Take Away, that the men start to come together. It is in this more intimate setting that the film shows how crimes within the community are intertwined and have lasting effects within the home despite the bantering and play that goes on in the eatery. Amidst the urgent need to address the recent killing, each key male character has difficult issues of home that do not have comforting or identifiable resolutions.

In a question-and-answer session following the premiere screening, some audience members observed that the instructive potential of the film might be lost due to some explicit content. In response, the director upheld the current format of the film in order to show how these explicit images are not holistically demanding. Likewise, I think that although driven by true-to-life narratives, the edgy exactitude of Solomon's cinematography indicates the artist's innovative imagination.

In "A Winter Tale," Solomon along with her talented cast deliver a complex yet common story that respects the audience's interpretative freedom by preserving the dynamic lives of each character. (Courtesy of SeeingBlack.com)

My response to this movie was it was great. The reason why I say this is because I can relate to these things that happened in the movie from my own experience growing up in a troubled neighborhood. I myself grew up in TCHC neighborhood so I see these things taking place on a regular basis, people getting shot, drugs being sold, police come in and harassing innocent people and friends getting killed over nonsense.

Therefore we need more community support and more community organizations to help out in these troubled neighborhoods, so that our young men and women can have a future and move forward in life to accomplish their goals and dreams.

The reason why I thought the movie was great was because it showed the struggle that we face on a daily basis, growing up and living in a troubled neighborhood. It also had a community leader that was trying to make a difference by having community group meetings once or twice a week, having people come out and participate in making a change in the community.

Frances-Anne Solomon has done a fantastic job of combining a well-written script and the perfect team of actors to bring A Winter Tale to fruition on the big screen. This movie is a brutally honest and personal view of the social ills that affect young black males at risk in Toronto. Rather than just presenting a violent shoot 'em-up type of movie, Solomon shows us the lives of men from a community who are proactive in their attempt to deal with the emotional and psychological effects of poverty, and urban violence. These are elements that are hardly highlighted in depth in news stories we hear and see locally.

What makes this movie come alive is not just the stories told through a group of men seeking answers, but it's also the passion and emotion evoked by Miss G (played by the phenomenal Leonie Forbes). The history of conflict between her son Ian and herself is emotionally riveting, as is the performance of Canadian actor Peter Williams who plays the role of the social worker, Gene Wright, who initiates the support group for black males.

A Winter Tale is a special film told from a unique angle. It's a poignant story that is not exclusive to Black Canadians, but to anyone concerned about the future of their community and the children growing up under similar conditions.

'A Winter Tale' reminded me of a snow globe. Not only because it happens in winter (hence snow) and not only because the world of this small black Toronto community gets shaken (as snow globes do) by the accidental shooting death of a young child ... but also because of the closeness and intimacy of everything. The feeling was of being invited into a small space (like a snow globe) to meet these characters, experienced with an emotional and visual closeness (e.g. many close up shots of their eyes, faces, mouths) which pressed them and their lives against me as a viewer. How could we all fit into this small globe without becoming more intimately involved (visually and emotionally) or without feeling some kind of intensity?

Gene, one of the main characters (a social worker), forms a male support group, which addresses the need for 'dialogue' among the men of the community. In contrast, there are points in the film where there is no dialogue ... where what is not said speaks as loudly as (louder than?) what is or could be. This absence (of dialogue) stood out for me for two scenes in particular: (i) after the shooting of the boy, one of the men returns to the eatery to tell the grandfather that his grandson is dead. This is done so wordlessly and powerfully that in the moment I was aware of the power of silence (absence of words). Anything voiced at that point would have ruined it. (ii) Gene (social worker) crying in bed after the shooting of the boy, his wife's long, white arm reaching out to touch his turned back. He eventually turns to her, still crying, and there is an overhead shot of their naked interracial bodies intertwined. Sensual. Maternal. Come to think of it, the men in the film often come across as boys, particularly when in the presence of the women in their lives (whether wife, girlfriend or mother). They seemed to be reflections of that little boy who got shot: just as vulnerable - both emotionally and in the sense of being potential victims of gun violence themselves.

I enjoyed the film's textures, camera work and editing. At times I found myself thinking that I could have been looking at a painting - particularly in the scenes that showed the city of Toronto. I saw it in a blurred, abstract, almost surreal way - in contrast with the realness of the life of the main characters. The close up red of a street car passing was like a paintbrush with red paint on it, streaking across the screen. The silhouetted CN tower against a golden watercolour blur of sky. A quick, haunting glimpse of a black brush-stroked female figure standing alone on a snowy sidewalk. Blurry memories of childhood. At points the editing, angles and distance of the shots worked together to make me feel as though I was seeing this urban painting through the window of a passing train: quick snippets. Not much of the city had to be shown to depict it. Like a few simple Japanese brush strokes creating the whole picture.

The soundtrack was there throughout, supporting and driving, but never standing above. The only point where I consciously became aware of it and found myself listening to what the music was 'made up' of was a looped instrumental part just before the little boy gets shot. I remember listening to it and being aware of the silence and spacing between the notes enhancing the tension of 'something about to happen'.

The Reel World Film Festival in April opened with a gala performance of the made in Canada film A Winter Tale. It won the award for best Canadian feature at the festival which included films from a number of countries.

It's the work of British-born, Trinidad raised Frances-Anne Solomon whose experience embraces award winning feature films and television productions for the BBC.

Leonie Forbes, Jamaica's "first lady of film" won the festival's award of excellence for her telling performance as Miss G, the proprietor of a small restaurant in Toronto's Parkdale district, where the entire tale is set during bleak winter time.

After a ten-year-old boy is shot by a stray bullet a social worker tries to form a black men's support group seeking a witness to the crime. But it's an uphill struggle against fear of retribution from neighborhood, drug dealing gangs is portrayed. A Winter Tale offers a searching perspective on the timely issues of gun violence, set against the backdrop of a Caribbean community's hopes and tribulations. The film, although fictional is directed and filmed with a documentary-like sense of realism. It reminds one how shallow are the "reality" TV shows when art can imitate life in such a telling fashion.

At present, I can't tell you where this moving film might be shown theatrically, but please watch out for A Winter Tale.