Errol Williams
Directing
Biography
Errol Williams was a pioneer filmmaker who was introduced to filmmaking at the New Brunswick Film Co-op in the late 1980's. His dramatic and documentary films were screened at festivals around the world, and his international success helped shine a spotlight on the NB Film Co-op. He had a particular gift for documentary filmmaking and after his successful production of Echoes in the Rink: The Willie O'Ree Story (1997), he went on to produce two successful and influential documentary feature films in Bermuda - When Voices Rise and Walking on a Sea of Glass. After his untimely death in 2007, a special award was set up in his honour and was presented to the winner of the Best low-budget NB Documentary film at the Silver Wave Film Festival. After the 2011 Silver Wave Awards, it was decided to use the award to help fund a short documentary project and hence the creation of this award.
Known For
Echoes in the Rink: The Willie O'Ree Story is a documentary on the triumphal life story of the first Black player in the National Hockey League. Like Jackie Robinson in professional baseball, O'Ree faced many obstacles to achieving his dream; but unlike Robinson, his achievement would go unnoticed for forty years.
Echoes in the Rink: The Willie O'Ree Story
A drama of political awakenings which connects activism in Apartheid South Africa to Canada in the 1990s.
A Darker Side
"When Voices Rise..." tells the important, but little-known story of dismantling segregation in the polite society that was Bermuda in the 1950s. Working in secret, the Progressive Group organized the 1959 Theatre Boycott to end segregation in movie theatres in Hamilton. Context is provided by those who protested against segregation and the limited franchise earlier in Bermuda by authoring a "Secret Document" that analyzed the social problems of the island. The film also features a rare interview conducted in London, England with Kingsley Tweed-a powerful, public figure during the boycott that changed the island forever. -- Chris Campbell
When Voices Rise...
An elderly Caribbean man moves to Eastern Canada but struggles with isolation and addiction when he gets there.
Driftwood
A Parable in Black and White examines the nature and breadth of prejudice as seen through the eyes of two hobos, one black and the other white. What happens while they are out on a walk one day leads to an understanding that despite our differences, we are all human.
Parable in Black and White
Errol Williams' last film is an homage to the Bermuda civil rights activist Kingsley Tweed - carpenter, preacher, and key figure in the desegregation of Bermuda following the boycott of public theatres in 1959. The documentary follows Tweed's return to the island after forty years living abroad. [Darrell Varga]